As much as it would have been neat for this entire series to have consisted of smaller, lesser-known parts of the 2015 Blue Jays (Maybs a cool idea? Let's bank it.), the reality is that the team's stars are also a huge part of why the team is so much fun to watch. That statement is more true now, with the team coming off of a 3-game sweep of the Yankees to move within 1.5 games of them for the AL East lead IN NEW YORK, than any point in this season. When I posted the first edition of this series on July 6th, I said that it would a good time for casuals to get on the bandwagon.
I love being right.
Unfortunately, the first subject of this series, Danny Valencia was designated for assignment by the team, ultimately ending up with the Oakland Athletics. I was both surprised and sad to see him go, as he was more or less my "guy" on the team, but him leaving also doesn't take away the things he added to the team this season or the forever-positive memories that I will associate with him. And hey, I was almost certain that he was going to get picked up by the Yankees, so having him play for Oakland, my AL West side-b's, ain't so bad.
He's been replaced by Mr. 80-grade smile, in-a-constant-state-of-bewilderment-at-the-offense-he-is-a-part-of, Ben Revere.
As implied in that last run on hyphen thing, the 2015 Blue Jays offense is fucking out of control. So many hits. So many runs. SO MANY HOME RUNS. When it rains it pours and also it is raining all the time.
Since #2, the Blue Jays traded Jose Reyes for Josh-Donaldson-except-he's-a-shortstop, Troy Tulowitzki. Also they traded for David Price, who is fucking elite. Also, now the bullpen is also good? How did this all happen in the span of a week? How did the team address every need they had?
It's a crazy time to be Jays fan right now. Regular season home games that are selling out and it's not even because of giveaways. The starting rotation has been lights out. Troy Tulowitzki and David Price play for the team and that is so weird to say and type that I still barely believe it typing out this sentence.
But some things haven't changed at all this year and one of those is the level that Josh Donaldson has been producing all year.
The Jays got Donaldson from Oakland in what is looking more and more like the biggest steal in recent memory. The Jays gave up 4 players for Dosh, but I still think "Billy, how did you give us this player?" every time I watch him play. Even if those prospects work out well, it still doesn't make sense to me. Josh is the real deal. He is the best third baseman in the whole world and it's not even close. Never mind that, he is in close contention to be the best player in the world. There's a real possibility that he could overtake Mike Trout in Wins Above Replacement (WAR, my fav stat) by the end of the season. Mike Trout! In WAR! WAR is Mike Trout's thing! He's the high WAR guy!
WAR is a good place to start with Josh. The stat is more or less the closest thing to an objective calculation of a player's total value. It's like the player ratings they assign to guys in video games, except based on real math. They take every number they can about a guy's offense, defense and baserunning and throw it in a blender and out comes an evaluation of a player's total contribution to his team.
Josh Donaldson's current WAR is 6.2. That is not just good and not just very good, but is truly elite. Only two players in baseball, Bryce Harper and Mike Trout, have a higher WAR than Josh and they are not leading him by much.
What I'm trying to say is that Josh is very good at the following things:
Hitting baseballs for average (getting lots of hits)
Hitting baseballs for power (hitting them far so that the team scores)
Taking walks (makes it easy for his teammates to hit him home!)
Catching baseballs (he gets to a lot of them)
Innings in which Josh doesn't contribute anything positive to the team are getting more and more scarce. It is fucking crazy to watch.
My dad and I talk about baseball a whole lot. It's one of the main things we talk about. The way that Josh has been playing this year reminds me of something my dad told me once. He said that in the 80's one of the most exciting things to watch in baseball was to watch Don Mattingly play for the New York Yankees. Even though the Yankees were uncharacteristically mediocre in that decade, Mattingly maintained a constant level of intensity and production that made him stand out from everyone in the league. In my dad's words: "You could tell, every play he was putting out this demeanor 'Hit it to me.'" He didn't just want to win, but he wanted to be the guy that made them win. I get that vibe from Josh. Recently, the Jays had come back from two 3-run deficits in a game against the Kansas City Royals (side note, fuck the Royals) and were tied with them in the 10th inning. Josh stepped in with Tulo on 1st and as soon as he looked out at Franklin Morales, I legitemately, not just for the sake of the narrative of this blog post, thought to myself "Josh is winning this game, right now." He hit a walk-off single.
Consider the following comparison:
It's not just that it's a walk-off home run, but that in each case the team is down by two runs, and they are still able to win the game for their teams.
Also, that was THE SECOND walk-off home run by Josh this year.
I could prate about Josh forever, but instead I'll just offer the following:
And, most importantly:
He even looks directly into the camera before doing it!
He is such a joy to watch. For every superstar that Jays have on the team this, and there are many, Josh's star shines the brightest. He is a supergiant that will not leave it's supernova phase (yeah, I took first year astronomy) and is by all abounts, the driving force of the Blue Jays spectacular offense. As much as I like to focus on the little things in baseball and make the role players or lesser-knowns my favourite, Josh is just the best.
He is hyper-competitive and backs up everything he says. The Blue Jays would be good, but not great without him. He elevates them to another level in pretty much everything he does.
Your starting centerfielder, Kevin Goddamn Pillar.
Again, I'm choosing to go with one of the players who doesn't exactly play a prominent role on the team. Yes, he is in the starting lineup pretty much every day and is often a topic of conversation during broadcasts, but he is not one of the "main guys" of the team in terms of media and marketing presence the way a Josh Donaldson or Jose Bautista is. To say that he doesn't contribute to the team's success the way that they do though, is completely incorrect.
