Hold on Hope

Maybe it's getting a little late for optimism, and maybe we should be a little less enthusiastic about the home side given that Dustin McGowan is out with some unknown shoulder troubles and Vernon Wells is gone for a month or more with (gulp) hamstring troubles.

And yet, just as we're sure that the small flicker of light is being snuffed out, the Jays pull off their second walk off win in three days to sweep the Orioles.

Of course, the hard slap of reality is that even with this week's long overdue heroics, the team still sits nine games back of the Wild Card with six teams ahead of them in the standings as they host the Yankees this weekend. And as much as we might bring up stories of the Rockies' post-All-Star surge last year, or the Astros a few years back, you've got to give yourself a shake and realize that the Jays just don't have the scary offense that those teams did that allowed them to go on a 10 or 12 or 15 game streak. (Do you see anything that Cito could pencil in that would remotely resemble a Hawpe-Holliday-Helton-Tulowitzki(2007)-Atkins lineup ?)

But how can we be so cynical after a dramatic win like last night? It brings to mind the words of the poet laureate of Dayton, Ohio, Robert Ellsworth Pollard Jr.:

Everybody's got a hold on hope
It's the last thing that's holding me

A strange thought on Vernon
You know, as much as we were disappointed to hear that Vernon Wells went down for four to six weeks, the first thing that popped into our head was: "Gee, didn't the Jays go on a wicked winning streak the last time he was out of the lineup?"

It makes you wonder what to think if they manage to go on another run with him on the DL.