Fate of displaced Blue Jays depends on COVID-19 vaccination: CEO

▲ This Getty Images file photo from July 9, 2020, shows Rogers Centre in Toronto during an intrasquad game for the Toronto Blue Jays. (Yonhap)

▲ This Associated Press file photo from March 1, 2021, shows TD Ballpark in Dunedin, Florida, during a major league spring training game between the home team Toronto Blue Jays and the Pittsburgh Pirates. (Yonhap)

▲ In this Getty Images file photo from Sept. 29, 2019, Toronto Blue Jays players salute the crowd at Rogers Centre in Toronto during the final game of the season against the Tampa Bay Rays. (Yonhap)

MLB club-season

Fate of displaced Blue Jays depends on COVID-19 vaccination: CEO

By Yoo Jee-ho

SEOUL, April 3 (Yonhap) -- South Korean left-hander Ryu Hyun-jin signed a four-year contract with the Toronto Blue Jays in December 2019, but he has yet to pitch in a regular season game in the club's home city in Canada.

The coronavirus pandemic, and health protocols and quarantine measures put in place as a result, kept the Blue Jays away from Rogers Centre in downtown Toronto, and forced them to set up shop at their minor league facility in Buffalo, New York, during the 2020 season. With the Canada-U.S. border still closed to nonessential travel, the Blue Jays will play their early home games this year at their spring training site, TD Ballpark in Dunedin, Florida.

When will Ryu get to take the mound at Rogers Centre? Could that happen this year, as more and more Americans and Canadians get vaccinated?

Mark Shapiro, president and CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays, said "objective facts" will determine the level of his and the club's optimism.

"Most importantly, we've had zero positive cases through an entire short season (in 2020) and a whole spring training, which just demonstrates the amount of respect our players have had for what is a very good set of protocols that Major League Baseball and the Players Association have had put in place," Shapiro told Yonhap News Agency in an interview Thursday.

The Blue Jays began their season with a 3-2 victory over the New York Yankees on Thursday in New York. After a day off Friday, they'll play two more games in the Bronx and then visit the Texas Rangers in Arlington, Texas, for three more games.

Shapiro said the COVID-19 vaccine will be available to his players when they come back to Florida next week.

"Hopefully, a large number of our players and staff will take the vaccine. That'll be another objective reason to be optimistic," the executive said. "If you know wide distribution of the vaccine throughout the United States results in numbers that start to decline -- that's not the case right now but if that does happen -- then that's three pretty strong compelling reasons for why we should not be a public threat to public health in Toronto and should be allowed to return. But I watch those three developments and see where they go. And as long as they trend in a positive direction, then I think there's an objective reason to be optimistic."

Canadian health authorities, though, continue to have reservations about cross-border travel that the Blue Jays and their opponents would be making during the season. All travelers arriving in Canada face mandatory 14-day quarantine, and vaccination won't be sufficient for an exemption.

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