The Jays just "officially" finished the first half with a tough 11-10 loss to Kansas City. They're a mediocre 45-46, but what matters is that they are only 4.5 games back of the American League East-leading New York Yankees and 4 back of the Wild Card positions held by Minnesota and Houston. If you think they're sunk for the season right now, get the fuck off of the boat. There's no time for the stupid whining bandwagonism that plagues Toronto sports. If you're too embarrassed or disgusted to call yourself a Jays fan now, you aren't allowed to be a fan when the banner goes up in October.
Diatribes aside, it has been a very up-and-down first half and Kevin Pillar has been instrumental in the "up" parts. He was drafted by the Blue Jays in 2011 amateur draft with the 18th pick in the 32nd round. That means that 978 players were picked before him. 978! He was passed over 978 times. He was passed over 31 times by the Jays alone! This is a large part of what makes Pillar so easily likable; he's a gigantic underdog. Given the sheer number of players who go through the draft every year, the expectation of even a player picked in the first round working out and providing value to a team are pretty minimal. Kevin Pillar continues to defy expectations and do more in baseball than anybody thought he would. He hit the shit out of the ball in every level of minor league baseball, rising quickly and forcing the team to take notice.
Initially Pillar struggled, plagued by his inability to take walks. He didn't provide much offense during stints with the Jays in 2013 and '14 and had generally been written off by Jays fans as a fourth outfielder and organizational depth piece (re: someone who would be used in a pinch, but more or less rode the bench otherwise). I'll admit that I was one of this camp. He looked like shit at the plate and also had blowup in the dugout after being replaced in a game that got him some pretty negative media attention. Pillar, Anthony Gose and Dalton Pompey all profiled as similar speed/glove-first outfielders and none of them performed especially well. Out of the three, Pillar was considered the least effective and as a result, spent most of those two seasons in the minor leagues.
Even this season, during Spring Training when the team was assembling roster in Florida, Pillar was generally seen as just the guy behind Bautista, Dalton Pompey and maple-boner candidate Michael Saunders on the team's outfield depth chart. Then Saunders blew up his knee by tripping over a sprinkler (actually) and Pillar was suddenly the Blue Jays opening day leftfielder. Jays fans initially cried bloody murder, but there wasn't much we could do about it. Sometimes your favourite team has a problem in their lineup that you just have to sit back and tolerate and this seemed like one of those times.
However, one of my favourite baseball writers, Drew Fairservice, wrote an interesting piece on the idea of Kevin Pillar being a starter and it made me reconsider my stance on it. With Michael Saunders being injured, there was nothing the Jays could do. Kevin Pillar was going to play and there was nothing we could do about it. We might as well get used to it, right?
Pillar started to perform pretty well in Spring Training. He also strained his oblique by sneezing too hard, which caused him to miss 10 games. The picture at the top of this post is how he came into camp the next day. This was the start of "Maybe Pillar isn't so bad after all." thoughts in my head.
Something that I've always been prone to doing is picking a lesser-known guy from the bottom of the roster and making him "my guy". I've talked about this in regards to Colby Rasmus to death. Before him it was Marco Scutaro, Reed Johnson, Orlando Hudson, etc. It's not like I don't appreciate and love Jose Bautista, but he's "the guy" on the team and is everyone's favourite (at least until Josh Donaldson came into the fold this year), so does he really need me too? I guess it's part of me being a shitty hipster and having to like things that not everyone else likes, but I've been doing this as long as I've been a fan. It's fun to root for underdogs.
This year when I was on my way to Montreal with my friend Mark to see the Jays play an exhibition game, I turned to him and said "I think Pillar might be my guy this year."
Given the starting job in left to start the season, Pillar immediately made waves by making absolutely stunning plays in the outfield. They started to occur with such frequency that the entire league began to take notice.
For example:
And, the pièce de resistance, in my opinion the hardest and finest catch made this season:
That is my most-watched highlight of this season by a landslide. It is such a phenomenal play. For reference, the walls at the Skydome are 10 feet high, which is much higher than most stadiums and makes "home run robbing" catches extremely rare in Toronto. Notice how he has to jump onto then off of the wall in order to get up to it, all while timing it perfectly. Utterly amazing.
Also, all four of those catches are within the first month of the season and he hasn't stopped since then. It is amazing to behold.
Dalton Pompey began the season in a slump and was demoted to first AAA then AA, which meant that Pillar took over his starting centerfield job. He's run with it since then and has established himself as a reliable and competent outfield not just as defender but also as an offensive player, leading the Jays in hits in June and also being the team leader in stolen bases.
If you are hip to Sabermetrics, Pillar currently has a 2.4 WAR (Wins Above Replacement), which is sort of an overall value of a player, factoring in offense, defense and baserunning. If you had told me that Pillar would give the Jays even a 1.0 WAR for the entire season, I would have done something like this:
On this pace, Pillar might be able to put up one of the best seasons EVER for a Blue Jays outfielder.
