Dropping links like Adam Lind crushes hanging breaking balls

We'll confess to being a bit spent by the two-game mindfuck that was the series against the Clevelanders, so to give ourselves a little respite today, we'll punt you off to the many other fascinating Blue Jays tidbits around the internet.

(Speaking of which: Did you know that you can get free breakfast and "internets" from Super 8? We may have heard that somewhere.)

Scott Richmond got his face in a frame
The Blue Jay Hunter tips their cap to the American League's New Employee of the Month, Scott Richmond.

Doc turns his stare from stun to grin
Hum and Chuck offers up a funny video of Roy Halladay being interviewed by Gerry Dee, the caucasian half of the Score's goofball reporter tandem. It's a riot to see the look on Doc's face as he suffers Dee gladly. Funny stuff, even without the allegations of litigious racism.

The Blue Jays' attendance woes, Part 28
In the comments yesterday, we promised a post on the Jays' early season attendance numbers, though we're not sure that we could do much better than this gem from Neate at Out of Left Field.

If you can't get 'em to the park, at least have 'em watching on the tube
The Star's Chris Zelkovich reports that the Jays' TV audiences on Sportsnet are up about six percent over last season. (Which begs the question: Even with half of the 'Net's "regions" airing games other than the Jays'?)

What do you do with a problem like Snidey?
It's a couple of days old now, but Drew/LtB at Ghostrunner on First made a very reasonable suggestion that the time might have come to send Travis Snider to Las Vegas for some fine tuning. This, of course, was before Snider discovered the impact that high socks could have on his performance. Problem solved!

Josh Barfield misremembers the good old days of the SkyDome
Jesse's kid regales the Cleveland Plain Dealer with tales of goofing around the SkyDome when it first opened and playing in the new facility with the Mosebys and Upshaws. There's just one problem: Willie Upshaw never played as a Blue Jay at the SkyDome. In fact, he never played at the SkyDome at all. In 1988, he made way for Cecil Fielder and Fred McGriff by moving on to Cleveland before retiring at the end of the season. The SkyDome didn't open until June of the next season.

Moreover, Jesse Barfield was traded from the Blue Jays on April 30, 1989 for Captain FingerBlister, Al Leiter, a month before the SkyDome opened. So clearly, we can expect to see an announcement coming from the Cleveland front office that Josh has been placed on the DL because of injuries sustained when his big liar pants were on fire.

The minutiae of MLB rules...explained at last!
We're digging Bart Given's Inside the Majors blog lately, especially when he digs into the particulars of the waiver or DL systems. We're just hopeful that Given doesn't go all soft on us after he moves to the West Coast.

There's something that happens to people when they get to the other side of the Rockies...we can't explain it, but we've lost too many friends to a life of performance art, yoga and Canucks apologism not to worry for Bart. (But congrats to Jody on the new gig.)

All-Star Breakin'

Dudes! It's the All-Star Extravaganza!

This is where we separate ourselves from the majority of hacks out there. You won't hear us bitching about this element of the Midseason Classic, or about who got snubbed or what guy got voted in by the obviously stupid stupid stupid stupid corrupt inept fans who shouldn't be allowed to pick the starters because they are stupid and have no access and are stupid and don't really know what's going on with the game of baseball because they are stupidly ignorant to all of the stuff that the writers and broadcasters know through their access but that they don't pass on to the fans because they are too stupid to get it and therefore shouldn't even be allowed to watch the game.

And moreover, you won't hear us complain that the game sucks because it's stupid because it doesn't count but then it counts but it shouldn't count because it doesn't count.

Those guys try to take the fun out of everything.

We love the All-Star Game. Some nights, when we close our eyes, we still see Fred Lynn hammering that Atlee Hammaker pitch into the seats at old Comiskey Park for the only grand slam in All-Star Game history.

Or our patron saint Dave Stieb getting the start in 1983 and 1984. (Sadly, it sounds as though Cliff Lee's mirage-like first half will lead to him getting the start for the AL this year over Roy Halladay.)

We remember sitting in anticipation as they went through the introductions, waiting for the Blue Jays representatives to be introduced. (Hey look! It's Jesse Barfield! Tony Fernandez! The Shaker, Lloyd Moseby!)

Tell me that doesn't count for something.

Jesse Barfield answers the questions you never bothered to ask

Completely by accident, we stumbled across a columnish first-person thingy posted today on cbcsports.ca by neophyte colour commentator and former Blue Jays rightfielder Jesse Barfield.

We don't want to get on Barfield's case too much, because he seems like a genuinely nice fellow, but someone's got to give Jesse a little direction on these things. The first rambling post of the year can pretty much be summed up thusly: I'm a baseball insider, and you're not.

It starts off all wrong, right from the get-go: "Fans often wonder how a former player feels about the game after he has retired, so to open this baseball season, you will get to go behind the scenes with me and find out."

Err...no. We don't. We don't wonder about former players. Generally we're too preoccupied with the guys who are still playing to give a flying fadoo about the guys who used to play once upon a time. (Except for Bob File...where's that guy at?)

The rest of the post kinda meanders about, giving us little insight about stuff we weren't particularly jazzed to hear about. However, if you had your roto team killed by Josh Barfield last year, you'll be happy to know that he's doing just fine. We're sure that Josh will remain totally positive (just like his Dad!) watching Asdrubal Cabrera trot out to second base all season long.

Nattering Nabobs of Negativity Update
Did you know that the Blue Jays have 77 people working in their ticket sales and service department? You can count them right here. Wow. That's a lot of people, isn't it? With a workforce of that magnitude and the right vision, they might just be able to sell tickets to at least a dozen or so people in the GTA once single-game ticket sales open later this week for those outside of Detroit and Boston.