Wednesday, September 30, 2009

A lot can happen in a meaningless game

Maybe it will make us look as tone deaf and overly earnest as a Rattle and Hum era Bono, but we wore out the floorboards, pacing through last night's thriller of an 8-7 win over the Red Sox.

Yeah, yeah. We should have perfected our disaffected pose by now, and we should have signed off on the season long ago. But when you check out and declare that you've given up on the team, you might just miss something special.

Like a troika of homers from Adam Lind. And José Bautista still killing it. And Kevin Millar turning a 6-5-3 double play. And six total homers for the good guys. And the bullpen handing back the lead. And Jonathan Papelbon reconfirming what an unmitigated douche he is. ("My bad", my ass!) And the Sausage King locking down the win and getting Kevin Youkilis on a called third strike that umpires would usually give to any Sox player in Fenway.

Some people get too wrapped up in whether if the game they are watching is "meaningful". (Ultimately, aren't they all kinda meaningless?)

But the great thing about baseball is that every day, there's a new game. It's always something new, and it's the greatest game there is. That might not mean anything to you, but it means something to us.

The Crux of our Tweets
We've been getting exceedingly argumentative over on the Twitter lately. Not sure what's up with that. But suddenly, we find ourselves unable to avoid engaging in verbal parries and thrusts, 140 characters at a time.

Here's the gist of what we were bitching about last night:
  • We like José Bautista. Especially as a super sub who's the 24th or 25th guy on the roster. And we don't discount his seven homers and 15 RsBI and .932 OPS just because it's September. With regular playing time, he's gotten better.
  • We think Adam Lind deserves some consideration for the MVP. Not ahead of Joe Mauer or anything, but maybe further down the ballot. But with his offensive explosion last night, Lind's offensive numbers are on par with Kendry Morales, who's been third or fourth on our ballot for the past few months.
  • You don't hit a guy just to hit a guy back. Who do you think you are? Gary Roberts or some other jerk-off fake tough guy? You've got a one-run lead. You gotta protect that. Because moral victories come and go, but actual victories stay in the Win column forever.


If you're interested in watching us go on with this while Polyannaish routine and argue with people for the sake of it, follow us over at twitter.com/taoofstieb.

23 comments:

The Ack said...

Fuck Boston is one of my favourite post tags. Fuck Boston, indeed.

Will be interesting to see if Doc decides to knock down one of the BoSox tonight. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't expect it AT ALL from ol' Roy.....but 2nd half '09 Doc is a much angrier version of the cyborg than we've become accustomed to.

Navin Vaswani (@eyebleaf) said...

Tao, fucking NAILS post. You're absolutely right: they're all fucking meaningless. At the same time, last night was incredible. Heart racing, throwing my hands in the air asking God why after the Drew home run, going ape shit over Lind; it really had it all. That was my game 7.

Long live the Sausage King. It's rare for Youk to go down looking in that situation. What a pitch.

Fuck Jonathan Papelbon. He's not even worth the time. And I'm with The Ack: "Fuck Boston" is a beautiful, beautiful tag.

Do you re-sign JoBau?

Tao of Stieb said...

Yeah, man, I re-sign Jo-Bau.

Because if shit went down with Vernon or Snider or Lind or whoever, and the Jays suddenly had to run him out there each and every day, I could live with that.

With regular playing time, I think Jo-Bau's a 15-20 homer guy with a .750+ OPS. Which isn't going to set the world on fire, but is completely acceptable in a pinch.

Jennifer Hammer said...

everything Eyebleaf said.

re-sign Bautista yes

QJays said...

I can live with JoBau as #4 fielder and longterm in case of injury. Funny how bad the signing for this year seemed at one point though.

Now, I'm not saying resign Millar, or anything crazy like that, but there was a brief "who needs Rolen?" moment last night. That game had it all.

brainiac said...

"But the great thing about baseball is that every day, there's a new game. It's always something new, and it's the greatest game there is. That might not mean anything to you, but it means something to us"

This is what I keep telling those band wagon jumpers who wont watch the Jays because they arent the Yankees...baseball is a new game everyday!

SP said...

Tao of Stieb, the pulse of the Jays fan

Tao of Stieb said...

Or maybe just a pulsating Blue Jays fan.

I leave it to you.

Darren Priest said...

Imagine how amped you would be if the Jays were playing that game in the position that the Tigers and Twins are in right now.

Am I bugging you? I don't mean to bug ya.

Stedron said...

Rattle and Him reference? Has someone been watching Palladia?

Stedron said...

Hum, of course. Blah.

SP said...

There's only one guy that should be getting 1st place MVP votes: Joe Mauer. He runs away with every batting category, including WAR. That's especially ridiculous considering that WAR doesn't include catcher's defense!

Zobrist, Cabrera, and Teixeira should split the 2nd place votes.

Lind deserves some 3rd place love.

Tao of Stieb said...

I don't know what Palladia is.

But I caught about 30 minutes of it, and it was quite a treat.

I was a HUGE U2 fan at that time, but watching the movie just made me realize how a band like that with a world view like that can't really hang in a world soaked in ironic detachment.

I mean, they'd have fans...but no one would take them all that seriously.

Like Coldplay: I kinda liked them when they were just a band of blokes singing mopey songs about romantic strife. But when they started writing about big meaningful stuff, I just couldn't do it anymore, because then it just sounds ridiculous.

Even when it is announcing Scott Rolen.

Navin Vaswani (@eyebleaf) said...

Who's Scott Rolen?

Tao of Stieb said...

Some guy I heard about one time.

I don't even remember his face no more.

Ian Hunter said...

Bautista has 11 outfield assists this year and he's not even an everyday outfielder. Once the Jays figure out where they hell they're putting Snider next year, maybe JoBau can play the opposite end of the outfield everyday.

Tao of Stieb said...

I think that Lind is the DH, Snider plays the field and they look at a bigger bat for either 3rd or the other corner outfield spot.

Jo-Bau will get his cuts against lefties at 3rd, OF, 1B, wherever.

I know this, because I just decided it. And I told the Jays that they have no other option.

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