Pillar represents what is truly joyous about being a sports fan and specifically a baseball fan. He is not the supreme natural talent that Mike Trout is. He doesn't have the bulletproof batting approach of Jose Bautista. He doesn't have the freak strength of Edwin Encarnacion that allows him to pull ball into the second deck. WARNING, THIS WILL SOUND CLICHÉ. Instead, Pillar works hard and makes the most of every opportunity. If you are a sports fan, hell if you are a human being, and you can't identify with someone who was passed over 978 times and and still managed to fight his way into his dream occupation and not just make it there, but succeed, despite all odds, I'm sorry but you are helpless. Being able to see somebody like Kevin Pillar find success at the Major League level is the reason I watch baseball. It is the belief that even when it seems like you have no chance and nobody wants to give you a shot, if you keep believing and work hard, you can make it happen. This type of situation is what allows for a fan to create a truly special and emotional tie to a player. That is why you watch and care about and follow your favourite sports team. That is what keeps you coming back every season. I care about Kevin Pillar's career and I mean that in the most gushy and emotional sense possible.
In many ways, Kevin Pillar is the 2015 Toronto Blue Jays. The team's path and season pretty much mirror Pillar's own.
In 2002, Disney made a movie about Jim Morris, a guy who was forced out of the minor leagues due to injuries in the 80's before trying out for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays as a 35 year-old. He sucked though. Give me a movie about Kevin fucking Pillar.
Since "The Trade" in 2012, the Toronto Blue Jays have been on an upswing in terms of team performance and popularity. Sure, the team didn't make it to the World Series, as Las Vegas' official betting line predicted them to, but the Jose Reyes/Jose Bautista/Edwin Encarnacion/R.A. Dickey/Mark Buehrle anchored lineup sure looked a lot different than the one from the year before that gave 20 starts to fuckin' Jo-Jo Reyes. Did they immediately turn into the AL East juggernaut everyone thought they would? No. Did that mark a transition in terms of the team's roster, philosophy and image? Undoubtedly.
You could argue that the foundations of this were laid much earlier in 2009 when then-new General Manager Alex Anthopoulos began the team's rebuilding phase by trading Roy Halladay for prospects, but I'm not here to give you a history of Blue Jays player transactions, I'm here to talk about the team right now.
So, the Blue Jays are getting more popular. People are wearing Jays caps way more. There's more people at the games. The atmosphere, while still maddening, is inching towards "baseball atmosphere". Being a Blue Jays is fun. In fact, I find it one of the most fun things about my day-to-day life. Not just fretting over a player's performance and wins or losses and the team's place in the standings, but loving the team. Loving the interactions between players. The more you watch, the more you get exposed to the team as a collection of individuals and you start to experience this weird ethereal attraction to the players, some more than others, but everyone in some way.
This is when being a fan truly starts to give back to you. For all of the time, effort and money you put into being a fan of a team, this is what you get back. Sports fans know what I'm talking about. If this sounds weird to you and seems like a shitty deal for the fans, then you just don't get it. The only way I can convince you is by having you sit down and watch a month of baseball with me and that ain't gonna happen, is it?
The Jays might have a chance to contend this year. They're right on the brink of contention right now, so if you're planning on being a bandwagon fa when they surge to win the division and he comes back to pitch, now would be a good time to get in.
I thought it would be fun for me to try to explain why I like the players on the team and why should like them too. To do this all in one post would be impossible, so this will come in small increments.
Valencia was picked up on waivers from Kansas City last year as a depth move that didn't really shock or awe most Jays fans when it happened. He's a reserve infielder, which for the unwashed means that he only plays when one of the regular players needs a day off. The club kept him around this past winter as a depth piece and most Jays fans' reactions were "Mmm, yeah. Probably the right move." Nothing too revolutionary.
Now for some background, this past off-season a lot was made of the Toronto Blue Jays "team chemistry" with the manager and some players saying that the team was lacking this always incalculable and intangible quality. This was one of the elements that management wanted to change most this off-season. Teams play better as a team (derrrr), but making that happen is always a lot harder than it sounds. Bringing in Russell Martin and sending away Adam Lind and Brett Lawrie was apparently going to help all of this
Fast-forward to this season and it appears that this experiment worked. The team is play okay, 2 games above .500 and two back of the Wild Card (if you do not know what this means, they are "pretty close!"), but they definitely pass the eye-test on the field in terms of playing well as a team and enjoying being on the team and it seems that Danny Valencia is instrumental in all of this.
On every World Series-winning team, there seems to always be one bench player who boosts everyone's morale, is everyone's favourite guy and fills in in big spots when he has to. During the Blue Jays' early 90's heyday there was a group called "The Trenches" who filled this role. I would argue that Danny fills this role for the current Blue Jays team.
Example 1: God damn I love it!
First Jose Bautista got a pitch thrown behind him. That's an insult. Then he hit a pitch over the fence. That's awesome. Want to know what Danny Valencia thought about it?
He seems to be the first guy out of the dugout whenever anything awesome happens and is always the main guy doing something on the bench when ever anything happens.
Earlier this year the Jays adopted the "stirring" celebration that James Harden had been using this season. Whenever a player would get a timely hit or start a rally, he would stir at his teammates on the bench to get them pumped, show them that he's pumped, get the crowd pumped, etc. Guess who the guy to start it was?
Him trying to get Mark Buehrle to do it after the pitcher picked up a rare hit? Fucking amazing:
Who even cares what they're doing?
In terms of hard, tangible evidence of what he adds to the team, he can play at three positions, 3B, 1B and corner OF, and mashes left-handed pitching like few other players in the league. A .357 batting average! Or, if you're of the SABR nerd variety, a 152 wRC+, which is "I spend too much time analyzing baseball statistics" for "really good!".
