I Missed It

When I laid my weary soul down to bed on Wednesday night, I was content. The Blue Jays had won earlier in the day, which always puts me in a pretty good mood. Later that evening, I got The Org Kids to bed, and settled in for some baseball. There were some rather important games on, you may recall. I wanted to catch as much of them as I could, knowing full well that The Org Kids would need to be fed and cared for the next morning before being shipped off to their respective educational facilities. The morning routine, as if often the case, limits my ability to watch baseball, or anything else, past about 10:30 PM.

So I watched for a bit, then went to bed. I went to bed with the New York Yankees leading the Tampa Bay Rays 7-0, and the Boston Red Sox/Baltimore Orioles game in a rain delay with Boston leading 3-2. In the National League, about which I care somewhat less, St. Louis held a 7-0 lead on Houston, and the Atlanta Braves were leading 3-1 over the Phillies (if I recall correctly. It may have been 3-2 for Atlanta at this point).

The worst case NL scenario was missing a Phillies comeback that would cap the Braves’ September collapse; otherwise, it’s a one-game Cards/Braves play-in. Worst case scenario for the AL: I miss an Orioles comeback after the rain delay, forcing a one-game Rays/Sox play-in, and unsheathing the rusty dagger that could potentially be plunged through the hearts of Red Sox Nation the next night.

This was my thought process. No matter what, I figured I would awaken to either:

• the Sox and Cardinals having won their respective wild cards; or


• a really awesome night of baseball coming Thursday night, with one or even two one-game showdowns.
  

I woke up to something substantially different, of course. I turned on the news and did a double take at the scrolling scores at the bottom of the screen. Then I got on Twitter, and it was like my friends had gone out to nondescript bar somewhere, I decided to stay home and take it easy instead, and then I found out later that The Who showed up and played an acoustic set. And also, my friends had come home and kicked me in the stomach several times while I slept.

***

It’s not always easy to be a Canadian baseball fan. It’s certainly not a very emotionally rewarding experience to be a Blue Jays fan, at least for the last 18 years or so. Those of us who follow the game, love the game, live for Opening Day – we’re not exactly the dominant force in the Canadian sports landscape. I’ve long since given up on explaining why I love baseball to those who ask how I can care so much for such a slow, boring game. From now on, I’m just going to carry around a copy of Joe Posnanski’s write-up from Wednesday night on laminated cards in my pocket and hand them out for those occasions.

I’m happy nowadays to simply feel like I’m part of a big, loosely-knit, yet dedicated club of Canadian baseball fans. We have our own inside jokes that devotees of other sports don’t get. Sometimes those jokes are at their expense; how many times have we taken the piss out of the people who call in to the Jays Talk to say the team should trade a player for draft picks? Most of our neighbours have never heard of the young prospects that get our hopes up, like Anthony Gose or Travis d’Arnaud or Jake Marisnick. Compare that to millions of hockey fans, both dedicated and casual, who’ve watched Nazem Kadri or Alexander Ovechkin or Sidney Crosby since they were 16 years old. Our enthusiasm for obscure-by-comparison prospects makes us feel like we’ve maybe got a bit more inside knowledge about our sport than they do about theirs.

Or at least that’s how I feel sometimes. I enjoy sharing these little idiosyncrasies with some like-minded people and not feeling like I have to apologize for it. Unfortunately, our clique is not often rewarded with big, amazing moments. As Posnanski said, “It’s all the years you spend waiting for Wednesday night that makes baseball great.” Wednesday’s baseball games are going to go down in history as some of the most stirring, memorable ones ever played. I had a chance to be part of it in a way that the non-fan isn’t. And I missed it.

When I tweeted this on Thursday morning, I was half-joking. I really did feel – I still do feel, in fact – like I missed out on something special.

In the end, though, I still got to wake up in the morning, hang out with my kids, and see them off to school. That’s a big, amazing moment I get to experience every day. They’re not big baseball fans, at least not yet. Maybe one day, they’ll get to see a night like Wednesday and won’t sleep through it like I did. I bet they’ll be two Canadian kids as hooked on baseball as I am.

