The Toronto Blue Jays are getting ready for their first home game of the season against the Milwaukee Brewers. But one Jays “super fan” who has been to every one of the team’s home openers will be sitting out this year’s opening game.
Bruce Nelson has had Blue Jays season tickets ever since the team debuted at Exhibition Stadium back in 1977. Back then, he paid $5 for his game ticket -- one of the most expensive seats in the house. Though it was cold and snowing that day, Nelson took his wife and their three children, and started what has become a family tradition.
“It was freezing (that day) but nobody cared,” Nelson told CTV News Toronto. “…If you get to the first game ever of a new sport in town, you don’t care what it’s like (outside).”
Nelson has been a Blue Jays season ticket holder every year since, and has never missed sitting in the stands when the first pitch is thrown over home plate.
But this year, in the Jays’ 40th year, the home opener falls on the Jewish holiday of Passover and, as Nelson says with a smile: “God told us not to go.” Instead, he’ll be watching the game while eating dinner with his family.
Nelson’s love of baseball has never waned over the years and it’s a passion he’s passed down to two generations of his family. Not only do his children cheer for the Blue Jays, but so do his grandkids.
“My wife loves it, my kids have grown up on it and love it and now my grandkids both play baseball and they love it.”
He says there’s nothing quite like the feeling of being in the stadium, surrounded by family, watching the team you love.
“…When people grow up, you sort of have your own life but when you go back to the baseball stadium and you’re sitting with a family and when the Jays get a run or a homerun and everybody’s cheering and giving high fives, it’s your family,” he said.
Nelson has collected a lot of Blue Jays memorabilia over the years, and has passed down many of his collectables to his 15-year-old grandson, Jake Bucovetsky. The walls and shelves of Bucovetsky’s bedroom are filled with autographed baseballs, jerseys and old ticket stubs -- including one from the first home opener his grandfather attended.
The collection also contains a ticket stub from the first game at the Sky Dome in 1989, and a replica ring from 1993 that Nelson was sent after the Jays won back-to-back World Series.
Nelson was in attendance when the Jays won the World Series in 1992 and then again in ‘93 and has kept the hope alive ever since. Even when the team was in a long drought before becoming playoff contenders in the last couple of years, he continued to cheer them on.
For Nelson, his loyalty to the team will never die.
“The Blue Jays mean everything to me.”
With a report from CTV Toronto’s Janice Golding
