TORONTO – The Toronto Blue Jays are interested in hosting an all-star game for the first time since 1991 and have spoken to new commissioner Rob Manfred about how to pursue the Midsummer Classic.

Team president and CEO Paul Beeston made the revelation during the club’s annual State of the Franchise event for season-ticket holders Thursday, when he also announced a deal with the University of Guelph to study the implementation of grass at Rogers Centre had been completed.

Responding to a fan question, Beeston said he hoped the all-star game would return to Rogers Centre in the near future and speaking with reporters later, he added that “we haven’t talked about a year, all we’ve talked about is the fact that we are interested and we will make a proposal.”

“The conversation between Rob and myself took place this week,” Beeston continued, “like how do we get in line and what is the submission scenario. We’ll go forward with that.”

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The Blue Jays have hosted the all-star game just once, a 4-2 American League win over the National League with Cal Ripken Jr., claiming MVP honours. Cincinnati is hosting this year’s contest, with San Diego home to the 2016 edition.

Beeston’s predecessor, Paul Godfrey, also pursued the all-star game but ended up settling for hosting a round of the 2009 World Baseball Classic instead.

Any new proposal may be timed to coincide with the club’s plans to have natural grass installed for the 2018 season, a process now really in motion thanks to the deal with the University of Guelph.

Beeston told reporters “that they’re going to examine the feasibility of grass, what it’s going to take, what type of grass it’s going to be and we’re going to work with them on a long-term basis. It’s a formal agreement and it’s pretty exciting from our point of view.”

“We’ve had many discussions, now it’s to the point where we’re actually going forward,” he added. “We’re looking forward to the report, which should take probably a year, and then we’ll go from there.”

Among the key challenges is digging up the Rogers Centre floor to install new drainage over the course of one off-season. That’s a tight timeline and when asked if that was long enough, Beeston replied, “We hope so.”

“We don’t know for a fact, but that’s part of what the study is going to be. We know it can work, what we’re really worried about, actually, is the air,” he continued. “You need the sun, you need the light, you obviously need the water, we can handle those, but air is the big problem. One of the things we learned about it was when they headed to Milwaukee, they put in those big fans to have air currents. It’s not something that just can happen. So we’ve got to work at that.”