It used to be Toronto the Good.

That was the civic nickname, earned through generations of attempts to be fair and neighbourly, if dull.

It was the Ned Flanders of cities, and people got dressed up to go to hockey games.

More recently, as least as it relates to their sports teams and their departed heroes-turned villains, it's become Toronto the Hypersensitive; Toronto the Easily Aggrieved. Toronto the Loutish.

Hence the booing of the departed upon their return.

Its roots stem from the Air Canada Centre, where a succession of Raptors stars have said “thanks but no thanks” to the offerings of what is in all respects excepting over-zealous parking enforcement a fine place to live.

Stars leave, fans stew and lay in wait for their return to spew their vindictiveness. Repeat.

So you had Raptors fans tearing into Damon Stoudemire and Vince Carter, who will get booed if he holds a ball to sign an autograph for a disabled kid in this town.

That has morphed into Blue Jays fans giving the business to the likes of Lyle Overbay when he returned this week with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Booing Overbay makes about as much sense as booing paint, but a tradition is a tradition.

Saturday all that will go out the window, or at least it should.

Roy Halladay is finally back at the ballpark where he played his entire major league career, from the moment he threw a complete game one-hitter as a September call-up in 1998, to his demotion to the low minors in 2001 so he could learn how to pitch again to his emergence as a certain Hall-of-Fame candidate and quite possibly the best pitcher of his generation.

He'll take the mound as a member of the visiting Philadelphia Phillies and a sun-dappled holiday weekend crowd will roar in their approval; louder still if the famously-focused right-hander can lift his eyes from the task at hand long enough to acknowledge them.

If he doesn't? Well, they'll understand; the man has a complete game to pitch.

Athletes come and go. It is the nature of the beast. Short careers, limited patience, the drive to maximize earning power and teams' endless need to keep shuffling deck chairs on their respective Titanics.

Toronto is not alone in this respect; most markets become in some measure feeder schools for the bigger or more ambitious fish.

But it's not an idea that sits well with anyone. Getting left behind sucks, and fans have increasingly gone out of their way to let returning athletes know it.

But it's not often a Roy Halladay arrives, let alone leaves. For all the fuss this week about Doug Gilmour's Hall-of-Fame acceptance or what will be made when Mats Sundin gets the nod -- if he does -- next year, Toronto has never seen an athlete like Halladay.

He's proof that real substance will always win out over style. He wasn't the master of the sound bite. He didn't court the media. He showed zero interest in leveraging his fame or success into anything more than another 110 pitches, most of them pounded down in the strike zone.

Two years ago next month, his exit began to seem inevitable. The since departed J.P. Ricciardi mentioning, ever so casually, that the club had to listen to offers for its franchise player. Then -- when it became clear that being the guy who traded a legend-in-the-making was not as much fun as it seemed -- Ricciardi added that it was Halladay who had forced his hand by suggesting he'd be interested in testing free agency for the first time in his career after the 2010 season.

Through it all, Halladay kept stoically throwing strikes, even as his wife Brandy -- the nurture to her husband's nature -- was saying a tearful if premature goodbye in the Blue Jays broadcast booth.

Ricciardi is now gone -- wonder if he'll get booed on his return? -- but the path was set and Halladay made his way to Philadelphia for a return that has appeared more and more uncertain with each Kyle Drabek meltdown.

He and Brandy took out a full-page advertisement thanking Blue Jay fans for their support, which was a classy gesture, if unnecessary.

This was not LeBron James teasing a city with his excellence and his ego; an act of hubris so badly calculated that the bar for athlete-city breakups will never be set lower.

This was a pitcher who found his feet in a city and an organization and grew to become the best at his craft, seeking no fan fare and receiving less than he ever deserved.

He took measure of his age and the organization's profile, did the math and stepped through the door marked out of town.

He left behind a body of work unsurpassed by anyone who will ever wear a Blue Jays uniform and on Saturday he'll come home for the first time, try to whip the home team's ass, because that's what he does.

And for that Toronto the Good will give him their best.