You have to make a choice

I know, I know.... I drop at least one of these posts every year. I'm running the risk of getting all shticky in here. But, y'know, fuck it.... if I'm going to be repetitive, this seems like the point in the season to do it. So here we go....

I'm of the opinion - the opinion - that if you're a fan of a team (let's say, for example, the Toronto Blue Jays), then you're a fan of a team Win or Lose. Win or fucking Lose.

Now, I'm not here to give anybody shit. I'm not your dad. But whoever said this would be easy? You know what's easy? Being a fan of, say, today's Boston Red Sox. They are built to win now. They have the financial resources to build a winner and spend the cash to fill the holes as Theo sees fit. Ownership has set that precedent; need an arm? Go get one. Short a power bat to fill the 6 hole? Who's available (statement not question).

So this is where the cynical fucks tell me to look at Rogers' balance sheet. Remind me of the resources that should be available then point to the stopgap options and roster fillers filling the major league bench.

And this may surprise you, but I'll tell you that you're right.

I'll also tell you to fucking get over it, because it is what it is and no amount of twitter bitching or otherwise is going to change any spending habits.

Me? I take comfort in seeing that The Plan put forward has been unwavering - build internally, throw big money at the draft (all indications are, 2011's should cost.... a lot), develop a homegrown roster of stars, and strike at free agency when the time is right.

Now is pretty clearly not yet that time. There have been setbacks - big ones with Travis Snider, Brett Cecil, and Kyle Drabek. Not all prospects will develop as hoped - whatever happened to the Adeiny Hechavarria hype machine? But that's what happens when you shoot for "ceiling" (as a scout might say). They aren't always going to hit.

But seems to me the squawking was never louder than during the Ricciardi era where safe reliable talent and big money free agent signings where the method to roster construction.

So take your pick. I know which route I prefer.

Back to the statement up top - it's easy to be a fan of today's Boston Red Sox. But it will be entirely more satisfying to be a fan of tomorrow's Toronto Blue Jays.

A lot can happen in a meaningless game

Maybe it will make us look as tone deaf and overly earnest as a Rattle and Hum era Bono, but we wore out the floorboards, pacing through last night's thriller of an 8-7 win over the Red Sox.

Yeah, yeah. We should have perfected our disaffected pose by now, and we should have signed off on the season long ago. But when you check out and declare that you've given up on the team, you might just miss something special.

Like a troika of homers from Adam Lind. And José Bautista still killing it. And Kevin Millar turning a 6-5-3 double play. And six total homers for the good guys. And the bullpen handing back the lead. And Jonathan Papelbon reconfirming what an unmitigated douche he is. ("My bad", my ass!) And the Sausage King locking down the win and getting Kevin Youkilis on a called third strike that umpires would usually give to any Sox player in Fenway.

Some people get too wrapped up in whether if the game they are watching is "meaningful". (Ultimately, aren't they all kinda meaningless?)

But the great thing about baseball is that every day, there's a new game. It's always something new, and it's the greatest game there is. That might not mean anything to you, but it means something to us.

The Crux of our Tweets
We've been getting exceedingly argumentative over on the Twitter lately. Not sure what's up with that. But suddenly, we find ourselves unable to avoid engaging in verbal parries and thrusts, 140 characters at a time.

Here's the gist of what we were bitching about last night:

• We like José Bautista. Especially as a super sub who's the 24th or 25th guy on the roster. And we don't discount his seven homers and 15 RsBI and .932 OPS just because it's September. With regular playing time, he's gotten better.
• We think Adam Lind deserves some consideration for the MVP. Not ahead of Joe Mauer or anything, but maybe further down the ballot. But with his offensive explosion last night, Lind's offensive numbers are on par with Kendry Morales, who's been third or fourth on our ballot for the past few months.
• You don't hit a guy just to hit a guy back. Who do you think you are? Gary Roberts or some other jerk-off fake tough guy? You've got a one-run lead. You gotta protect that. Because moral victories come and go, but actual victories stay in the Win column forever.

If you're interested in watching us go on with this while Polyannaish routine and argue with people for the sake of it, follow us over at twitter.com/taoofstieb.

Jays seed the clouds with home run balls

Yeah yeah yeah, we know. We shouldn't get too excited over beating up on a bunch of minor league arms in Boston.

(And on that note: Were we the only ones who were relieved that this Michael Bowden cat is still in Boston's system and wasn't part of a Halladay trade? Seriously, all those internet based scouting analysts really don't know nuthin' 'bout nuthin' in the end, do they?)

But come on. Isn't it a stitch to watch Aaron Hill and José Bautista and Rod Barajas send dingers into Boston's night time skyline? Why must people try to ruin this for us?

Praise the rain
Thankfully for Jays fans, the rains came pouring down exactly at the point where Casey Janssen had begun to hand the game back to the Red Sox. Watching Janssen walk two and give up a double to that little rat-faced elf Dustin Pedroia, we could feel a big BoSox turnaround coming on like a freight train (even with the six-run lead.)

Given Cito's dubious handling of the bullpen, we could have seen him leaving Janssen in to burnish his .940 OPS against. Yikes.

