TORONTO – Baseball is full of long days and short years, which is how it can simultaneously feel like George Springer’s been with the Toronto Blue Jays forever and that the six seasons in his then-club-record $150-million free-agent contract have flown by.

So much has happened since he signed that fateful agreement Jan. 23, 2021, while the federal government’s pandemic restrictions that locked the club out of its home for a season-and-a-half were still in place.

Despite 91 wins, the Blue Jays missed the playoffs by one measly game in that vagabond three-home-sites ’21 season, before jarring wild-card exits followed in each of the next two years.

As a three-stage renovation completely transformed the Rogers Centre, a train-wreck 2024 was chased by the exhilarating run to — and subsequent heartbreak of — the 2025 World Series, the slugger delivering a franchise-pantheon Game 7 ALCS homer along the way.

He earned an all-star selection and a Silver Slugger, poured into his teammates, set a standard in the clubhouse, became a symbol of the club’s re-emergence as a legitimate player in the free-agent market and is so ingrained within the organization’s fabric that his seven preceding seasons with the Houston Astros feel more like fever dream than reality.

Yet suddenly, the end is nigh, with three games versus the visiting Cincinnati Reds beginning Friday night (7 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. PT, Sportsnet, Sportsnet ) all that remains of those six years, and perhaps in his career, too.

“It’s emotional to think about it,” Springer said Wednesday in a quiet corner of the visitors' clubhouse at Camden Yards, after an Orioles doubleheader sweep eliminated the Blue Jays from the wild-card chase. “Very, very grateful to our fans, this team, this organization. Obviously this is not the way that we all wanted it to end. But if it is, I'm going to do my best to embrace being back home for one last time and making sure that I do anything I can to reciprocate to the fans.”

Springer is coy about........

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