Matthew Toffolo Blog May 12th/2007I know that most people won’t get this, especially if you’re not a sports fan, but I recently went through a really tough time as my #1 team, the Toronto Blue Jays just went through this terrible 9 game losing streak. The feeling I had was like a death in the family as each day during the steak brought more and more pain. This team has the talent to make the playoffs for the first time in years, but bad luck in injuries and just people not playing to their potential have caused this losing streak to occur. There are many reasons why I’m so into this team. For one, the Jays and baseball are the first things I really fell in love with as a child. I can’t complain about my childhood as it was better than most, but baseball was the first thing that gave me that tingle inside and gave me excitement in this world. I don’t expect the Blue Jays to win every game in their 162 season, that’s what so magic about the game, you only have to win 60% of your games to be successful. But what eats at me is underachievement and people who make excuses for things being the way they are. Yes, this team has had more bad luck than I can remember. In the span of 3 weeks, we lost our Ace Pitcher, our closer, our setup man, our starting catcher, left fielder and 3rd baseman plus two starting pitchers. I’ve never seen anything like it with any team in all my 25 years of following this sport. It’s the equivalent of making a film and losing your lead actor, 2 supporting actors, your DOP, his Gaffer and 1st AC, plus your key 3rd Assistant Director. It’s hard to recover and you have to upgrade your team and they must step up in order for you to succeed. But you have to eat the problems and move on. But the #1 reason why this team’s losing ways is getting to me is because of the freaky similarities of their successes and failures compared to my own successes and failures. You may like I’m a little nuts, but if the Jays are doing well, so is my life and career. It’s uncanny actually how parallel the Blue Jays existence is to my own: In the mid-70’s the Jays became a franchise and I was born into this life. The beginning years were about setting up our philosophies and forming the franchise/person that we were to become. In the early 80’s, we went ahead of schedule with the conventions and began to win early. From 1983 to 1994 we obtained a lot of success and never had a losing year. We formed a lot of talent and were able to skate through a lot of life’s challenges. But some years we just plain underachieved as we were more talented than what we brought to the field. We just lacked direction and overall leadership to take us to the next level. There were a few major fears that needed to be defeated and some key mentors entered the Jays team and my life to help defeat them. We finally obtained total happiness in 1992/93 when we won the World Series and I started to get out of my shell and fight my fears. The key was to do pretty much what I wanted to do and not caring what others thought. The years I became an independent man! And the Jays were on top of the world! Then cockiness, addictions and overall anger towards the world caused me to sink in life and for the Jays to bottom out. Key people left my life and the Jays organization. We still assumed that no matter what we did, we would always succeed. We were both very young and perhaps achieved success too early. From 1994 to 2001 both the game of baseball and me as a human being fell on hard times. People fell out of love with baseball and I fell out of love with the world. Anger set into us and it became a virus that took years to defeat. For those years the Blue Jays had some ups and downs but were never really in contention. I had a lot of good times but when looking back there were more bad times than good. There was just a lack of direction day in day out. We knew we wanted to win, but we really didn’t have a game plan anymore to obtain it on a consistent basis. We both became jaded and we lacked integrity. Then a miracle happened. I remember the day November 2nd/2001. Our society was post-911 and really feeling mixed about many things. More fears entered a lot of our souls but at the same time a lot of pride and character did for others. I sensed right away that this was a very important time in our society and the tragedies that occurred could make me either a better man or more of the bad man I was at the time. But first a back story: I was addicted to drugs and alcohol during this time. When you’re addicted, the last thing you do is look yourself in the mirror and see who you really are and that you have a problem. You think you’re okay. On that day, September 11th/2001 was the day after my birthday. I was working in the film industry as a PA at the time and I had a 6:30am call on the set of this TV show Soul Food. The night before I was at this industry party for Alliance Atlantis and I drank a ton and did a ton of drugs. As I slumped to work I was completely hung over if not still high and drunk. I was a year older and a year dumber. I bought a journal for my personal birthday present the day before on a lark as I wanted to get back to writing again. I used to write a journal for years before the addictions took over my life (since that day in 2001, I have never missed a day writing in my journal) and I wanted to get back into it again. During a down time, I sat on the steps of the Porta-Potti and wrote my first sentence in years. “I want to be a filmmaker. I want to get control of my life again. I need to change.” Were the first things I wrote. I closed the journal and was completely overwhelmed. Writing those words were the hardest thing I ever had to do. I was taking accountability of my life again. I began to cry when a transport driving walked up to me. “Hey man, my wife just called me on an airplane. She was flying in from England and they turned the plane around. Seems that another plane hit the World Trade Center.” He said. I didn’t say anything as I was a bit overwhelmed