It’s not quite rock solid, but Alexandra Jacobs makes a pretty good case. She may well be the original Blue Jays fan.

It was 38 years ago, on a frigid April Thursday, that Jacobs and her friend Janet skipped class at Northern Secondary to wander down to Exhibition Stadium and take in the very first regular season Jays game.

And there’s proof—a Star photographer captured the moment: two Grade 9 students bundled up in the grand stands, reading the broad paper program of the inaugural Jays.

Their photo was on the front page of the Star’s afternoon edition later that day.

“Other than maybe the birth of my daughter, it was one of the biggest, most fabulously memorable moments of my life,” Jacobs told the Star on Wednesday, just hours before her favourite team played their most important game in a generation, facing the Texas Rangers in the winner-takes-all fifth game of the American League Division Series.

Needless to say, she desperately wants tickets.

“It’s a nail-biter,” she said. “I think it’s our year.”

Jacobs reached out to the Star on Wednesday after a friend saw her photo on the front page again: the 38-year-old shot was included in the Star’s coverage ahead of Game 5.

“I remember it well,” said Jacobs, née Julian, now 52. “I dragged (Janet) to the game because I didn’t want to go alone.”

They arrived at Exhibition four hours early, and were allowed to sit in their seats in the empty stadium until game time, she said. The Jays were hosting the Chicago White Sox, and as Jacobs recalls it had recently snowed, so a Zamboni was brought out to clear the field.

From there, the Jays had a solid outing, and Jacobs witnessed the dinger from Doug Ault that became the club’s first-ever home run. The Blue Jays won the game 9-6.

“I grew up with my mom playing baseball with me when she got home from work,” said Jacobs, who played shortstop and pitched for her high school team. “I come by my baseball love honestly, for sure.”

The only downside to her game of baseball hookie came the next day, when Jacobs went back to school. “Of course, I’d been on the front page of the Star,” she said. “My principal saw it first … I was busted.”

But she regrets nothing. She still has the 1977 Star with her photo on it, a somewhat tattered artifact that she later got signed by Jays outfielder Rick Bosetti. Besides, she didn’t get suspended or grounded or anything.

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“I guess it says something about baseball, that it’s the stuff of dreams,” she said.

Yet now that she has a daughter or her own, who also happens to be 13, she’s not sure she can condone the actions 38 years ago. “I hope she’s not skipping school to go to the game!”

Even if, like her mother, she’d get to taste a slice of history.