CLEVELAND—The first sign the army has been mobilized comes at a rest stop just outside Buffalo. A stealthy “Let’s Go Blue Jays’’ and a tentative fist bump from a blue-clad stranger signals we’re on our way.

We travel beneath the radar on Interstate 90, but you can find us if you know where to look. The Ontario plates, the strategically placed Blue Jays cap on the back dashboard of the car, the silent thumbs up as one driver in a Jays jersey passes another, the Jays pennant on the aerials.

Jays nation politely and quietly arrived in this Ohio city this weekend, then pounced. On the streets, Blue Jays blue was everywhere, in the bars and restaurants, pouring out of the downtown hotels, waving banners and flags with a few Edwing parrots along for the ride.

But unlike previous Cleveland invasions, this one was different. For starters, it was pricier.

The locals, believing they are riding some karmic wave to the World Series, seem pleased to see us, perhaps thinking if anyone would actually come to Cleveland for the weekend, they should be nurtured, not chirped at.

And, what’s that you say, there are actual Cleveland fans here?

There was a time Toronto fans could take over Progressive Field for the simple reason that we came and the locals couldn’t be bothered. A few years back, with both teams wandering aimlessly through the 162-game season, the handful of locals who bothered to show up, tried to quiet the Blue Jays faithful with the ubiquitous chant of “USA, USA.” The well-lubricated Toronto throng countered with a full-throated, equally irrelevant chant of “We’ve Got Health Care, We’ve Got Health Care.”

We still come in the thousands — but now we sit in blue pockets of the stadium because people who live in Ohio have rediscovered their team.

Greg Hives and his buddy Ryan McNeil, both of Scarborough, scored standing-room tickets at cost by juggling 10 different tickets sites the moment they went on sale. Many, like Debra and Rob Good of Elmira, Ont., who traveled to Boston to see the Jays clinch a playoff spot, bought from a secondary ticket source, but the winners in ingenuity appeared to be the quartet of Jordan Glicksman, Nathan Stall, Lauren Rakowski and Melissa Lantsman. Three of them drove from Toronto, monitoring ticket prices for the five-hour journey, finally scoring four behind the Jays dugout just before game time — below cost — then flipping their existing tickets.

We want to get the competitive juices boiling in this town, but Clevelanders are being a tad too, how should I put it, nice and polite? That’s supposed to be our shtick.

Everywhere we went, we were asked if we were from Canada, with that kind of awe Americans can summon as if we had to abandon our dog team and trek through the night. The worst I heard on the street after game one was a derisive “thanks for coming.”

Thanks for coming? While wearing Blue Jays garb, you could hear worse from a hotel desk in Boston, New York or Pittsburgh.

The hotel bar even serves a Toast to Toronto, a rather inexplicable concoction of rye, domaine de canton fernet branca (what?) orange and bitters.

The bartender wouldn’t charge us for it, apologizing for his slow service.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer served up a minor tweak to the visitors with a front page headline Saturday that read, “Pretty Good Start, Eh?”

Maybe that passes for trash talk in Cleveland.

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Maybe they’re just having such a good time here, they’re just happy to see us in October.

Hey Cleveland, we’re trying to take over your town. Stop being so nice about it.