By: J.P. Antonacci
Canadian Baseball Network

Unlike July 1, there are no fireworks on Canada Baseball Day. So Josh Donaldson provided his own.

A home run hat trick by the reigning American League MVP powered the Blue Jays to a 9-6 win over the Minnesota Twins on Sunday afternoon, much to the delight of the 47,444 fans who packed Rogers Centre in Toronto.

Troy Tulowitzki added a solo shot for the Jays, who completed a sweep of the Twins and built some momentum heading into a three-game showdown with division rival Baltimore.

With the players wearing red and white jerseys and a steady stream of CanCon blaring through the loudspeakers, the Blue Jays paid tribute to Canada’s baseball heritage by inviting the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum to set up a display near the WestJet Flight Deck.

Under the watchful eye of two Toronto police offers, fans got a glimpse of select artifacts from the museum’s collection. The main draws were Jose Bautista’s flipped bat from last year’s ALCS against Texas and the home plate Joe Carter landed on after “touching them all” to walk off the Phillies in 1993.

“It’s one of our best artifacts, and it’s pretty rare to bring it out (on the road),” director of operations Scott Crawford said of the historic home plate, which was donated to the museum by former Blue Jays president Paul Beeston and autographed by Carter when he was inducted in 2003.

Two other gleaming items impressed a Blue Jays employee setting up the display hours before game time.

“Buddy, you gotta see this,” he said, calling to a coworker.

“Those are our trophies,” he continued, staring at Toronto’s two World Series trophies. “Those are what makes us what we are today.”

Crawford shares that excitement. It’s the same feeling that drew the current director of operations to first volunteer at the hall of fame in St. Marys 17 years ago.

“Just the love of baseball,” he said. “There aren’t a lot of places in Canada to work in the baseball field, so I drove up to St. Marys and said, hey, what can I do?”

Crawford credited the Blue Jays for helping Baseball Canada develop the future of the game, and the hall of fame and museum to preserve its past.

“The Jays have been great supporters. It’s been fantastic – great promotion for us,” Crawford said of Canada Baseball Day, now in its fourth season. “The Jays really want to promote the history of baseball in Canada, which is vitally important.”

Thanks in large part to the Blue Jays’ on-field success, Crawford said attendance is up in St. Marys, coinciding with an eight per cent increase in registration in youth baseball programs reported by Baseball Canada last year.

That’s a good sign, said Blue Jays broadcaster Joe Siddall, who credited the many opportunities he had to play ball as a kid in the baseball hotbed of Windsor, Ont., as instrumental to his development as a future major leaguer.

“I’m forever grateful to the people who ran baseball in South Windsor,” Siddall said, mentioning his rep coach Bernie Soulliere and Baseball Canada director of national teams Greg Hamilton, who recruited Siddall for the junior national team.

“You have to look back as a player and a person and just be grateful that those programs existed,” Siddall said. “And of course they’ve all flourished – we know what the junior national team does now, and the opportunities they provide to kids.”

Amateur baseball also had its moment in the spotlight on Canada Baseball Day. In London and Fredericton, Summerside and Red Deer, teams battled to become Baseball Canada’s senior men’s, senior women’s, 15U boys and 13U Baseball Canada national champions.

At Rogers Centre, Canada’s 2016 Little League World Series team, from Hastings Community Little League in Vancouver, lined up along the third base line before the game and got a nice round of applause.

These are the kids who handed powerhouse Japan their first opening-round LLWS loss in 51 years.

Though his team was on the losing side of the ledger, Twins pitcher Andrew Albers, a native of North Battleford, Sask., was all for the Jays promoting the sport in Canada.

“I think that’s the first step. You come out here with your kids, you enjoy a baseball game, that’s how kids get interested,” said Albers, who won two Pan Am gold medals and a World Baseball Cup bronze with Team Canada.

“Then you go play pickup baseball in a backyard somewhere, and they find out they can throw the ball a little bit, they can hit it a little bit, and all of a sudden you might have something. But I think it all starts with enjoying the game.”