TORONTO – By the point Blue Jays fan Suzanne Jangda and her two kids arrived at college Thursday morning the yard was empty and students were already inside. They were late.
The morning had been a scramble and “hard for all of us,” said Jangda, because they’d stayed up later than usual to observe the Jays trounce the Seattle Mariners in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series.
“I’m a giant Blue Jays fan and turning my kids into them, too, is my mission,” said Jangda, who was anticipating one other late school night for Thursday’s game, and a more manageable Friday night game because the series continued from Seattle’s T-Mobile Park.
Wednesday’s game ran nearly three hours long, but she had let the boys watch until the fifth inning, about an hour after their usual 8 p.m. bedtime and long enough to catch George Springer’s homer.
That was after the four- and seven-year-olds powered through a sluggish Tuesday, because of a later night Monday watching the second game within the best-of-seven series.
“It doesn’t occur on a regular basis. Embrace it should you can,” Jangda reasoned in a late afternoon phone interview.
By early evening Thursday, it was clear Jangda’s kids needed to make amends for rest.
“Seems my kids are definitely showing TIRED,” Jangda said by text in a 7 p.m. update, about an hour-and-a-half before Game 4’s first pitch.
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“So I’m going out to a bar to observe with friends tonight, and making them go to bed at 8 like usual. Without me at home watching, they won’t be as sucked in.”
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Like many baseball fans with school-aged kids, Jangda found herself weighing the worth of cheering on the Jays’ championship bid as a family against the likely prospect of weary days.
Parents keen to share their Blue Jays fervour with their children needs to be able to adjust accordingly, agreed Lisa Fujimoto, a mom of two and Toronto elementary school teacher.
As an ardent Jays fan herself, she’s grappling with the identical challenges as her 12- and nine-year-old boys each push bedtimes well-past the norm to catch playoff motion.
“All of us have Jays fever big-time immediately,” she said, suspecting adrenalin keeps her boys alert for sophistication.
“I actually think the joy has been bringing them through their days, partially,” she mused, adding that any sleep deficits are offset by extra-early bedtimes on non-game days.
It helps that they’re a bit older and higher able at recognizing their very own physical limits, Fujimoto added, but she’s also imposed some rules.
Homework have to be done first and lights are out as soon as the sport ends. Consequently, she said her boys are busy when there are lulls in gameplay – that’s once they shower, placed on their PJs, prep their school backpacks and lay out the following day’s outfits in order that they’re ready within the morning.
“It’s really motivating for them,” she said.
Fujimoto hadn’t noticed if the children in her split Grade 1 and a pair of class are any more bleary-eyed than usual due to MLB playoff excitement, but noted that Jays chatter has infiltrated classroom discussions. Since every child is different, she advised parents to be guided by their very own kids’ cues as as to if they will handle a disrupted schedule, and by how much.
Elisha Muskat described her nine-year-old son as “obsessed” with the series but still sent him to bed at his usual 9:30 p.m. bedtime Wednesday due to a cross-country meet the following morning.
That didn’t stop him from yelling out every five minutes, asking her for an update on the rating. He finally fell asleep at about 10 p.m., she guessed.
“He’ll reluctantly go to sleep, waiting for updates from the following room,” Muskat chuckled.
Muskat expected to let her son to watch Thursday night’s game through MLB.com.
“We don’t have a particular marker, but when we were within the seventh inning and we had a giant lead or if we’re within the sixth inning and we were down by 10 runs or something like that, then I’d be like, ‘OK, bedtime,’” she said.
“But when it’s a detailed game, I believe it’ll be a late night.”
Jangda said she planned to let her kids watch Friday’s game, expected to be an earlier matchup starting at 6:08 p.m. ET.
She’s keen to provide her son the identical memories she has of watching the Jays clinch the World Series title in 1992, when she was seven-years-old.
“To capable of see that is large. It’s amazing. I wouldn’t want him to miss that. Because I remember as a child watching them within the World Series,” she said.
“I don’t think I could dare put my seven-year-old to bed in a World Series game. There’s no way. Why would I try this?”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2025.
© 2025 The Canadian Press