I seriously spent at least 8 hours watching Twitter, in a mall's food court, while pretending to Christmas shop, waiting for the allegedly immanent trade to become official.
Ironically, neither the trade nor my Christmas shopping is done.
It got me thinking, though. Who is telling Ken Rosenthal et al about these trades?
Is it someone from the Jays? If so, who? How close are they? Are they THIS close:
It's been blamed on everything from fickle, fashion-conscious fans, to omnipresent corporate influence, but the recent dark period in Toronto sports is the fault of one man. Luckily for us, John Gibbons has returned to set this city right, and gosh-darn it, setting this city right is what he and Bruce Walton are going to do. Don't believe me?
I stumbled across this exclusive video of the phone call John Gibbons received, informing him that he was the successful candidate for the 2012 Blue Jays manager position.
I am a huge Gibbons fan, and can't wait to see him in his Jays K-way again.
Toronto's half-assed answer to San Diego Comic Con is coming soon. The end of summer means sweaty cosplaying nerds from all around the Golden Horseshoe will soon gather to celebrate their pathetic, virginal-dork-ridden culture (I AM KIDDING. I'm going. I'll be the guy wearing a garbage bag and calling myself Robocop).
So in honor of "Fan Expo" lets look at the Blue Jays, if they were comic book characters.
For this installment, something special... RETRO BLUE JAYS SUPER FLASHBACK FRIDAY EDITION!
Todd Stottlemyre is Longshot
I don't know what is going on with Stottlemyre in this pic, but dammit if it doesn't encapsulate his time with the Jays.
Toronto's half-assed answer to San Diego Comic Con is coming soon. The end of summer means sweaty cosplaying nerds from all around the Golden Horseshoe will soon gather to celebrate their pathetic, virginal-dork-ridden culture (I AM KIDDING. I'm going. I'll be the grown man dressed up like a god damn Pokemon.).
So in honor of "Fan Expo" lets look at the Blue Jays, if they were comic book characters.
Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, John Farrell & Brett Lawrie are The Fantastic Four.
Yeah, I know Lawrie's hair in this pic looks more like DC comic's Firestorm than Human Torch. Shut up, nerd.
Jose Bautista is 100% Reed Richards a.k.a. Mr. Fantastic
In fact now that I think about it, the moniker "Joey Bats" is getting a little tired. Toronto needs a new nickname for Bautista and Mr. Fantastic really fits.
Toronto's half-assed answer to San Diego Comic Con is coming soon. The end of summer means sweaty cosplaying nerds from all around the Golden Horseshoe will soon gather to celebrate their pathetic, virginal-dork-ridden culture (I AM KIDDING. I'm going. I'll be the guy dressed up as Cloud Strife). So in honor of "Fan Expo" lets look at the Blue Jays, if they were comic book characters.
Ricky Romero is The Green Lantern.
With the luck the Jays have had this year, this is the closest anyone will get to a World Series ring
If you asked me last year what comic book character best exemplifies Ricky Romero, I probably would have gone a different route.
I've got this morning routine I go through, every morning.
I wake up at 5:45ish, I make some breakfast, and then I sit down, I turn on the T.V. and I flip back and forth between "19 Kids and Counting" and "Sportsdeskcentre".
So the other morning, in between the Duggar family singing their ridiculous birthday song and skydiving for Jesus, I flipped to Sportscentre and saw this:
Yeah, that was pretty good.
But lets face it, Blake Griffin is jumping over Kendrick Perkins, and Perkins' vertical-jump-ability is about 5 inches, maybe 5 & 1/2, on a good day.
It is an impressive replay dunk. Griffin is exuding that sense of purpose that every great dunk has (seriously, there just seems to be a singular sense of "this is going into the fucking net and nothing is going to stop me" surrounding every solid dunk shown on replay).
But I was curious....
It's one thing when Jay Onrait (a.k.a. Bell Media's attempt to create a Canadian Joel McHale; an attempt at which they succeeded but unfortunately have no idea how to capitalize on) calls a dunk kick-ass awesome, but another thing when my nardcore (wolfman was nardcore) NBA friends like it.
So I asked 4 separate NBA superfan friends of mine to name the 5 best dunks of all time.
And what came back surprised me.
None of the dunks belonged to V.C., to Vinsanity, to Air Canada...
People believe Alex Anthopoulos is making a lot of phone calls on behalf of the Toronto Blue Jays. Unfortunately the way things have been going for the Jays he'd have better luck calling radio talk shows in search of a wife for Tom Hanks.
Last year I set about trying to drum up interest in a tent-pole blockbuster about your 2011 Toronto Blue Jays.
At the time I pegged Terrence Malick to direct, thinking he’d be willing to change pace from his usual visually-stunning-but-boring-as-hell style to take on the Blue Jays tale. Early reports of Tree of Life being a massive turd made me think he’d want a change of pace.
Well apparently my sources were wrong, as Tree of Life is being ranked amongst the best movies of the year. I refuse to see it out of the fact I know it’s going to a narcoleptic’s wet dream (anyone familiar with Malick’s work who disagrees with me is a liar).
