TORONTO — More than an hour after his season ended in a heartbeat and winter took hold, Ernie Clement sprawled in his chair in the Blue Jays’ clubhouse, still in full uniform, nursing a Labatt Blue. His sliding shorts featured a hole in the right knee. His eyeblack stickers barely clung to his cheeks. His eyes brimmed with tears.
He struggled to reckon with his loss. Not of Game 7, in which the Blue Jays fell, 5–4, in a shocking, back-and-forth, 11th-inning defeat to the Dodgers. Not of the World Series, which they at one point led three games to two, and on Saturday were two outs away from clinching. What hurt most, he realized, was that he wouldn’t get to come to work tomorrow.