not to mention a little drunk and stoned still so I didn’t take in with what we was saying. I just thought it was a dumb mistake by the pilot on his way to landing in New York. He walked away as I began to follow him to set. They weren’t filming anymore. Many people were on their cell phones talking and crying. Then my cell phone rang. It was my at the time girlfriend, future wife and future ex-wife. She told me what happened and I was in shock An hour after they wrapped, I walked down to Yonge/Bloor street in Toronto to catch the Subway. They were showing what happened on the big screen they had at the busiest corner in Toronto. Thousands of people were watching the screen as the traffic was completely stopped. It was shock, simple as that. So as I fought my biggest fear, at the same time, the biggest tragedy in 60 years in North America occurred. The day where we all realized that this would be the type of day where we all would be asked where we were when this happened. When asked by others now where I was I say that I was sitting on a shitter expressing my deepest and darkest fears. Back to November 2nd/2001. For the next 52 days, I tried desperately to stop drinking and doing drugs. I scaled back some but I just had too many enablers around me. Especially my job in the film industry! I needed to quit the film industry in order for me to come back and work again in the film industry. And I also needed to leave my roommate and almost all of my friends who all had major problems too. Quitting is hard, but it’s not as hard as knowing that you must start over again and pretty much leave almost everyone around you. The last episodes of the Sopranos have a major storyline about this problem with addictions. You can stop, but nobody talks about being forced to leave everybody and start your life over again so you can stop forever and never return. So on that day I sat down and watched Game 7 of the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks. My roommate rolled a joint and grabbed himself a beer and one for me. I declined the beer and the joint which was extremely tough. And for the first time in years I watched the game of baseball again. The game I loved as a child more than anything else. I watched some baseball from time to time during the years, but I didn’t REALLY WATCH IT. I didn’t watch it from the angle of poetry, storytelling and competition for a long time because I was usually high or drunk. Baseball is too magical of a game to be watching under the influence. It was then that I found my true addiction. My positive addiction and the addiction that would make me a better person. The addiction of baseball! As my roommate was hassling me to drink a beer and to smoke this “crazy hash joint,” I kept declining. But I was still smoking cigarettes. But never again after this game (okay, after my divorce I fell off for a few months before I found my other more important love – another story!). I hated the Yankees and was totally rooting for the Diamondbacks to win. In the bottom of the 9th inning the Yanks were up a run with their unstoppable pitcher Mariano Rivera ready to close out the victory and another Yankees World Series. I looked at my cigarette and said to myself. “If the Yankees give up the lead, I will never drink, smoke or do drugs again.” The Diamondbacks came back and won the game and the World Series in an improbable victory. It was a great game. It was time for me to begin my life again. So I beat drugs and alcohol and set up my life for the second time. During this time, the Jays finally conceited that what they were doing for all these years needed a change as well. They hired a new General Manager and President and basically fired their whole organization. They were starting from scratch. And so was I. 2002 was a year of faze for me. I was cleaning up and figuring out who I was again. So were the Jays. We were both building things up from the ground up. 2003 we both completely overachieved. We moved up the ranks way too quickly and our dreams of success were happening fast. We didn’t expect this to happen so fast and it fucked us up a bit. 2004 we came crashing down. Overachieving is an interesting event if it happens in your life. You obtain responsibility of things that you are learning while it’s also happening. So you are making a lot mistakes while doing, which is great, but it eats at you afterwards because those mistakes you make are obviously things you won’t make ever again in hindsight a week later. So you get mad at yourself for being so stupid and you have to learn to get over your regrets and move on. A very important thing to learn in life. 2005 things were starting to come into shape. I was building my life exactly the way I wanted and I saw that the future was very bright. So bright in fact that it would be a miracle if I DIDN”T SUCCEED in the future. 2006 was a great boost. We were good, but not great yet. There were a few things and personal that needed to happen to fill the holes we still had. But you now knew that’s all you need to do and you’re ready to make a huge mark in this world. 2007 is the year. You have the team and all I have to do is stay focused, play the game and just go out there and have fun. Then the injuries happened which led to the losing streak. The Jays have become a part of my personality because we have mirrored each other so much. But for the first time we aren’t mirroring each other. Or maybe we are. Maybe I’m not seeing something that is obvious in my life. My career is on track. My life is on track. I’m happy. So what am I missing? And that’s what’s killing me. I know it sounds crazy that the Jays are my good luck/bad luck charm. I know that this insane feeling is all in my head, but I still believe it. So I have to figure out why I’m in this losing streak (eventhough I’m still in denial about it) and how to get out of it. Because no matter how many injuries there are, we still should be on top of the standings.
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