To be chilled to the bone by winds off the lake during an April night game. Or to be down in the lower rows of the outfield grandstands and have to peer over the fence, any ball making it to the warning track disappearing completely. If you were born too late, you don’t know what it was like to sit down the right-field line, completely sideways in your seat, with your neck craned 90 degrees to get a look at home plate. Taking in the Toronto Blue Jays at their original home put certain demands upon the ticketholder.
Of course, watching the most famous of tenants at Exhibition Stadium was strange enough. He was probably driving home while we were still circling the track, getting our lap times from the Bulova Tower. I had some strange experiences at Exhibition Stadium, maybe the strangest was in high school back in the 70s when, at an all-comers 10,000-metre race on the track, my friend and I seized the lead on the opening two laps and only then realized that the field included Jerome Drayton, who had won the prestigious Fukuoka Marathon and owned the world record for 10-mile run. An object lesson to never trust advertising, the concert turned out to be a farewell to guilelessness, that’s about it. And, no, those of us down on the turf 35 years ago for the Who’s Farewell Tour didn’t get a refund any of the dozens of times survivors of the band have reunited since. So, a bit of personal history: Hundreds of times I and now-doddering thousands went to the Ex. What went down at Exhibition Stadium is stuff you may have read about, that you’ve seen pictures of, maybe grainy videos with graphics that look like hieroglyphics.
It doesn’t matter how much of a fan you are it’s just the timeline. If you’re 35, you might have some vague recollection of a trip to the ballpark as a tyke, bouncing on your father’s knee. If you’re in your 20s, you probably couldn’t figure out where the stadium once stood if you were dropped at the Princes’ Gates with a compass.
Never saw that rite of ’80s summers, the Police Picnic. I run the risk of sounding like your bat-guano crazy uncle for caring about this, but it’s a simple statement of fact: A generation of fans have no recollection of Exhibition Stadium.