The Blue Jays are the Greatest Show on Artificial Turf

If there's one thing you can say about the 2010 edition of the Toronto Blue Jays, it's that they are rarely boring. This year's team is so smashingly entertaining that even those who croaked on about how awful they were going to be this year are starting to come around and feel the joy in watching the awesome display of power.

(And yeah, that's you Blair. Welcome to the bright side.)

At present, the Jays lead the Majors in homers by 19 over the Red Sox (88-69), and also lead the collective circuits in doubles (123), slugging (.471), and total bases (836). They sit just two behind the Yankees in RsBI with 264, followed by the Red Sox (260) and Rays (255). Which we mention mostly to remind us all that a third or fourth place finish in the AL East is not like any other division's third/fourth place finish, no matter how much Bobcat McCown spits into his mic in absolute terms about the failures of this team.

So what's our point? Whatever happens in the next week and a half with the series against the Yankees and Rays, we're reasonably sure that the Jays aren't going to go quietly or lose ugly. They are going to compete through all nine innings, and have a puncher's chance of making up ground on their divisional rivals this week.

Did you catch that last bit? We spoke of gaining ground in the race. As if we were speaking about these all-too-fetishized "meaningful games" that people groan on about endlessly. Because that seems to be the gripe of most of the gasbag radio hosts and fatuous general sporting columnists: That the Jays don't play those impactful and important games in September. That none of this stuff matters now, and that we should be suspicious about the early success because the only thing that matters is the last month...or three weeks, or two weeks, or two days, or third-of an inning of the season.

Which has led us to this minor epiphany: The Bruce Arthurs and Dave Perkins and Steve Simmons of the world are a bunch of pasty tourists when it comes to this beautiful game, and we really shouldn't pay them any hommage by listening for even a nanosecond to their all-too-knowing postulations in the preseason about how awful and dreadful the outlook is for the Jays, and why fans should be wary of the team in the here and now. Just because the only part of the season to which they pay any mind is the last bit, it doesn't mean that there isn't fun to be had in the early going.

Because this is supposed to be fun, right? This is baseball. That's why we love it.

We suspect that many of the empty seats in the RC/SkyDome are filled with the ghosts of casual fans who have bought into the steaming pantloads flung by the cynical opportunists who eat up space in the newspaper and on the talk shows. But what we really hope that people recognize over the next few weeks is that they are missing a great season. Maybe the greatest season that they've had in more than a decade. Really.

And this isn't at all like last year's team, who got off to a quick start by beating up on some weaker competition. This is a team that has been in almost every game this season, and has the crushing offensive power to get themselves back into games in a hurry.

Maybe you're the type who can shrug off another JoBau JomeRun, or another extra base hit from Alex Gonzalez, or a screamer off the bat of Vernon Wells. Maybe you can write those off as a fluke and set yourself up to walk ten feet behind the bandwagon, so that no one mistakes you for a sucker should the team falter. But where's the joy in that? Isn't it better to let yourself go and fall for a team once in a while?

We're a third of the way through, and the Jays are just a game back of the Yankees, four and a half back of the Rays and sporting the sixth-best record in all of MLB. They are setting themselves up to be in the Wild Card race, which probably only begins in July, but you can at least consider these first eight weeks the preliminary heats.

And thus far, it's been pretty frickin' fun to watch.

O! The wonders of a best-of-five series

What will 100 regular season wins get you in the postseason?

SFA.

And if you are the 2008 Anaheim-ish Angels, it sure as hell won't get you a matchup against the weakest of the playoff entrants. Instead, because of a stupid rule that states that the Wild Card team can't play a team in their own division in the LDS, the Angels got the 95-win Red Sox in the first round, while the Rays had the luxury of facing the 88-win White Sox.

Where's the justice in that? Why can't MLB just seed the playoff teams comme du monde?

Three quick losses and that's that for the Angels. For as quick as the series came and went, they might just as well play three games of rock-paper-scissors to determine the winner.