And hey, he has an adorable french bulldog pupy that he constantly instagrams to boot!
Ever since Colby Rasmus left the team this past year, I've wondered who is going to be my new "guy", by which I mean a favourite player who isn't everybody else's favourite.
It's late January. There are many reasons why this is my least favourite time of year. It's cold. Snow is everywhere and that snow is wet. Being cold and wet at the same time is not so fun, in my opinion. You know what you can'd do while it's cold and wet and snowy outside? Skateboard. I go crazy when I can't skateboard. I would like to hang out outside in the sun with my girlfriend, but that is impossible. Why are you ruining my dates winter?! It also happens to be dead in the middle of a busy semester. While I don't want to complain about going to university, because I'm extremely privileged to be able to do so, it is stressful.
But there's one thing that sucks the most. One thing I hate about winter that towers above all other hates, and that is that winter is the baseball off-season. I fucking love baseball. I love the way that the game moves. I love the way it sounds. It makes me feel comfortable and excited. I love going to games. If ownership would hurry the fuck up, I would say that I love the grass smells.
I am denied all of this during the winter months and it drives me wild.
But Spring Training is just around the corner, so there's hope in the form of anxiously waiting for pitchers to be warming up in shorts on a sunny, small baseball diamond. That's not for another 24 days, so I thought I would create a list of my favourite moments from the 2014 Toronto Blue Jays, which was the most exciting in years.
Blue Jays Come Back from a 8-0 deficit to win in Cincinnati
This was easily one of my favourite Blue Jays games and is already one of my favourite memories as a fan. Buffalo Bisons call up Liam Hendricks gave up 8 runs in the 2nd inning and things looked especially dire early. I try to never write games off and stop cheering for the team, because you never know what will happen, but let's face it, giving up 8 runs in an inning, let alone the second is embarrassing. However, Edwin hit a three run shot to answer in the top of the third, giving me hope. The teams both traded runs, before shit got real in the 7th. I was sitting on the edge of my couch in anticipation for most of the game and when Juan Fransisco went deep, to the opposite field no less (!), I knew it was ours. Dioner tied the game with a double and shouted a loud "Fuck yeah!" back the dugout from second base, at which point I was running around the upper floor of my house jumping up and down. With the game now being 9-9, the largest remaining obstacle was Aroldis Chapman looming in the bullpen. Of all people, Steve Tolleson got to him for the go-ahead double, swinging the game in the Jays' favour for good. To rub salt into the deflated Reds sizable wounds, Edwin Encarnacion hit ANOTHER home run (that will be a trend here) in the top of the ninth and then watched it and gave a wonderful batflip to cap off the game. The Jays were red-hot at this time, which tends to attract a lot of bandwagoners during the summer in Toronto. Many of those bandwagoners counted the Jays out early in this game, citing it as a sign that club would soon collapse (hey, that collapse took another two months!), so this game came to stand as a reason for always standing by your team, whether the standings or score tell you to or not.
Edwin Encarnacion's Walk-Off Dinger on Canada Day
In baseball, there is no play that is more exciting than the walk-off home run. From a fan perspective, you go directly from "We are not currently winning this game." to "We just won the game!" and that's pretty much the best thing that can happen, right? The Milwaukee Brewers represented an interested point in the 2014 Blue Jays season. Through the beginning of July, the Jays were one of the best teams in the American League and had been leading the East since May 22nd. For the Blue Jays, that is a huge, huge deal. Milwaukee was one of the better teams in the National League at the time and were leading the National League Central by 6.5 games, which meant they represented a test in terms of the Jays' "legitness" as a contender. Though the Jays started strong with a home run from a returning Jose Bautista, they found themselves down 4-1 after some fielding gaffs. Juan Fransisco, before all of his stats fell off a cliff part way through the season, hit a bomb to it a 4-4 near the end of the game. John Gibbons got ejected arguing a call, which led to this ending (keep an eye on the Blue Jays' mascot Ace):
Colby Game-Tying Home Run in Baltimore
I would like to state now that Colby Rasmus was my favourite Jay during his tenure here, so this list will be biased towards him. Don't like it? 2 bad. Games against Baltimore were important this season, because at the start of the season they were the second-biggest threat in the division behind Boston (hahahahahahahahahaha). The Jays looked like shit this whole game and were down to their last strike on this play. The Baltimore fans were riding Colby hard this game and he answered by putting one into the seats to tie the game with the team's last shot. Not visible is Colby's excellent point to the Baltimore stands as he rounds first base. This is why I like baseball. There is no running down the clock. There is no ragging the puck. There isn't hack-a-Shaq defense. You have to throw the guys a pitch until there are no more outs left and sometimes that leads to moments like this. Also, I called this shot the second before it happened.
Jose Bautista Takes Batflips to an even more badass level
The thing about that last clip is that the Jays eventually lost that game in extras. For every unbelievable high, like the comeback or Edwin's walkoff, there was a low, like losing three of four to the Astros in the midst of an epic collapse in August. By September the Jays were still mathematically in the playoff hunt and things seemed hopeful after a dismantling of the Cubs at home, but deep down most kind of knew it was over. You could see that a lot of the team was feeling deflated. Lind was hurt. Edwin was hurt. Colby was benched. You know who wasn't deflated? Jose Fuckin' Bautista. Right before this home run, Bautista got a pitch that he liked, but fouled it back. He stepped out of the batter's box and cursed himself out for missing because he is a beast and is tenacious and is a serious fuckin' ballplayer. They decided to give him the same pitch and he clobbered it to tie the game. SO DEEP. Right the fuck out to left-center. He watched the hell out of it and then slammed his bat to the ground right before getting to first base. At a time when most fans were down and out and were accepting another third place finish, Jose, taking a page from Timothy Findley, said "Not yet."
