Wednesday, July 9, 2008

A time to cheer, a time to mourn the end of the year

It was a weird confluence of events last night. Before the game, cheerful legendary happy healthy younger-than-his-age Cito Gaston essentially told the press that this season was over ("Maybe come up with a couple more players and this is going to be a good contending ball club next year.") Next year...bloody next year already, and it isn't even the All-Star Break.

J.P. Ricciardi followed up, and if he didn't throw in the towel ("Now does that mean we're going to be a playoff team? No, the chances are probably not good that way...") then he certainly has the towel in his hands waving it over his head.

And then, smack in the middle of this season of misery, there was the visceral thrill of a Jays walkoff victory after Orioles shortstop Freddie Bynum allowed a hard hit Scott Rolen ground through his wickets with Alex Rios on third...O! Victory!

And yet, somewhere in the middle of the game, Dustin McGowan walked off the mound with a sore shoulder that needs to be examined via MRI, right at about the same time that the Chicago (Eat! Breathe! Live! Baseball!) Cubs knocked down the next domino in the trade puzzle by acquiring Rich Harden et al. from Oakland.

So, given those two events, is it hello to A.J. or goodbye A.J.?

Opening Day 2009 is nine and a half months away. That's a long time to hold out hope.

3 comments:

The Ack said...

surprisingly, I have been finding it far less stressful these past few weeks watching the games once I realized that contending wasn't going to happen.

Management conceding the season last night will at least make things interesting, re: who stays and who goes from here on out.

Ladies and gentlemen....your 2008 Toronto Blue Jays.

Navin Vaswani (@eyebleaf) said...

i refuse to give up. the rockies and phillies proved last year that anything is possible.

and, in typical toronto fashion, the team will start playing well once the white flag is waived by the bitches up top.

who would have thought we would have come back last night? it's the start of something special.

go jays.

Darren Priest said...

I admire Eyebleaf's optimism. Then again, only a guy (gal? doubtful) named Eyebleaf could be that optimistic. How else could they sell out the Air Canada Centre every night?