Dear Baltimore, we’re really sorry.

Dear Baltimore,

We’re sorry. Really, we are. We know we messed up.

The Blue Jays fan who threw a full beer can at Orioles left-fielder Hyun Soo Kim (that’s a ballplayer? sounds like one of Kim Jong Un’s dead uncles) as he made an easy catch during Tuesday wild-card game doesn’t represent us. To be absolutely clear: we’re ashamed of what the flinger did. He didn’t even come close.

Most Torontonians—even our girls—used to be able to throw a lot better than that. To quote your centre-fielder Adam Jones: “That was about pathetic as it gets.” We’re down with that, homey.

We’re also down with having “whupped yo’ asses,” as you people are wont to say in your colourful demotic. No, we won’t apologize for that, or sticking a “u” in colourful, for that matter. But we will apologize for just about anything else, real or imagined. It’s what we do.

So, here goes: We’re really, really sorry, Baltimore. We really need to do better.We’re as bewildered as you—that is, when you stop smoking crack and shooting each other long enough to ponder anything—about why this happened. In Canada, in Toronto of all places.

Now, a lesser newspaper would undoubtedly find some way to blame this sorry state of affairs on Drake or members of the Toronto Raptors or Black Lives Matter. But, as we never tire of pointing out, we are among the most diverse cities in the world. Racism? That just isn’t us. (We loved The Wire.)

Surely, we must assign the blame for this shamefully errant toss where it belongs, namely, on decades of cutting back on physical education in our schools. Most of our uncoordinated little treasures couldn’t–to paraphrase Robertson Davies—hit a moose in the backside with a banjo, let alone a Korean in left field with an overpriced can of beer.

Or Rob Ford. Let’s just pin the whole thing on five unhinged years of Rob Ford and be done with it. He was a complete aberration and not like us at all. And now he’s gone.

Regretfully,

The Toronto Star