Marcus Stroman Complete Game Shutout
I'll admit that coming into the 2014 season, my expectations for the Blue Jays were set pretty low. They were coming off a completely disastrous season in which more or less everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. Because of "the season of which we will not speak" (2013), there were really few things I was actively looking forward to: Edwin, because he is the best, hopefully a full season of Bautista, a new catcher and a kid the Jays had drafted in 2012, Marcus Stroman. He was rated highly right out of the draft and noted scout Keith Law called him the most MLB-ready player drafted. After a rough start out of the bullpen, he took off and became one of the brightest spots in an already pretty bright season. I mean, yeah. He pitched like a veteran, had a totally magnetic personality and is only 5'9"! The last decade of Blue Jays baseball had conditioned me to expect a drop-off in performance (Brett Lawrie, J.P. Arencibia, Travis Snider, Ricky Romero, Gustavo Chacin, etc., etc.), but his just never came! This amazing rookie season culminated in a complete game shutout of the Chicago Cubs on September 8th. 9 innings pitched! 8 Ks! 3 hits! Only 93 pitches! Plus Ryan Goins made one of the plays of the year to end the game!
Colby Rasmus Game-Winning Home Run at Tampa
Like I said, there's gonna be some Colby on this list. After an amazing 2013 season in which he put together one of the best ever seasons from a Blue Jays outfielder, Colby really struggled this year. Before the season started fans wondered about even being able to afford a contract for him once he hit free agency this off-season, but now they were wondering if it was worth it to bring him back at all. He was hurt during the team's amazing May and performed pretty awfully afterwards. It was tough seeing my favourite player struggle that much and what made it worse was that the fans seemed to like him and genuinely wanted him to succeed. It was such an odd combination of psychological issues and performance issues that seem to return and hurt him as soon as he begins to succeed. Once September arrived, he lost his starting job and was benched, which was a pretty huge slap in the face for someone with as much league experience as Colby. The first game he was benched, he was brought in as a pinch-hitter with the game tied 0-0 in Tampa Bay. You know what Colby thinks of your benching Gibby? This. Note how the manager does not get up to congratulate him while the rest of the team does:
Colby forever.
Edwin Encarnacion's May For The Ages
After two astonishing seasons for the Jays, Edwin Encarnacion got off to a pretty slow start this year. A lot of people wondered what was wrong, but it important to remember that the baseball season is long and good stats are a result of ups and downs. Following a slumping April, did Edwin ever have some ups. He powered the Jays to one of their best months ever. Oh, and dingers are fun to watch. Note how many of these are in the same game.
Walk-Off 19 Inning Win
As I previously mentioned, the Jays struggled mightily in August. First they lost hold of their lead in the AL East and then the gradually fell down the Wild Card standings. A pivotal point in the month was a three game set against the Detroit Tigers at the Dome. The Tigers have traditionally been one of the best teams in the AL, so just like the Brewers coming to town, this would be a big one. The Jays lost the first one in a heart-breaker (a game I was at) and the Jays took the next game. Beating teams like the Tigers is what good teams do and they had to prove they belonged. Neither felt like losing, so the fans that stayed got two for the price of one! Fittingly, Bautista won it all with a walk-off single, because that's what "leaders" do. Best way to celebrate a 19 inning win? A big ol' smooch on the cheek.
Buehrle Gets to 200 with a Gem
Mark Buehrle is a wonder. He's old, he doesn't throw hard and he puts a lot of balls in play. But every year he puts together a great season that helps whatever team he is on. In an age of high strikeout numbers and big fastballs, Buehrle, to me, is a call-back to a time in baseball when hitting your spots and pitching smart got you through a career. The biggest story Buehrle-wise for the season was his quest to become just the 7th pitcher since 1901 to throw 200 innings 14 seasons in a row. Dude is a workhorse. He started the season amazingly well, but ran into a bit of trouble in the middle. Buehrle went into his last start of the season with 194 innings pitched, so there was a very real chance he wouldn't get there, but instead went out and pitched 8 and gave up no runs. The guy has done nothing but impress me since he came to Toronto and has had a very real and noticeable impact on the team's morale and pitching staff. A great accomplishment for one of the game's true good guys.
Perfect Rasmus
This year MLB ran a show called Home Field Advantage in which players would speak about playing in whatever city they play in. Out of all the Jays, they chose Colby! The results were obviously hilarious, with Colby small town Alabamaness coming out strongly. Khakis! Shirt tucked in! Two-strapped backpack! Chicken dogs! Oh, the glorious chicken dog line. He's obviously completely out of his element living in a city the size of Toronto, but it comes off in the most adorable way. Just out little country mouse Colby trying to make his way in the hustle and bustle of the big city. The video was immediately a huge hit among Jays fans, so much so that it inspired a totally hilarious fan-made video in which they combined the opening credits from the 80's sitcom Perfect Strangers with the video to create Perfect Rasmus, which is already one of my favourite Jays things EVER.
And hey, there was also that time my friends got a dick and balls sign on national TV! During a Brett Lawrie home run no less! It was by far the most "viral" (as much as I hate that term) thing that I've ever been a part of and really does make me laugh every time I think about it.
