Just when Jays fans thought the Addison Barger pull-out couch had been forgotten...
A special edition T-shirt commemorating the couch will drop at a Jays game in April
The Toronto Blue Jays’ marketing personnel must have sensed that we need something to look forward to during this frigid winter, so they have revealed to us: things we can get at baseball games in just a few short months.
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There are various quirky collectibles on the team’s special events calendar, published today—bucket hats, bobbleheads (Vladdy bobblehead night is May 25, mark that down) and yes you will be able to eat a hot dog for $1, during every Tuesday home game. In 2025, Blue Jays fans ate 826,308 “Loonie Dogs.” Imagining many hot dogs will be consumed this season will power our daydreams until spring. (George Springer and Dylan Cease will also have bobbleheads made in their honour.)
The marquee swag, however, will be available on April 11: the first 15,000 fans will get to keep an “Addison Barger Couch T-Shirt,” referring to when Barger famously crashed on teammate Davis Schneider‘s pull-out couch at the Toronto Marriott City Centre during the World Series.
For a minute we thought the press release said they were raffling off a T-shirt he actually wore. Would that really be so weird? The couch he slept on was put on display in the hotel lobby, after all. But no, it’s a T-shirt featuring an image of Barger, not a T-shirt worn by Barger. The real thing would probably make a lot of money at an auction, though.
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
