On Saturday night, after Joe Carter threw out the first pitch at game two of the 2025 World Series, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. placed the sparkling Blue Jays home run jacket on his shoulders. The 1993 World Series hero’s smile melted the hearts of everyone old enough to remember how his three-run home-run triumph lit up this city.
The jacket bears a glittering new World Series patch, an upgrade to the post-season one that commemorated the Jays’ victories over the Yankees and the Mariners. Most notably thus far, Addison Barger donned it and ran through a gauntlet of his jubilant teammates after his historic pinch-hit grand slam in game one.
The fun of the home run jacket is that it is a one-size-fits-all affair. Some athletes’ bulging arms and broad shoulders threaten the seams, while slighter players can seem swamped by it.
But primarily, the garment is a symbol of unity, covered as it is in tributes to the nationalities that make up the team’s roster. Its “Plakata!!” crest is a reference to Guerrero Jr.’s favoured term for a home run. Translation: “Pow!”
Many teams have developed home run rituals, from the Boston Red Sox laundry cart to the Cincinnati Reds Viking helmet; the Seattle Mariners golden trident to the Detroit Tigers pizzas on a stick. But the Jays’ inclusive tribute to the homelands of its players feels perfectly Toronto.
The designer of every iteration of the home run jacket, and there have been many, is Hector “Tito” Lebron, the Blue Jays’ cultural development co-ordinator and interpreter. Currently, his vision is brought to life by Jill Douglas, who works at Toyota Motor Manufacturing in Cambridge, Ont., six days a week.
Douglas was discovered out of the blue, a fan Cinderella story, after making herself a replica jacket three years ago and posting it on Instagram. “Someone saw that, and I was then asked to make a new jacket for the team,” Douglas told the Star. “The first jacket I did for them was the post-season one with all the numbers inside. There’s a picture of Teoscar (Hernández) wearing it, opening it up for the camera. I have made them all since then.”
Each jacket takes “many, many hours to construct,” she said. “Think of it as a big jigsaw puzzle that has to be put together piece by piece to connect it all.”
The current version is known as “the Blue jacket.” Douglas creates each one according to a brief from Lebron and the team: “I just manufacture their vision and make it sparkle.” Of course, she adds, “It is exciting for me to see them wear it.”
The first version of a home run jacket appeared in the dugout in 2021. Then called “the Barrio jacket,” it was a simpler affair, a customized JCPenney Stafford-brand blue blazer. The name referenced a crest emblazoned on the back: “La gente del barrio,” which means “the people of the neighbourhood.” It also had patches for every player at the time’s home country, and an “It’s a Tito thing” patch to honour Lebron.
Inspired by the iconic green “Masters” jacket from the Augusta golf tournament, Lebron commissioned the Jays jacket as an incentive and a way to commemorate the team’s successes. “I came up with the idea. I presented it to the players. The players liked the idea, and we all designed it,” Lebron told CTV News in 2021.
Guerrero Jr. was the first to don the jacket when he knocked a homer out of Fenway Park in July 2021. It was an immediate hit with players. Santiago Espinal told The Athletic at the time: “When I was running, I just kept thinking, the jacket, the jacket.”
There was a brief pause in this ritual when the Jays weren’t quite so on fire. After they lost to the Seattle Mariners in the Wild Card series of 2022, the jacket was quietly retired and stayed out of sight in 2023.
But in 2024, with things looking up again, the jacket made a reappearance. “We all pulled together and we said, let’s bring the jacket back,” Guerrero Jr. told Sportsnet at the time. “Everyone is on board with that.”
The new jacket for 2025 began the season in Guerrero Jr.’s locker, until the players decided they had enough momentum to reinstate the celebratory ritual in May.
In the exhilarating post-season, the jacket has taken on a life of its own. Cut-rate knock-offs can be found online, but plenty of fans have been inspired to create their own DIY tribute versions, just as Douglas did. With the World Series happening the same week as Halloween, what better or more civic-minded costume idea?
At a press conference in early October, Lebron translated for Guerrero Jr. as he answered a reporter’s questions. Asked who gets to keep the home run jacket at the end of the year, Guerrero Jr. said, “Me!” Then he amended his answer: He auctions off the jackets through his foundation, VG 27, to raise funds to help kids and families in Dominican Republic and Toronto access medical supplies. In that way, these pieces of the city’s history spread even more goodwill.