But that got me thinking: what if the Blue Jays story isn’t a sprawling epic?
Ram Man's real name is Rammy Manirez. Seriously. I'm not making this shit up. Topps don't lie.
If you're like me, you woke up on Tuesday December 20th with a raging hangover. One of those "leave work early and tell everyone it's because you think you're getting bronchitis" type hangovers.
Why was I were you hungover, you ask?
Simple. You stayed up 'til midnight boozing, only to hear your 2012 Toronto Blue Jays failed to win the Yu Darvish sweepstakes, and are now down one marquee player.
Ok, they're not DOWN per se (they didn't lose Bautista) but thanks to our reliable traditional media friends (found here, here and here) we all expected the Jays to land the best pitcher the world has ever seen, so it kinda feels like we're down.
So who/what do the Jays do now? Well a lot of people are talking a lot of Manny Ramirez. And maybe that's the logical next step. His performance enhancing drug suspension has come to an end, and he has stated his intention to return to the game. The very same game that helped pay for his legal fees after this incident.
Wait... I apologize, that was in bad form.
But come on, who am I kidding, Toronto loves their athletes most when they have a history of domesticviolence.
So the big question now: "Should the Jays sign Man Ram?"
As Blue Jays fans deal with the disappointment of losing the Yu Darvish sweepstakes, eyes now turn to GM Alex Anthopoulos in anticipation of his next move.
Anthopoulos has always been upfront regarding his team's willingness (or lack thereof) to spend money. As he explained at the winter meetings, the Jays are sitting on their wallets until attendance justifies a big spend. Apparantley at that point the floodgates will open, and the Darvishes, Fielders, and Pujolses of the world will come spilling onto the Jays 25 man roster.
In it's short history, the Toronto Football Club (or TFC) has been accused of not spending the money needed to attract quality talent while wasting it's fans time by wallowing at the bottom of it's division year after year.
And while said fans complain about the state of their beloved team, the city of Toronto, and the rest of the world complain about TFC fans.
TFC fans have quickly earned the reputation of bringing British-style hooliganism to the colonies. It seems like every Torontonian in the vicinity of BMO field has heard stories of various bars banning soccer fans on game day and/or refusing service to anyone wearing a TFC uniform because of their rowdy reputation.
Since the team's inception, people have been complaining about TFC fans' disgraceful behaviour at home, embarassing exploits abroad, and just plain ugliness wherever this guy saw them.
I've made a habit of staying away from TFC games: partly because I enjoy my football played by actual professionals who take pride in their game and public image, and partly because this is the first year TFC tickets haven't been exhorbinant;y expensive for absolutely no reason (I dunno... maybe TFC fans wouldn't be such angry drunks if they had a good team to support?).
So when I was handed tickets to the September 17th match against the Colorado Rapids, I decided to take this opportunity to investigate the question everyone is asking:
Do TFC fans really get as drunk as everyone thinks they do?
Shortly after kick off, and the crowd is boisterous but no more so than any other local sporting event. So far I notice nothing out of the ordinary.
So apparently Sidney Crosby will be speaking to the media on Wednesday, addressing the state of his recovery and comeback from a concussion.
The last time Crosby played for the Penguins was January 2011. He was forced to take the last half of the season off after multiple blows to the head in back to back games.
His press confernce comes after a summer filled with the self-inflicted deaths of multiple NHL enforcers (speculated by many to be due to depression caused by head injuries), the announcement that all star Marc Savard will miss yet another season because of post-concussion syndrome, and growing awareness of the severity of these types of injuries in all professional sports.
A lot has changed since May 16th, the date of the last casting report.
On May 16th, the Jays were 1 game over .500. As of August 15th they're 2 games over.
And so today, in celebration of this enormous improvement, we will look at who will be playing some of the younger members of your Toronto Blue Jays, because as Whitney said, I believe the children are our future. And Whitney starred with Kevin Costner in the Bodyguard. And Costner built the god-damn field of dreams. So on that note...
At first I didn't want to believe it. Not MY Toronto Blue Jays.
My boys would never cheat. They would never steal signs.
And when Alex Anthopoulos responded to this ESPN article (which claims that when playing at home the Jays are helped by a mysterious man in white, perched in the outfield, somehow transmitting pitch types to Blue Jays batters) I felt proud. He stood up for my boys. He told the world ESPN was wrong.
Young Roberto Alomar plays hit the hoop with the stick with the boys
In January 2011 it was announced that Roberto Alomar was to be inducted to the baseball hall of fame. This didn’t come as a real surprise, as Alomar is the second best second baseman to ever play the game, and the best hit the hoop with the stick player, ever.*
What is special about Roberto Alomar entering the baseball hall of fame is that he’ll be doing so wearing the Blue Jays uniform. This makes him the first player wearing the ole blue & white in Cooperstown.
There are tons of other athletes of various sports that played for Toronto, that for one reason or another chose not to wear their Toronto uniform into whatever hall of fame they were inducted into. And there’s a crop of future hall of famers that have either just retired or will be retiring from their respective sports in the next few years. So that got me thinking… what uniform will these Toronto superstars wear into their respective halls of fame?
