The morning after stepping on a loose ball sitting in the outfield while taking pre-game grounders, Bo Bichette checked in and told John Schneider that his right knee “felt astronomically better,” which the Toronto Blue Jays manager described as “a good sign.

The Canada Day ceremony was a thing of patriotic beauty, as it always is for the Blue Jays. And given the world we live in, the latest renewal was perhaps bumped with a greater dose of passion than in the recent past.