When Melvin Upton hit a two-run homer in the third inning to give the Blue Jays a 5-0 lead, the kid behind me in an Indians' T-shirt started to cry. Earlier in the inning, when Russell Martin hit a solo shot, the six-year-old had swallowed his sorrow, but this was too much. This time, he buried his head in his mom's shoulder and sobbed.

In the row behind him, a woman wearing a Blue Jays jersey leaned forward, rubbed his shoulder and spoke kindly to him, trying to deliver solace across enemy lines. But in that moment, the kid was inconsolable.

The scene played out in the rows behind me at Progressive Field in Cleveland on Saturday night. We were deep in Section 129, about halfway down the right-field line, in a neighbourhood heavily populated by Blue Jays fans.

Since the turn of the century, my work has afforded me the good fortune to watch baseball games from the press box, a perch many might consider exalted. In my job, it has its advantages, of course, but it is also like looking down on a forest without feeling the intimacy of the trees.

It had been a long time since I'd watched a major league game in the stands as a fan—so long, in fact, that I couldn't remember the last time I'd done it.

But earlier in the summer, my eldest son, who lives in Pittsburgh, and I made plans for a fan weekend. On Friday, we met in Akron and attended a concert. We spent most of Saturday at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a popular destination for a mob of fans decked out in Blue Jays regalia. "I think all of Canada is here today," a security staffer said.

That evening, we followed all of Canada to the ball game.

The place was packed, which is unusual for Progressive Field, despite the fact that it is home to a terrific team that leads its division by 7.5 games. It seemed like every second fan was wearing a Francisco Lindor jersey, except, of course, for those in our section, where there were plenty of Josh Donaldsons and Jose Bautistas, and even a Jimmy Key.

Toronto fans are renowned for travelling well, and on this night they swelled the crowd to 33,604, only the fourth sellout of the season for Cleveland. Late in the game, my son—a nosy journalist like myself—noticed the Indians fan to his left texting: "Most visiting fans I've ever seen at a game."

In our area, where Toronto fans far outnumbered their rivals, the ambiance was spirited but generally good-natured. Fortunately, the drunken louts who can spoil things for everyone were ensconced elsewhere.

Toronto fans were on their feet a lot. The early Jays lead made for much hugging and high-fiving. Chants of "Let's go, Blue Jays" drew a tepid response from the locals. A man wearing a Martin jersey and a Martin beard jerked his thumbs at the name on his back when the Jays' catcher hit his homer. A woman in a multi-hued blue wig spent much of the game on her feet, even when times turned tough, as they did in the Cleveland fourth.

That's when the kid who had been crying and his fellow Cleveland fans brightened up as the Indians scored five runs against Aaron Sanchez. The score was 5-5. Suddenly, the chant that seems to erupt at every Blue Jays road game began to swell: "U-S-A! U-S-A!"

It is a mantra of Pavlovian idiocy, with no root in logic. Manifest destiny dies hard. But where we sat on Saturday night, it won no medals. And when Edwin Encarnacion homered to deliver the eventual winning run in the fifth, it evaporated completely. Nervous anticipation engulfed fans of both teams for the rest of the game. We spent the ninth inning on our feet, waiting to exhale.

In the ninth on Friday night, Roberto Osuna gave up two homers, including a game-winning inside-the-park job. (Where was Upton, the backup fielder, on that play, anyway?) But on Saturday, after Osuna locked down another one-run win, I could barely see him reaching for the stars for all the arm-waving, blue-clad fans on front of me.

Progressive Field is a great place to watch a ball game. The new 13,000-square-foot video board offers clarity that puts the Rogers Centre version to shame. The sightlines are excellent, and to a press box veteran, the field-level view I had on Saturday was refreshing.

For example, the record shows that Devon Travis made a critical error when he threw away a double-play ball in the fourth inning. From my view, directly over his shoulder as he turned toward second base, his throw looked eminently catchable. It was perhaps the only angle in the house where it looked that way, but I thought Ryan Goins should have caught it.

A fan's view, of course. Two rows down or six over, it might have looked like a terrible throw.

On our walk back to our hotel, we heard a couple of Cleveland fans—a man and his wife, we assumed—talking about the big, passionate crowd and the excitement it generated. They gave grudging credit to the Toronto fans for that.

"I want a sellout with our fans," the man said, "not with help from someone else."

Cleveland's first-place team is averaging 19,875 fans per game. They sold out on Opening Day, on July 4 against Detroit, on July 8 against the Yankees and on Saturday night against the Jays. In the series finale on Sunday, they drew 26,696.

By comparison, the Blue Jays are averaging almost 41,000 per game. They've had 28 sellouts.

When we got back to the hotel, my son counted 44 Ontario licence plates among the 96 cars in the hotel lot. Blue Jays fans indeed travel well.

My takeaway from a fan's night on the road: it was fun, and I won't wait so long to do it again. It provided a connection that I'd long missed.

As a journalist, going back to the many years before I covered baseball, I have always made an effort to maintain a level of detachment. I think that's important in my job. Objectivity is neither possible nor desirable, but independence is. I long ago learned not to become emotionally invested in the wins and losses of the Toronto Blue Jays. And on Sunday, when I was back in the press box, that mindset took over again.

It's a mindset that wouldn't last long if I were to spend many more nights in the stands, where joy and pain ebb and flow in passionate tides. There's no cheering in the press box, and no stoicism in the stands.