I do not think it would be stretch for me to say that almost all of my friends think of me as the biggest Toronto Blue Jays fan that they know. The issue of my Jays fandom has been explored previously on this blog*, but it's been a little different this year and I haven't written about it in awhile.
This season has been different because it is the first season that I can remember when the Jays have been in contention. The Jays were at the top of the American League heap when I was born and I was only 5 during their historic 1994 collapse. I have very vague memories of them being great and in fact, the excitement of Joe Carter hitting his home run is one of my earliest memories (Did I just watch that entire video? You know I did. "Touch 'em all Joe! You'll never hit a bigger home run in your life!" is bar-none, the greatest game call ever.). Since then it has been a very long history of disappointing seasons. A winning campaign here and there, but never coming within sniffing distance of the playoffs.
However, this season was entirely different. The club posted the best record in all of baseball during the month of May, due in large part to Edwin Encarnacion's month for the ages. They sat atop the American League East for a large chunk of the season and though they've since relinquished that spot to the Baltimore Orioles, they've still been within striking distance of the second wild card playoff spot. So if you were to measure a season's success in terms of the playoffs, this is by far the most successful Blue Jays season since 1993 when they last won the World Series.
Even you were to measure it in other regards, it's still the most fun I've had being a fan that I can remember. Both Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion have had incredibly successful campaigns and have proved that they are arguably the best 3-4 power combination in the league when healthy. The starting rotation, previously the team's main weakness, has been surprisingly consistent and effective. Two of the club's marquee prospects, Marcus Stroman and Aaron Sanchez, were both called up mid-season and have been nothing short of spectacular and just the most fun to watch.
Look at that shit! He catches it a few inches off the ground!
Even just this past week the Blue Jays overcame a huge obstacle by sweeping the Tampa Bay Rays at home. They hadn't won a road series in Tampa Bay since 2007, which is especially saddening because both teams play in the same division and as a result play significantly more games against each other than other opponents. That losing streak was bad that I didn't even have to look up any of the specifics just now! They're burned into my brain!
Despite all of this, it can still be difficult to be a Blue Jays fan in Toronto^. Toronto is a hockey town, always has been and always will be and as a result, the Blue Jays have to play second fiddle to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Growing up in Toronto made it really difficult for me to be a Leafs fan, because most of the ones in the city are absolutely insufferable and the worst type of sports fan. They all turned me off caring about the team forever and I don't think I'll ever really be able to care about them.
All of that is inconsequential to the Blue Jays, but the Leafs do affect them in a variety of ways. \
A big one is that Toronto is major market but is forced to operate like a small one. It is the fourth biggest city in North America, making it the third largest market in Major League Baseball, behind New York and Los Angeles and just ahead of Chicago. Those other three cities all have two baseball teams. Their market can support 6 successful teams!* And yet Toronto still struggles to support one.
Earlier this year I was running school tours for CAFKA and a child started talking to me about baseball. I was excited, as the Jays were well in first place in their division and were easily the hottest team in baseball at the time. I asked if he had watched the game the night before and his response was "No, I stopped paying attention once they lost their winning streak." This was in reference to a 10 game winning streak the Jays went on during May. But there is 162 games in a baseball season! Do they have to go on a 130 game winning streak to end the season then? It's long! This kid has it hammered into his mind that he can only pay attention to the Jays when they are winning because of hockey and that kills me. It's not just that he isn't fan, because let's face it, baseball isn't for everyone, but it's that he, and tons of kids like him, are never going to be fans. And that's all because of the sports environment they're raised in.
Another aspect of the Jays having to compete with the Leafs is the way that fans behave at games. It's going to be hard to not sound pretentious and self-righteous here, but I really don't care. The majority of people who come to watch the Blue Jays at the 'Dome are fucking clowns. They're all hockey fans who pretend to care about the Jays because it's the summer and there's no other sports on. Nobody pays attention to what is going on on the field because they're used to the non-stop nature of hockey and they can't be bother to pay attention to something slower paced and more nuanced. Everyone gets way too drunk and does the wave and it creates an absolutely terrible atmosphere at the park. The rest of the league thinks that Toronto fans are a joke and it's really disheartening to go the park to watch something you care deeply about and have the experience be ruined by a bunch of fucking morons.
Protips:
DON'T DO THE WAVE. PAY ATTENTION TO THE PLAYERS PLAYING BASEBALL. THAT'S WHAT YOU CAME TO SEE.
DON'T RUN ONTO THE FIELD. YOU ARE DISRUPTING THE GAME WHICH YOU APPARENTLY CAME TO SEE. YOU ARE NOT FUNNY. RELEVANT.
DON'T BOO WHEN THE OTHER TEAM THROWS OVER TO FIRST BASE. THAT IS NOT BAD. WHO GAVE YOU THAT IDEA?
JUST WATCH THE GAME. CLAP AND CHEER FOR THE TEAM WHEN THEY DO THINGS THAT WILL HELP THEM WIN.
Y'know I've read books like The Summer Game by Roger Angell and the way he describes how intimate the atmosphere of the ballpark was and how tuned into the ebb and flow of the game the fans were before they were force-fed everything by a giant flashing TV. I feel like the old idea of going to take in a baseball game on an afternoon is really starting to die. Hell, it's been dead in Toronto for as long as I can remember.
