Jose Altuve (27) of the Houston Astros is caught stealing in the fifth inning during MLB game action as Josh Donaldson (20) of the Toronto Blue Jays tags him out at third base on August 12, 2016 at Rogers Centre in Toronto, Canada.Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images
Inside the Blue Jays clubhouse on Friday afternoon, the many large flat-screen TVs were all tuned to the women's Olympic trampoline competition as the players prepared to play the Houston Astros.
In the office of manager John Gibbons, who is often dismissive of the world game, the tube was showing women's soccer.
"I was watching the trampoline earlier," Gibbons remarked, as if to reinforce that his sporting colours run deeper than just balls and strikes.
The Olympic Games are in full swing in Rio and the appeal is undeniable, even to multimillion-dollar major-leaguers embroiled in the thick of a pennant race in mid-August.
The Blue Jays went out and dropped the first of a three-game set against the Astros, 5-3, at Rogers Centre.
And that draw is likely to get stronger now that the International Olympic Committee recently agreed to welcome back baseball for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.
After becoming a medal sport in Barcelona in 1992, baseball was dumped from the Olympic lineup for the 2012 Games.
And perhaps nobody is more elated by its reinstatement than R.A. Dickey, the Toronto knuckleballer who 20 years ago in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta was on the team that represented the United States.
"I think it's about time," Dickey said of the news that baseball is set to rejoin the five-ring circus. "I think it's a sport that's recognized across the globe and it's a sport that's grown in popularity. I see no reason why it should not be part of the Olympics."
For a competitor who has more than 100 major-league wins and a Cy Young Award as the National League's top pitcher in 2012, Dickey said the Olympic experience remains a highlight of his playing career.
Fresh out of the University of Tennessee after being a first-round draft pick of the Texas Rangers, Dickey joined a group of other collegiate players to lead the United States to a bronze medal in Atlanta.
"And we had to play in Atlanta, too, so it was on our own soil and ended up winning the bronze medal," Dickey said. "It was incredible experience. For some of those players, that would be the pinnacle of their baseball lives – the Olympic Games.
"There's something just so pure about playing as an amateur that really resonated with me. That's not to say there's a right way or a wrong way to who should play for the team. I'm just saying for me that's what made it pretty special.
"Again, it's something that every year it rolls around, both summer and winter, I'm glued to the TV."
Unlike the NHL and NBA, Major League Baseball has never found a way to free its best professionals to play at an Olympics.
The timing is the biggest hurdle with the Summer Games running up against the 162-game regular-season schedule, at a time when the pennant races are heating up and fan interest is starting to peak.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has not yet commented on what baseball's return to the Olympics means for his organization, but has said in the past that the Games are a challenge because of the calendar.
Ross Atkins, the Blue Jays general manager, said he is excited at the prospect of being able to watch Olympic baseball again, that it is nothing but good for the growth of the game worldwide.
He said he is glad he is not the one trying to figure out how to try and involve major league players in the endeavour.
"There's so many pieces to that puzzle that are really complicated because of alternatives, because of the risk, because of timing," Atkins said. "So it's really challenging from a logistical standpoint."
The solution, according to Dickey, is no problem at all.
Just keep sending amateurs and don't worry about it.
"Either way I think it's just the spirit of the game that needs to endure, regardless of who plays," Dickey said. "I think it's a sport that needs to be recognized in the Olympics because it's a great sport."