Some weekends suck more than others

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?

Hacks and gasbags hack away at Jays

Now that the Jays' ever so slim playoff aspirations have gone up in a poof of green and gold smoke, thanks to Esteban Loaiza and his merry band of brigands, we fully expect the gang of hacks and gasbags in the Toronto/National media (is there a distinction?) to gleeful indulge in "I told you so" wankery for much of the next few weeks.

What fun.

We wouldn't mind, so much, if they were vaguely enlightening about the plight of the Jays season. For instance, Jeff Blair, in his triumphant return from the Barry Bonds beat, lays it out pretty effectively in today's column.

You're misguided if you think the Blue Jays postseason hopes are fading fast. They were extinguished long ago, when the club went 3-5 from July 12 to 19 in an eight-game road trip against the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees.

You see, that's harsh, but it is true.

But what kills us are the goofballs like Sun Media columnist and TSN sabbath gasbag Steve Simmons, who dropped this erroneous knowledge in his Sunday column: "Not hard to figure why the Blue Jays are so middle-of-the- road. The club is 14th in batting, 17th in runs scored, 22nd in earned run average".

We checked those numbers, especially since the ERA number seemed so completely out of whack. The Jays sit fourth in ERA (4.01 going into yesterday, and 3.99 coming out). In 22nd in ERA are the Marlins with a 4.69, so it's doubtful that the Jays managed in the space of about four days to shave almost three-quarters of a run off their mark.

Neither of the other numbers made much sense when we checked them either, so Simmons basically made this shit up.

Sycophancy Update - Back to the mailbag
We were slow off the mark in our analysis of yesterday's Dick Griffin Mailbag Madness yesterday, but the Drunk Jays Fans pretty much said what we thinking.

We'll just point out that yet again, the mailbag was full of unnecessarily laudatory greetings for a writer who is already way too full of himself.

Yesterday's mailbag featured such exquisite brown-nosery as "I love your column and candor during the season" from some limey, "I look forward to every Wednesday just to read your column" from someone in Oshawa, and "Hi Richard, Love your column" from some misguided American Jays fan.

We get it, Dick. People love you. Then again, people love a lot of ridiculous shit, like The King of Queens and head cheese.