Anyways, the season is now drawing to a close with a still slight chance at the playoffs. Even if they aren't in the hunt over the last two weeks, they will still be playing teams who are and will serve an important role in how the American League plays out.
*And hell, I barely post anymore so you could probably just go back a page or two and find one of those.
^Or Kitchener/Guelph in my case. But fuck that shit, I'll always be a Toronto boy.
*Well, the Cubs, White Sox and Mets suck, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!
It's been awhile since I've thrown up a post that is more or less just a compilation of random thoughts and since that was the calling card of this blog for the longest time, I figured it might be nice to throw another one up.
Like I said in my last post, I can prone to grazing through my Facebook timeline and reveling in nostalgia. An obvious result of doing this is noticing how much I've changed over the years. Yeah, I know that I'm more or less the same ska fanatic, Peter Pan Syndrome havin' mawfucka I've always been, but everyone changes. While doing this recently, which inspired my previous post, I noticed that I've grown as a person in the last year or so and have done so positively, in my opinion. It may seem narcissistic to say this, but it's comforting in my mind to know that I'm always improving myself, no matter how minute and inconsequential-in-the-long-run those changes may be. Feelsgoodman.
Currently, I am starting to get right into the heavy part of my first semester of grad school (re: the second two thirds of it). It's getting real busy, but the good kind of busy. My brain is functioning critically really well again. I seem to have a lot to say about all the things that we're studying and I really like that. The other huge part of being in a Master's program in TAing for classes, which is new and really exciting for me. While working at KW|AG this summer, I had a lot of fun teaching kids and getting to joke around with them but also instructing them in the basics of looking at, appreciating and making art, but teaching young adults in university is whole other can of worms. I think I'm doing pretty well so far and have managed to get through to a fair amount of the kids. If anything, I take immense pride in noticing that now the kids crack a smile when the see a Duchamp piece because the understand it now. I also love seeing the horrified expressions when my classes see a Chris Burden piece for the first time. Trust me kids, it only gets weirder from here on out.
On that note, what would the kids think if they knew that I spend most of my time in my office bobbing my head and doing the cooking dance to RiFF RaFF?
People love to make fun of RaFF because of how obviously silly he is, but seriously look how different he is from everyone in the game right now. Rap game Julio Franco.
Baseball's regular season is almost over. This makes me sad. This Jays season was a giant fucking disaster. Everyone had high hopes for us after "The Trade", and the Jays just completely dropped the ball this year. Being a fan who has suffered through 20 straight playoff-less seasons, I was extremely to see how the team would do after this obvious and dramatic upgrade, but all it did was make the letdown worse. Get out and get gone Josh Johnson. It's even worse now as we're finishing the season without any of best players in the lineup and are more or less fielding our AAA team. However, silver linings can be found in the excellent campaigns that Colby Rasmus (my favourite Jay), Edwin Encarnacion, the Joses and Mark Buehrle had. Also, Munenori Kawasaki established himself as the most endearing and fun player in MLB, so there's that too.
Something that my parents instilled in me at a very young age was the importance of reading. Whereas many of my friends in elementary school (let's get real, they're still my friends now) would be getting new Super Nintendo (and then Sega) (and then Nintendo 64) games and bangin' new toys for Christmas and birthdays, I would get a whole lot of books. Though I wasn't the happiest camper when all my friends were jumping on kremlins while I was staring down a stack of literature, I realize now that it was a very good thing. Reading and enjoying a book is immeasurable in the benefits it gives to a person's language and speaking skills and also really develops one's imagination, as their mind creates images to go along with the story it's taking in. Since I got in the habit of reading for pleasure at a young age, it's something that I've continued to pursue since and something that I've noticed people I know do less and less. First TV and now, especially in my generation, video games have more or less taken up all the time that would have originally been occupied by books. Though you'll never catch me bad-mouthing either of those things since I thoroughly enjoy them both, it does really suck that instead of teenage boys getting stoked about all the angst and swearing in Catcher In The Rye, they're getting stoked brain-melting violence. (Again, for the record I would like to state that I really enjoy brain-melting violence.)
Another thing that my parents lovingly forced onto me at a young age (that I briefly touched upon in an earlier blog) was a deep love of baseball. With both my parents being die-hard Toronto Blue Jays fans, I was going to games before I knew how to talk, let alone walk. You know how it's a somewhat common practice for parents to keep a newspaper headline from the day their child was born? My parents cut out and kept the boxscore from the paper that day (A 4-3 walk-off win over the Mariners ending in dramatic fashion with George Bell scoring on a wild pitch after Fred McGriff tied the game with a ground-rule double.). While most of my friends growing were playing hockey and gushing over Mats Sundin, I was going to way more Blue Jays games than they were Leaf's games and worshipping the life-sized cardboard cut-out of Joe Carter on my wall. Eventually I started playing softball and then baseball and began to understand the ebb and flow of a 9 inning game and all the little elements that make it so great. Through my adolescence and now into adulthood I've started to realize the love/hate relationship and stress that comes with loving and supporting a team that is perpetually on the outside looking in when it comes to October. You start to realize after a while that baseball is a constant in your life. Unlike other sports, during the season baseball is there pretty much every day and it's something you get used to; the game starts at 7 (usually) and it's the way you end more or less every day from April 1st until September 30th. After a period of time you develop a kind of fatherly relationship (or about as fatherly as a relationship between a teenaged boy and 25 grown men can be) (welp, that came out wrong) and you invest a whole of emotional energy into wanting to see them succeed on the field.