10

Ten games, and no losses in September. Seriously, this is getting ridiculous. Isn't is strange to think that at some point years from now, we'll look at great winning streaks in the history if the franchise and see the past few weeks as one of the most wickedly awesome stretches ever.

No, really. And we don't even care at this point how much of a long shot the postseason is. We're going down with the ship.

We know that the chances are remote, but the irrational fan in us is doing somersaults when we see the Jays' chances at the Wild Card increase over the past week from 1% to 2.8% according to Coolstandings. (UPDATE: Actually, it went from 1% to 2.8% in one day.)

You see? They're saying that we still have a chance!

Another night, another nail biter

Our cuticles can't take much more of this. (Seriously, those aren't really our nails, because that's just sick. Yeesh.)

Tonight's 2-1 win over the Angels was yet another in a series of close games where the Jays should be burying teams, but fail to move runners over or drive them in. Gregg Zaun in particular seemed to leave the entire roster on the bases at one point or another tonight.

But at least he threw out a runner.

We won't look gift wins in the mouth anymore, though, especially since tonight's victory puts the Jays three games over for the first time since April, and allows them to pick up a full game on Seattle and the Yankees for the Wild Card.

No, really, we still think in terms of the playoff race. That's why they call us die hard fans.

Marcum es MUY macho
We'll admit that we've been waiting for Shaun Marcum to turn back into a pumpkin and day now, but we like his smarts on the mound more with every start. Marcum won his fifth straight tonight, running his record to 10-4, and dropping his ERA to 3.31, the eighth best mark in the AL. Can you dig it?

So you're saying we still have a chance?

After any remotely positive stretch of games, we usually find ourselves consulting Coolstandings.com’s projections to see just how much the Jays have moved the needle in terms of their probability of making the playoffs.

With their current five-game win streak, Coolstandings’ adjusted Jamesian Pythagorean theorem figures the Jays’ probability of playing time in October at 4.3% (based on a 0.7% probability of winning the AL East, and a 3.6% probability of taking the Wild Card.)

Which, to paraphrase Lloyd Christmas, means they’re telling us we still have a chance.

Coolstandings figures that the Jays’ final record will fall somewhere around 83-79, which would likely be considered a disappointment, especially given last year’s 87 win season. The site also pegs the Indians at 91 wins, and the Yankees at about 90, which would mean that the Jays from this point on in the season would have to go on a 40-21 run to be right there in the final week.

After a feel-good week like this, we've gotta say that in unrepentant fan in us (foolishly? blindly?) likes our chances.

So, about all that "hay making"...

We figured that the past week or so would have been the time for the Jays to make a move in the Wild Card standings.

Well. So much for that.

In spite of yesterday's July 4th fireworks in Oakland, the Jays wind up the west coast swing at 4-6, and dropped two games further back of the Tigers, with the Indians in town this weekend.

As we noted back in those halcyon days when the Jays were above .500, these four series were likely make-or-break for the Toronto Nine's playoff chances. Now, we'll have to wait for the teams above them in the standings to start imploding.

Time to make some hay

Here’s a novelty for you: Meaningful games.

After what feels like a month of playing National League teams, the Jays have emerged, suddenly finding themselves in second place in the AL East (11 back of Boston, and a half game up on the Yanks). Moreover, the Jays are back in the Wild Card mix, sitting six games back of Cleveland in fifth place.

(It may be a bit of an overstatement to consider the Jays back in these races, but we’re fans. We’re willing to suspend our disbelief, if only to make our summer that much more satisfying.)

What this past weekend’s upswing means is that the next four series leading into the All-Star Break will be of considerable import for Toronto’s playoff hopes, as they'll play the four teams above them in the Wild Card standings.

The Jays take on Minnesota (38-35, 1.5 games up), Seattle (39-33, and three games up), Oakland (39-35, two games up) and the Tribe in the next two weeks, and with only two series per year against these opponents, the Jays will have to make up ground on these teams now, or rely on others to do their work for them.

It isn't quite "do or die", but it would be a hell of a time to go on a winning streak.