The bad news sure can pile up

We've been otherwise engaged in earning a living for the past week, and so here we are, trying to sift through the piles of disconcerting and discouraging news from the past week. Frankly we don't even know where to begin, or whether if we've already whinged electronically about half this stuff.

Twice this week, a professional colleague tried to engage us in a conversation about the Jays, and we pretty much just shut down emotionally and stared off into space, sigh and repeated banalities to keep ourselves together. ("Yeeeeeeep...yep...yep. Somethin' else, eh?. Yep. Not too good. Nope.")

So where to start? How with about the Cito Thing? (That's what we've taken to calling it, even though it's not totally about Cito and it's not just one thing.)

For brief moments, we had these notions that the move to Alex Anthopoulos and his initial moves augured well for a newish direction for the franchise. It's not that they needed to strip everything down or blow everything up, but they needed to make some adjustments to the balance of pro versus amateur scouting and they needed bring in some new voices.

At this point, we're all good.

And we're even vaguely optimistic about the three-year appointment of Paul Beeston, and feeling vaguely regretful about the tenor and tone of some of the bad things we've said about him recently.

And then, the Rogers Baseball Operations, led by The Merry Idiot Beeston, decide to delay any attempt to change the on-field leadership, and put off any decision about managerial succession off until next year. Which is smart, and sends out a TREMENDOUS message to the players on the team and the players who they may be trying to recruit to come to Toronto.

"Look prospective Blue Jay! We are a shit show! A team which is governed by nostalgia! A team which is about to spend a full season indulging a manager who has ostracized his players as a bunch of pussies! Who doesn't cotton to those who don't respect the decision-making of his protruding gut! A man who could give a fuck about losing his clubhouse! And by the way: Fuck those crybaby players! Now, can I offer you a dollar more than the other teams trying to sign you?"

Ask a sailor, and they'll tell you: Some days, the wind is with you and sometimes it's against you, but the worst thing that you can do is to allow yourself to drift.

Oh, we know that some of you are clever cats who wanna say "What does next year even matter anyway, because all the good free agents are coming out in 2011." Well, wouldn't it be ready to right the ship now and bring in someone new who could potentially make Toronto an attractive place to play?

By taking action, and empowering their new GM, the Blue Jays could (and should) be making a decision now about how they want the field level leadership of this team to relate to and govern the players who step between the lines and make the magic happen. Instead, they've decided to sit back, take it as it comes and let tomorrow take care of tomorrow. Which sounds like the decision-making process of a retiree. Too bad Beeston's retirement is on hold for the next three years.

P.S. - Thanks to the Ack for picking up the slack. (You see what WE did there?)