As the Blue Jays’ season swirls languidly in the plugged toilet that is the Dominican Republic’s international employment program otherwise known as Major League Baseball, I wanted to record my brief thoughts before the Blue Jays’ season is officially over.
Here is why the Blue Jays will quietly bow out of the MLB playoffs. They won their World Series when they clinched a playoff spot. Then they did a victory lap when they clinched the American League East Division. The problem is, they hadn’t done anything yet. Any team that gets that excited about winning nothing will indeed win nothing.
Breaking out the champagne and cigars just because you have a chance to play a few more games than most of the other teams in the league is always a bad sign. It psychologically dissipates the fire needed to plow through the hard part, which is playing at least 11 games against the best teams in the league.
Anyway, I wanted to get that off my chest before the Blue Jays are turfed from the post-season. Otherwise, it would look like I’m kicking them when they are down, with the benefit of hindsight. As it stands now, I’m just kicking them while they are going down (completely different), with the possibility that they will turn it around. That’s the difference between me and, say, classy people like Muhammed Ali. When Foreman was going down, Ali could have taken a swing at him before he hit the mat, but he just let him fall. I would have punched Foreman in the head, just for coming up with that damned grill. I don’t even mind the grill itself, but the commercials always annoyed me.
The Blue Jays, however, are a win-win for the rest of Canada. If they win, we’ll climb up on that bandwagon, figure out who these guys are (I can name Bautista and Donaldson, and then, uh, that new pitcher they just picked up, Pierce or Prince or something), and act like we’ve been here the whole time. If they lose, we can gloat about this latest example of Toronto sport futility (which does not include the entirely respectable and perennially disrespected Argonauts) and the sad spectacle of Toronto getting worked up about nothing again. This gloating isn’t fun anymore when it comes to the Maple Leafs, and no one really cares about the Raptors one way or another, although the short-lived excitement they generated last season is reminiscent of the Blue Jays this season. Vince Carter seemed to create some genuine nation-wide interest, but he royally fucked that up for everyone, didn’t he.
The Toronto Blue Jays: Canada’s Team, until they’re not.