Everybody loves Janssen because he's plucky as all get out, but dude needs to be far away from the Jays' pitching staff next season if they are going to have a shot at...well...nevermind.

Oh, boy

What to say about this one? Not much, evidently. The picture above says it all. It stunk.

A frisky ninth made the outcome appear much more respectable to the Jays than their performance warranted, and in the end....another one run loss. Stop me if you've heard this before (because you have).

On top of the on-field misery, our friends at Rogers Sportsnet treated us to the full "Sweet Caroline" treatment by the Fenway faithful during tonight's broadcast. Gee, parent company of the Blue Jays, thanks for that. I swear, if Campbell broke out into song, the odds of hari-kari were at least 50-50. Although a duet with Rance might almost have been worth it. You know, for the comedy.

(As an aside, I'd love to shit on "the nation" here, but it's hard to completely dump on a fanbase that sells out the building for 81 dates a year (plus playoffs - fuck), and has a good time while doing it. I could, but it would probably come across as petty jealousy....and that would probably be the proper read.)

The positives? Um, Adam Lind extended his hit streak to ten (!) games with a double? Cito's favorite reliever Jesse Carlson made dreamboat (barf!) Ellsbury look silly on an 0-2 breaking ball (small victories!)?

I don't know. I got nothin'. Give me something to work with here, Jays.

Tomorrow is another day.

I guess.

The stage was set

Top of the ninth.....Jays down one.....bases loaded.....two outs.....the world's biggest jackass on the hill for the Sox.....the Future steps to the plate for the Jays.....the Green Monster taunts - no, beckons - his opposite field power.....aaaaand the kid goes down swinging.

Elation in Fenway. Emptiness for Blue Jay fans. An all too familiar refrain.

The intrepid (and soon to be proud papa) Jordan Bastian tweets that the Jays are 16-23 in one run games, which is awful, but seriously - doesn't it feel a whole lot worse than that?

Wait, let me answer - yes. Yes it does. Actually, it feels like a recurring nightmare, where the build up may vary slightly, but ultimately leads to the same gory finale. You might even say the outcome has become anti-climactic.

Blue Jay fever 2009 - catch it! No, literally, I think I've come down with something as a result. The team is making me ill. It feels like a virus.

But you know friends, I'm not here to bag on the team. Not intentionally, anyway. I vaguely recall making an oath that I would do my best to remain positive, which leads us to a new theme as we march toward the close of the season....

It's still baseball, damnit!
Lighthouse doing his thing.

Barajas stepping up to the plate, looking for one pitch, and absolutely crushing it.

These are things I love. The Jays may be slowly (but surely) crushing our souls....but it's still baseball, damnit.

Oh, and I would never advocate intentional injury....
....but a well placed baseball between Youk's numbers tomorrow would be completely justified. Or, you know, maybe Rookie Romero aims a few feet lower and lets Pedroia know he's there. Just sayin'.

Welcome back (to a face slap)

Like many of you, I anxiously tuned in to the Jays' first game back after the All-Star break with vaguely optimistic (it works on so many levels) expectations. Romero! Powder Blues! A chance to stick it to the Sox! Baseball, baby!

That lasted until, oh, the first inning. I can think of better ways to start a game. Nothing spells buzz-kill like a Youkilis homer with Pedroia on board. Barf.

It's just one game, but......in many ways last night's effort was everything I feared. Essentially, there are two ways the team can respond to The Halladay Depression:

(1) Play inspired baseball to show the league (and management) that the team is close to being a contender, or

(2) Come out flat and wait for the other shoe to drop.

If you watched last night's effort, I don't think I have to tell you how the team responded in the series opener against our favourite Nation of Douchebags. Inverse b's, friends.

Julio Lugo's designation for assignment terrifies me
Boy Wonder GM Theo Epstein pulled a Ricciardi in designating Julio Lugo - who's owed about $13M over the next season and a half - for assignment. You'll remember that our own boy wonder (jokes!) has had eyes for one of my least favourite players in MLB over the years, and now it appears he can be had for the league minimum (barring anyone foolish enough to trade anything of value for his "services").

I don't need to tell you how much this terrifies me. With the trade deadline approaching, and our own Ninja-like shortstop approaching free agency.....well, I don't even want to finish that sentence. So I won't.

It was all my fault

I have been a dedicated fan of the Jays since '84 but it wasn't until 2001 that I first saw them play live. It was a bachelor party weekend in Toronto for yours truly and Boston was in town for a Canada Day weekend series. Although lots of extra curricular activities were planned, the games were the central focus for my group of baseball obsessed friends. It couldn't have been a better time. Except that the Jays lost. Badly. I was pretty bummed about it but got over it after a night of debauchery at a certain legendary adult entertainment facility on Yonge Street.

Over the years since then I've been back to the SkyDome/Rogers Centre a number of times. Work takes me around North America so I always jump at a chance to go to TO during ball season. While I've seen them play many times against many different teams, I have never seen them win. Not once.  I started to get a complex. Was it me? Was I jinxing my beloved team? I started to waffle on opportunities to go to games.  

