In my first professionally published science fiction story in Analog, November 1988, the Toronto Blue Jays meet the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series.

The story is “Wait Till Next Year.” It begins in the year 2048, not 2025. The morning before the seventh game of the World Series, the universe changes.

In the real world of 2025, as a former Torontonian I was, of course, rooting for the Jays in the current championship. My interest grew as the Jays took on the New York Yankees in the playoffs.

I’d first heard of the New York Yankees when, in 1958, as an eight-year-old, I saw the Vancouver’s Stanley Park Theatre Under the Stars production of Damn Yankees starring Robert Goulet.

The musical takes place in the 1950s but is set “sometime in the future.” (Could that have been a bit of an inspiration?).

Back in the late 50s and early 60s, here in Kitimat there was as yet no television, just radio, and it seemed in the era of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, almost everyone here in the north was a Yankees fan.

So I was a somewhat tepid Yankee’s fan until the Blue Jays came along in 1977

This year, the Blue Jays beat the Yankees in the divisional round and went on to take on the Seattle Mariners in the championship. The Dodgers were in the National League championship against the Milwaukee Brewers. That got me wondering. Jays Dodgers in the World Series in 2025.

Step one the Dodgers win the NLCS.

Step two, the series against the Mariners was a nail bighter. Then in Game Seven, George Springer’s three run homer gave the Jays the victory.

AP George Springer’s home run was one of the biggest non-World Series plays in baseball history

Now it’s time for the World Series 2025.

In “Wait Till Next Year,” the main character is a reporter covering the World Series. In that day before that Game Seven of the World Series in 2048, Earth receives its first alien transmission.

In my story, the Jays do go on to beat the Dodgers in Game Seven to win the 2048 Series.

The mysterious alien transmissions remain undeciphered. That is until the sports reporter figures out the transmissions are not the standard mathematical and science signals that the study for extraterrestrial intelligence believe will be the first handshake. Instead the transmissions are the accidentally picked up sports scores from distant aliens.

What happens after that, I will let the reader find out (if they can find the magazine)

A few of notes on how the story holds up.

In my 2048 story, ( again written in early 1988) the Jays have a star Japanese pitcher named Kitigawa. Today, of course, the Dodgers have the phenom Shohei Ohtani a pitcher and a hitter.

The Jays win the 2048 series with a three run homer batted by a character named Nadeau.

In 1988, sports betting was still illegal across North America. So I described the transmission as a “bookie wire.” That’s based on the information wires that were used for betting information when the Mob ran hidden betting parlours and later the Las Vegas casinos. A character Bennie the Bookie will eventually help figure out what the transmissions mean.

Today people bet on anything in any innings with live feeds on their phones.

A general from the US Space Force unsuccessfully tries to decode the signals. The US Space Force was created in December 2019.

In 2048, everyone has an AI computer. The character Bennie the Bookie in the story has an AI XVII, while the final determination of the alien signals is done by the National Research Council’s AI XXIII.

Writing in early 1988 I also used the term “internet.” I am not sure where I heard it but I must have heard it somewhere.

I was a very early adopter and opened my first internet account in August of 1993. In the story I wrote “The Internet had so many retrievals in one fifteen minute period that the home mainframe crashed and the backup went crazy.” Now the idea of the main frame was based on my experience working on videotex/teletext Prestel/Telidon in both the United Kingdom and Canada, where that pre-internet system was mainframe based rather than distributed as the original internet was designed. Today, of course, the internet is centralized and controlled by telecoms and gargantuan Silicon Valley corporations. That said when a site is overwhelmed even today that site will crash. Just yesterday one the quasi-monopoly server hosts, Amazon Web Services crashed, making sites world wide unavailable.

As Robert Heinlein said he wrote stories “to buy groceries” not predict the future. So for 2025 I am saying Go Jays Go. And wonder if we will ever pick up signals from an intelligent alien species?