‘My brain was fried’: Exhausted Blue Jays fans who hung in for marathon Game 3 vow to watch their World Series team until all hours

Eris Vasconcelos, 16, who travelled from Cambridge with his mom to attend the watch party at Rogers Centre on Tuesday night for Game 4, stayed up until Monday night’s 15th inning and said going to school the next day was “painful.”

“My brain was fried,” he said of the game that ended after six hours and 39 minutes until the Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman hit the game-winning home run for a 6-5 victory.

Matt Morton, who commuted from the Hamilton area with his friend Andrew Laurens for Tuesday’s watch party, said he watched Game 3 and eventually went to bed at 3 a.m. — getting only four hours of sleep before having to get ready for the day with his six- and eight-year-old children.

For both friends, the cut-off time to watch the game on Tuesday night was going to be midnight.

Katherine Wood, who came in from Niagara, stayed up until 2:30 a.m. on Monday night and said her daughter “may have missed school” the next day.

Wood said she “had to be in Toronto” to see the Jays in the World Series. Without hesitation, she said she’ll watch “until the very end” of Game 4.

Another lifelong fan, Randy Cooray, watched Game 3 at a bar in Brampton, which remained open an hour after last call to accommodate the fans glued to the game.

Cooray said he intended to watch the entire Game 4, no matter how late it goes.

“I will most definitely will stay up,” he said, adding: “Anything can happen.”

“It’s been 32 years, you never know when it will happen again.”

Watching the Jays in the World Series is especially meaningful for him, as his love of the sport came from his father who took Cooray to his first Blue Jays game as a kid.

“It was in 1987, we were playing Baltimore and I’ll never forget it,” he said.

His father saw Joe Carter’s home run that won the Jays their 1993 World Series.

Crystal Young said she had no regrets staying up late ahead of her second day at a new job.

“I’m a little tired, to be honest,” she said Tuesday during a work break. Young added that her new workplace hosted a Blue Jays day, so she was not the only one running on a few hours of sleep.

“Surprisingly, it’s a full crew in there today and everyone’s dressed up and everyone is really supportive of the team.”

For Samantha Miller and William McCleery, the late night felt even more intense because they are “incredibly jet-lagged.”

The two flew in from Northern Ireland to catch the World Series and stayed out cheering on the Jays at a watch party on Monday night.

“It’s a cruel way to lose, but we’ll go again tonight, and hopefully we’ll win,” McCleery said.

The Jays’ 18-inning game against the Los Angeles Dodgers tied the 2018 record for the most innings ever in a World Series game, and put the Dodgers up 2-1 in the series.

Thousands of fans flooded into the Rogers Centre for the live watch party on Tuesday night. Crowds gathered around a stage where an MC blasted pop music, and fans shouted “Let’s Go Blue Jays!” during the pre-game events.

Fans at the watch party said they were experiencing the next best thing to seeing the Blue Jays in person.

For $15, seeing the game on the big screen in the stadium surrounded by other excited fans is “something you don’t say no to,” said Laurens.

With files from The Canadian Press