Last week I found out that I had to be in Boston when the Jays are in town. The tempation was extreme. My head was swimming with doubts and rationalizations. Things will be different this time... All of those past Jays losses were under lesser managers than Cito... They are too good this time... After last night's game, they are due... Snider is due... Wells is due. Cecil is the new Jimmy Key...The Jays are going to prove wrong all of those Jackasses in the baseball world...I'll wear a brand new Jays cap...Fresh start...It wasn't me. 

Turns out it was.

The Jays started out strong on the pitching and defence front. Love seeing a team struggle against an unknown starter like Cecil. The Jays drove balls deep in the first couple of innings. One of them was due to go out. Penny's luck was going to run out. 

All was scoreless until the third inning when Varitek electrified the crowd with a line drive shot into the seats. Lugo later scored on a fielders choice but a two run spot was not insurmountable.

Cecil actually was lights out in the fourth so it looked like things were back on track.

Then came the fifth. I don't even want to talk about the fifth. Thankfully the Boston faithful spent a lot of time on their feet -- it obstructed my view of moonshot after moonshot leaving the park. I slunk in my seat. 

My colleague deemed the game done. I was putting on a brave face. I reminded him of the Jays 10-0 comeback game...back in the late '80s. But I knew it was over.

I gave it until the 7th to see if they could muster any runs. They did manage two but the hole was deep. I suggested that we leave. I secretly hoped that my absence might spark a return of the team that kicked serious ass on Chicago on the weekend. When I got back to the hotel I crossed my fingers that I'd see that they scored 4 runs in the 8th. They got one. It was too late.

I have to disclose that the baseball Gods tried to keep me out of Fenway last night but I ignored the signs. Stubhub seriously messed with me and I ended up having to get tickets at South Shore Tickets (thanks Donny) at the last minute. But I foolishly thought that things would be different.

Sorry.    

Bring on the Red Sox

After a sweet long weekend sweep over the White Sox, we're ready and set to go for this week's series against those other Sox. You know, the ones that sit three and a half games back of the Blue Jays in the AL East.

Some are suggesting that Blue Jays fans should hang their hopes on the results of this series. We heard the McCownless crew on Prime Time Sports last night pimping this series in Boston as the biggest in the team's recent history, possibly since the World Series years. And while we're loathe to question the hyperbole of any reporter who is sitting in front of an open mic trying to fill the air, we'd have to say that the notion that this series has that much significance is a load of hooey.

Which isn't to say that there is no meaning to this series. Indeed, we've been wondering as much as everyone else what is going to happen to this Jays team when it starts to dig into the dense part of its schedule with the punishing intradivisional games in the AL East. But the nice thing about the Jays' hot start to the season is that they could actually get swept in this series by the BoSox and still sit atop the division when the smoke cleared. (Not that we'd want to see a result like that, but we're just sayin'.)

A good showing in this series and on this road trip will go a long way towards convincing people that the Jays are for real. But we shouldn't take a poor showing to absolutely mean that they are not.

(Does any of this make sense? Goddamnit, it's hard to keep our thoughts straight with a head full of DayQuil.)

It sucks to lose meaningful games in August

First off, we'd just like to say that the Red Sox are a bunch of bastard people. Now if you'll excuse us, we're going to go bite our pillow.

Meaningful games mean so much
Maybe it was the excess caffeine, the hectic travel schedule that we had yesterday, or the wicked heat, but we'd like to think that the fact that yesterday's game meant something was the reason that we were sweating our way through the extra innings in yesterday's 6-5 loss to the Boston BastardPeople Sox.

Unfortunately, the loss reduces the Jays' chances of making the playoffs to an absurdly slim margin that even an inveterate apologist such as ourselves has a hard time believing in.

What's worse is that this happened in the last week of August. If the Jays had won and kept teasing our manly bits for another eight days, we'd be able to say without reservation that the Jays played "meaningful games in September". We'd just like to be able to counter the assertion that the Jays never play games of any sort of consequence with an example of one September series that meant something. We want to believe, goddamnit.

And frankly, we don't like to cheer for our team to "play the role of the spoiler" in the final weeks, because any troupe of ne'erdowells can play that role. Although if we have to be spoilers, we'd like to take the Redneck Riviera Rays down a peg starting tomorrow.

Setting up the Weekend

Happy Friday, friends of the Tao, your dear friend the Ack is here after a mid-week getaway outside of Jays country. I'm frantically trying to catch up on all things Blue Jay, as outside of random ESPN ticker readings and USA Today boxscores, I'm basically out of the loop.

What's that? Jose Bautista? That didn't make the ticker. The BLUE JAYS AA affiliate was giving away Clay Buchholz bobbleheads? It's a good thing our guy Snider was promoted, because I'm pretty sure he would have beat the piss out of the Fisher Cats PR genius behind that move. Purcey got knocked around? Bummer. Doc pummeled the Yankees? Boner. Anyways....it's good to be back.

Oh, and as an FYI going forward, the esteemed ToS will bring the gold Friday mornings and I'll try and drop a short Friday afternoon/evening post before I start really dumbing it down with a longer blast on Saturday.

My position hasn't changed

Right back at you, douchebag.