A silver lining to last night’s election result for the Blue Jays?
Many of you that know me well know that I am quite staunchly anti-Conservative. Thus, I can’t say I’m particularly thrilled by last night’s Canadian election results. However, there might be a silver lining in this, especially if you’re a Toronto Blue Jays fan.
After realizing that the last time a Canadian hockey team won the Stanley Cup was during the last Progressive Conservative majority government in Canada, I wondered how baseball teams performed during the Brian Mulroney/Kim Campbell era.
That era began with the election of Brian Mulroney on the night of September 4, 1984 and ended on October 25, 1993 — interestingly enough, the Monday following the Joe Carter home run.
Here are the numbers of the 26 Major League teams (I have not included the 1993 seasons of the 64-98 Marlins and the 67-95 Rockies) during the era:
As you can see, the best team in baseball during that era: the Toronto Blue Jays, an average of a full 3.5 wins (over 162 games) better than any other Major League team during the Mulroney Era. Additionally, all of the Jays’ division titles (’85, ’87, ’89, ’91, ’92, and ’93) all came during that 9-seasons-and-change stretch.
Will the latest Conservative majority government bring sporting success back to Canada’s baseball team? If it does, it would certainly be a silver lining to what would otherwise be a rather disappointing election result for me.
In case anyone was wondering: The Blue Jays were 16-22 during the first 38 games of the Mulroney Era (9-15 at the end of 1984 and started 1985 at 7-7).
Conservatives are warm and cuddly and are the defendewrs of Canada’s institutions. Liberals, on the other hand, have been eroding Canadian values and traditions since 1968. A typical liberal wakes up each morning and says, “How am I going to undermine society today?”