"He ain't stopping us from coming down here," a man from Kamloops said to me, regarding U.S. President Donald Trump a few hours before the first pitch between the Toronto Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners on Saturday night, May 10.

This past weekend (May 9-11) was the only time of the 2025 MLB season Canada's only team, the Toronto Blue Jays was in Seattle to take on the Seattle Mariners. Because of the Blue Jays' popularity and Seattle's proximity to Western Canada, it's usually a weekend when the streets of the Emerald City, are filled with baseball fans from across British Columbia, Alberta, and even Saskatchewan.

The keyword there was usually, as the political impact and insecurity between the countries, stirred by President Trump since he regained office, was evident. 

For the first time in years, I attended the May 10 game, but the vibe around Seattle was much different than in years past. Typically, the Jays-Mariners weekend would see the streets filled with Canadians sporting blue. While many Canadians still made the trip, there were fewer Blue Jays jerseys than in previous years. The employees at the hotel explained to me, that they had a lot of cancellations in the months leading up to the anticipated sporting weekend because of President Trump's tariff threats and uncertainty.

In an attempt to support Canadians who made the trip down, some restaurants were offering discounts of up to 30 per cent off. 

In regards to seeing the impact of fewer people making the trip, maybe the most shocking part, to me, was at the game on Saturday night. Usually, T-Mobile Park is the hottest ticket in town when the Blue Jays arrive. Instead, there was a large number of empty seats around the park. You could still see blue jerseys in the crowd but a lot of empty seats as well, and the numbers prove it. 

The average attendance for the three-game set this past weekend was 31,564. T-Mobile Park holds 47,943 people. My curiosity peaked when I saw the empty seats, so I opened a third-party ticket-purchasing app and discovered tickets were as low as $16 to get in the ballpark. 

While the attendance of 31,564 is still 500 more people than usual for Seattle games so far this season (26,467), it's still much lower than the Blue Jays-Mariners series the last three years - 2022: 35,046; 2023: 42,430; 2024: 34,885. This year's attendance is nearly a seven per cent drop from last year.

Americans are feeling the impact as well, and very much welcomed the presence of Canadians who made the trip. The family sitting in front of me on Saturday night told us they were sorry for, "everything going on right now," and were happy to see their northern neighbours attending the game. I had the same response from some Americans I met when I visited New York City in March.

As fans chanted "Let's Go Blue Jays" walking out of T-Mobile Park on Saturday, I heard one group of about 20-something men start a 51st state chant in retaliation but that was the only animosity I noticed during my two days down south.

For the Blue Jays fans who did attend the series, they were treated to a Toronto sweep, taking the Mariners 6-3, 6-3, 9-1.

The impacts of fewer Canadians making the trip south could be felt at the border crossings as well. Both going down on Friday night and coming back on Sunday, the wait times were anywhere from five to 15 minutes instead of the usual hour or two for this weekend. And, while many people are concerned with issues at the border, I was in and out. Maybe having Nexus helps with that but I think I waited a total of under five minutes going through the border both ways. 

Make no mistake, while Canadians are facing uncertainty in the face of tariff threats and the ever-changing dollar, Americans are also feeling the impact on their economy as well.