She's a sportscaster and a trailblazer. But Hazel Mae’s career has been no walk in the ballpark

Toronto blueness Jays sportscaster hazel tree Mae doesn’t acquire a walk-up vocal, but if she did, she says she knows exactly which ace she’d pick:  the viral hit, Golden, from KPop Demon Hunters. 

The choice feels fitting. Mae is marking a golden moment in her 25-year career, during which she’s become a beloved fixture for Blue Jays fans, known for bringing players and their stories from the field to life.

In December, Mae received the Jack Graney Award from the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, a lifetime achievement honour for sports journalists — only the second woman ever to do so. And next month, she’ll get the Gordon Sinclair Award for Broadcast Journalism at the Canadian Screen Awards, recognizing her body of work.

“I never, ever really wrapped my head around [the idea] that ‘Hey, maybe one day I’ll be in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame,’” the longtime Sportsnet reporter told The Sunday Magazine’s Piya Chattopadhyay. €œWomen in general, we don’t stop and kind of pat ourselves on the back when we should. [And] 2025 was an incredible year for the ball club, for my colleagues and I, and I thought: ‘You know what? Let’s just drink it in.’”

Last year, millions more got to know Mae as audiences across Canada and the U.S. Tuned in for the Jays’ World Series run. 

But her career path was no walk in the ballpark. It was shaped by sacrifice, starting with her late father, the trailblazer says, who left his own career as a lawyer in the Philippines to immigrate to Canada in 1973.

“He did not know the language, [he] just knew that it would provide a better life for his children and his wife,” Mae said. €œCanada … didn’t recognize his law degree …  and so he worked for SickKids hospital.”

It was there that her father caught the sports bug — and then passed it on to her. At the Toronto hospital, Mae says, her father struggled to feel part of the community, as conversations revolved around the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Toronto Argos. 

“So he would watch sports to pick up the language and learn English so that when he would show up [to] this water cooler conversation, he would have something to contribute,” said Mae, who added that all they ever did was watch sports on that 33-centimetre television. 

Loving sports may have come easily, but Mae says convincing her Southeast Asian immigrant father that sports journalism was a viable career did not.

“He thought, ‘Listen — you’re going to be a doctor or a lawyer,’ there was no in-between,” she said. €œTo him, [those were] honourable professions.” 

It took time, but Mae says he eventually came around after she got her start at Sportsnet in 2001. She broke into the U.S. Media scene covering the Boston Red Sox, and ultimately returned home to Toronto to cover the Blue Jays.

'I don't know how to have thick skin': Hazel Mae gets candid about critics

Looking back, Mae says she understands her father’s hesitation, given there were no Southeast Asian women doing what she aspired to do, and in a male-dominated industry no less.

“I don’t even know why I had the gall to think that I could be among the first.”

And at first, Mae says she didn’t want to stand out.

“I didn’t want anyone to single me out, because of what I looked like or what my socioeconomic background was,” said Mae. €œI wanted to feel like I belonged, I wanted to feel like I was just good enough to do this.”

Soon, she says she recognized what she represented to young women and girls, as well as Southeast Asian kids who saw her on TV — and why it was important. It hit her, she recalls, after a young girl with “blonde hair and green eyes” approached her for an autograph, with her mother, saying she wanted to be “just like her."

“It was one of those ‘aha’ moments,” she said.  

These days, Mae says she still finds it surreal that her job regularly places her at the centre of historic moments. Moments, like when an emotional Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (Vladdy) delivered his “born ready” line after the Jays forced a Game 7 in the American League Championship Series.

The interview went viral, spawning T-shirts and bobbleheads. But Mae says what fans don’t know is that she never planned to ask the question that prompted Vladdy’s now-iconic response. It only came to her after her mind went blank.

Hazel Mae almost didn't ask Vladdy the iconic 'born ready' question

“Then I thought, ‘You know what, I’ll just ask him if he’s ready for Game 7,’” Mae said. €œIt was really a throwaway question  … and he paused and he had this little smirk on his face, and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s going to say something so profound and maybe historic.’”

She credits her ability to draw out candid, memorable answers to the personal relationships she’s cultivated with players off-camera.

“You want to be just a regular, normal human being: ‘Hey, what did you do yesterday? Is your family in town?’” she said. €œYou don’t want the players to think, ‘OK, here comes Hazel, she wants something from me.’”

Those relationships, especially in the last year, have included their fair share of celebrations. Gatorade, buckets of ice, champagne, it’s all been poured on the players — and on Mae. 

“The Gatorade bath comes after a walk-off,” said Mae. €œBut Vladdy wants to do it every single time they win, and what people don’t know … he thinks it’s funny every single time.”

And she’s happy to go along with those game-day traditions, even if it means going home with hair that smells like red Gatorade.

After 25 years in television and a long list of accolades, one might assume she’s developed a thick skin shaped by decades of praise and criticism, including about her appearance.

But what people may not realize, she says, is how much she still cares.

“Through all these years, I care whether you like me or not,” she said.  “Public figures, we’re out there for people to just shoot their arrows at, and I guess the arrows pierce, they hurt — no matter how tiny they are.”

Still, she said, the rewards outweigh the challenges: long hours of preparation, missed girls’ nights, family gatherings she couldn’t always attend.

“The fact that my name is going to be in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, or that my …13-year-old son will look back and see me get a Canadian Screen Award in front of all these unbelievably talented people, I don’t think I could have written a better script, really.”

Journalist

Audio produced by Sarah-Joyce Battersby

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