If there's a small blessing to this past weekend, it's that we spent more time listening to the games and less time actually watching them. We consider the lack of visuals a small mercy that we granted upon ourselves. It left us able to complete the picture of the weekend sweep in a way that was far more satisfying and relaxing and pleasant.In our mind's eye, a packed house watched as the Jays, a team comprised entirely of unicorns and My Little Ponies, fought valiantly against the Dark Angels and their evil machinations. And because of their equine nature and the lack of opposable thumbs, it was no wonder that the Blue Jays were left to flail away at the plate, striking out 19 times over the three games.
Now that our ether rag is dry, and we're left to piece the weekend back together in the cold grey light of a Monday afternoon, we're not certain what to read into the weekend. The Jays didn't really get blown out in any of the games, but they certainly never seemed to be poised to win any of them either. They continued to get contributions from Vernon Wells, Adam Lind and Alex Gonzalez, but much of the lineup is still scuffling along. Shaun Marcum and Ricky Romero respectively put up decent and excellent pitching performances, but putative number two starter Brian Tallet served up another subpar performance.
And so maybe this is the way that this season is going to play out: The good parts will be there, but will be outweighed by the bad, and eventually, you slip backwards into the mediocre showing that everyone expected.
(Go with us on this one, because we are trying to be the optimists who find arguments for how this team could go over .500 this year. If what we've just said seems completely obvious to you, it's because you were ready to believe it before we were. We're still sounding out the thoughts phonetically to ourselves and pretending that we don't understand the meaning.)
On Tallet and Tightness
Apparently, Brian Tallet's arm has tightness in it. Which is appropriate, we think, because our sphincter has had some significant tightness in it every time he takes the mound, if you know what we mean.
(Actually, it might not be "tightness". We're seeing "soreness" and "stiffness" in the reports. Which is appropriate, we think, considering the soreness of our sphincters after taking a beating from the opponent's stiffness each time Tallet takes the mound.)
My kingdom for a balance schedule
We've been dragging our feet on writing a piece on the bogus realignment horse-hockey that was tossed around in the winter, but we promise that we'll get right to that. Honest. In our mind, it's already the best thing that we're ever written, should we ever get around to writing it.
In the interim, we recommend a read through Neate Sager's typically well-informed and well-reasoned jaunt through the issues with the schedule, and why some of us should ignore the buffoonery of certain sportswriters.
A thought on buffoonery
After having had some fun with The Hack at Sun-Times, here's what we've come to believe about this whole situation: There are certain American sportswriters who go out of their way to make the situation in Toronto analogous to Montreal, or who like to hold Canada up for ridicule as a place where top level baseball should not and cannot succeed. But their existence is payback for the innumerable cases where Canadian hockey writers dump on the attendance and profitability of teams in American cities.
So maybe the point is that we should all stop being so fucking smug, and stop making arguments to pull teams out of other fans' markets. Mmmkay?
