So much for our road trip to Buffalo

It seemed like such a great idea: the Jays move their Triple A farm team to Buffalo, and baseball fans from all around the Golden Horseshoe could take the short treacherous car ride to see the team's future prospects just across the Peace Bridge. Win-win.

There's just one small problem: The Mets, who are apparently ready to move their shit out of New Orleans and settle in the Paris of Western New York.

Syracuse was in an all-fired rush to sever ties after a 31-year relationship with the Blue Jays because of their extended run of futility. (We're sure that this is somehow J.P. Ricciardi's fault.) Now, the denizens of Onondoga County may now have the pleasure of dealing with the Washington Nationals or the Florida Marlins. Have fun with that.

In spite of Chuck Schumer's song and dance to get the Mets' top affiliate in Syracuse, it looks as though the Mets have decided that the culture shock of moving their prospects from a two-bit one-horse town to the Big Apple could have lasting and palpable affects on the team's prospects.

If not Buffalo, where?
The unfortunate thing about this turn of events for the Jays is that the other cities left open in this game of Minor League Musical Chairs are primarily Pacific Coast League teams. They are:

New Orleans Zephyrs: Had their final series wiped out by Hurricane Ike. And thanks to the Army Corps of Engineers, their home town will likely end up submerged again soon.

Albuquerque Isotopes: That Simpsons joke will be funny for about two more minutes.

Las Vegas 51's: Well, at least we'd know that Bob McCown will be up to speed on the progress of the Jays prospects. The only option with direct flights to Toronto.

We're not crazy about any of those options, and god help us, we'd probably rather go back to Syracuse. Of course, the PCL is an offensive league, so maybe we can get extra excited about some of the future Jays when they start cranking out dingers in the high and dry air of Colorado Springs or Salt Lake.

Meet the Mets' Bloggers

A tip of the cap to our pals over at the Ballclub, who wished us well yesterday on our future raw bacon exploits. (Honestly, we spent 10 minutes the other day at the Loblaws looking at bacon, trying to determine which package was least likely to kill us.)

The Ballclub is the only non-Jays team blog to which we link at this point, in part because we spent a few of our formative years listening to Mets games on WFAN when the station came in clearly. (And those were the 1990s Mets teams, so no one could accuse us of bandwagon jumping. ) We're not exactly Mets fans, but if we have to pick an NL team, we'll pick them. Because of Mookie. And because we have a tendency to send them our first basemen.

One thing though: we can never root for the Mets when they wear black. The uniform that Johan Santana wore when he was introduced? We can get behind that.

Getting Props from Strange and Sundry Places
We were doing some maintenance the other day, when we notice that someone posted a comment under the name "Jody Vance", responding in a good-humoured manner to our post about her from way back in the fall. The real Jody Vance is apparently on mat leave, so we'll assume that given the debacle that is the 2007-08 Maple Leaves, she has nothing better to do than read our blog. In which case, she's officially our favorite anchorwoman. (Back of the line, Holly Horton!)

That Flushing Sound

These are not happy times for Los Mets, who are driving the good folks over at the Ballclub stark raving mad. We feel your pain, boys.

It's almost like watching the last week of a certain team's '87 season. Except without the Bill Madlock take-out slides and Frank Tanana junkballin'.

Speaking of the NL East: ToS correspondent Shortwaveboy was in Philly for some pennant race action this week. We're assured that there will be pictures to post and stories to tell (and not just of the Phillies's cheerleaders!)

Mets Fan Gets Banned For Shedding Light On Pitching

Only in New York. 40 year old Bronx resident Frank Martinez was banned for three years from attending Mets home games after pleading guilty to shining a laser at Atlanta pitchers during a game on April 20. Read the story in the NY Post. Hard to beat the tabloid spin.