So, what exactly do these two long-winded, seemingly unrelated paragraphs have in common? Well, I just finished reading Season Ticket by Roger Angell and before that read The Summer Game by the same author and both were amazing reads. Angell is a columnist for the New Yorker and regularly contributes baseball and non-baseball work, but his stuff about the diamond is by far the best. It's completely obvious in his writing that while he's a through and through New York Mets and Boston Red Sox fan, he's a fan of the game first and foremost and a good deal of each book consists of him taking pleasure in seeing the game in all its different forms in different cities. Pretty much every page has at least one great anecdote about baseball, be it from Angell or the ridiculously large amount of players he interviews over the course of each volume. Some personal favourites were Earl Weaver (One of the all-time great managers and characters, managed the great Baltimore Oriole teams from the late 60's and 1970's) sitting in his underwear, drinking a beer and explaining why exactly he likes baseball so much; (a reporter asks him if he thought the Orioles were going to hang on to their lead and win the World Series) "No, that's what you can never do in baseball. You can't sit on a lead, run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the goddamn plate and give the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all." Another was Ted Williams (The best Red Sox hitter of all time? Yes. Without a doubt.) describing the process he would go through in his mind when deciding where to swing on a fastball. It is truly a moment when you have to sit back and think "Well, that is why you are the last man to hit .400 and I only played houseleague."
But by far my favourite part of the two books was Angell describing seeing the expansion New York Mets for the first time in 1962 (the worst baseball team of all time), through to seeing them win the Series for the first time in '69 and then edging out the Sox in '86. Since the Blue Jays were an expansion team, joining the Majors in '77), they suffered though the usual fate for new teams in sports: many years of mediocrity. I've been to Blue Jays playoff games and got to witness them win two World Series, but unfortunately that happened when I was 3 and 4 years old, so I don't remember that happening (save for this of course, I'll never forget that.), so basically I've watched the Jays struggle to stay afloat (often fail at doing so) for 19 seasons. After a while you get used to the losing and learn to love the team despite their lack of success. Angell gives these long descriptions of going to Mets games and having an absolute blast at the games with the rest of the Mets fans, despite them being absolutely awful on the field that I immediately drew parallels with. It's especially great with the Mets because they came out of nowhere to win the World Series in an upset in 1969.
Angell was there from the beginning and then got to watch his boys win it all and get the ultimate gratification in the end and this is something I can relate to now. So far in the off-season the Blue Jays have pulled off a major trade and signed a few key free agents to greatly improve our chances in the American League East and in some cases become the favourite to win the division. I know that our club's certain betterment on the field will inevitably bring in hordes of band-wagon jumpers who will be a little annoying, but it sure as hell won't make the giant shit-eating grin that will be covering my face while I watch this new and improved version of the Blue Birds on the field any less enjoyable.
Even if you don't have any interest in baseball, reading either of these Roger Angell books (or any of his others, I'm sure) will make you look at the months of November through February with great disdain and make the news of pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training seem like the second coming of Christ. The guy is the Mark Twain of the old game and his absolute love of every thing that goes along with it is completely contagious.
CAN YOU GUESS WHY THERE IS A PICTURE OF MONTGOMERY BURNS HOLDING A "MYSTERY BOX" AT THE TOP OF THIS POST? CAN YOU?
So this year I'm joining the Movember and how that works is that I grow a mustache and accept donations which are then used to help in prostate cancer research. Beat Noir made a team and you could donate to us right here! Since my Mom beat colorectal cancer about 6 years ago I've taken a lot of joy and pride in trying to aid in research to figure out how to help people with the disease. Once it affects someone close to you, the idea of losing somebody you love and having nothing you can do about it becomes very, very real. It's not fun. The team is currently in 17911th place and I would really appreciate it if the person reading this could help us make it further up that list. If you could forward that link or know any type of group that would be interested in donating I would appreciate the most. Thanks!
Recently my ipod ate shit and stopped working. I had to restore it (delete everything off of it) several times and also had to reinstall itunes. So now my itunes is completely reset and everything. This golden nugget of shinfo aside, what that lead to was me listening to a bunch of music that I haven't in a while because I had to go through my music library with a fine tooth. One of these artists that I somehow managed to avoid for a while was Lemuria and I have no idea how that happened because they rule so fucking hard.
Right?
You know what's awful? The Major League Baseball off-season. Baseball is something that my family's been involved with for as long as I've been alive. My mom was at a Jays game something like 3 days before I was born and I went to my first game at 3 weeks old. Since then the Toronto Blue Jays have been a constant in my every-day life. And hey, we haven't made the playoffs since 1993. Think about how many losing seasons I've had to endure. IT TAKES ITS TOLL MAN.
Anyway, the MLB season ended not that long ago with the San Francisco Giants winning the World Series and now I am faced with 5 1/2 very long, baseball-free months. I guess I'm luckier than all the football, basketball and hockey fans because our off-season is shorter, but does it suck. From April until the end of October, you get baseball every day. Unlike other sports, baseball plays almost every single day and checking the scores and the standing and seeing where Jose is in the home-run race becomes your routine and something you look forward to each morning. And now all there is to do is read wild trade rumours most of which aren't true and only serve to get your hopes a little about your perennial losers.
I still love 'em though.
Oh and if you didn't figure it out, the post started with that picture because it was sort of a "grab-bag" or "mystery box" of random shit compiled together. BET THAT WAS A LETDOWN.
