JAYS READY TO LOWER THE BOOM

Homer challenges the Guess Your Age and Weight booth. The operator guesses "53 years old and 420 pounds."

"Ha ha, you lose! Thirty-six and 239!''
-- From snpp.com

Which segues right into . . . my Blue Jays are slated to face their old pal David Wells (who if the program is to be believed, is 43 years old and 248 pounds) on Wednesday in the final game of this all-important three-game set with Boston.

Digging through Deadspin's archive brings us a memorable tale of a fan/celeb run-in with Wells from a Cleveland reader: "Wells was holding three cans of beer stacked on top of each other with one hand, while drinking out of the top one."

And here I thought Wells pitching a perfect game in 1998 was his most impressive feat.

So Ty Taubenheim pitched like he couldn't find Ohio from from downtown Cleveland and the Jays had to settle for 2-out-of-3 over the Chisox. The bargaining that a Jays fan has to do is that there was no sure-thing proposition in that series, what with facing Chicago's top-2 starters on Friday and Saturday.

Still, the Jays are 27-22 and 3½ games behind Boston. As Dave Till at Batter's Box notes in his report from yesterday's game:

"The Jays are currently enduring the Schedule Of Pain [tm], which has the Jays playing good teams while their divisional rivals get to play the Rays and Royals over and over again. According to league mandate, the Sox and Yanks get to play bad teams until the Jays are out of contention .... and grumpy local columnists get to write columns saying that the Jays were never true contenders to begin with."

It's too optimistic by half to predict a sweep, but the Jays sure could use one. Beyond tonight's series opener, Roy Halladay against Matt Clement, the Jays' best bet is Wednesday's Wells-Ted Lilly matchup. That assumes (a) Wells isn't scratched and (b) Lilly can put two decent starts together and stops having Ron Darling Syndrome, where he gets too cute and inevitably hits the 100-pitch mark by the sixth inning.

Tuesday, Boston's starting Josh Beckett, who's handcuffed Jays batters to the tune of a .194 average in 3 starts this season. It's also Gustavo Chacin's first start since coming off the disabled list, so it's easy to curb your enthusiasm.

OTHER BUSINESS

• Much has been written about the surpassing suckitude of the Kansas City Royals. KC is 11-37. That's one game behind -- or ahead, depending on your worldview -- the snail's pace of two other infamous icons of ineptitude, the '62 Mets and the 2003 Tigers, each of whom were 12-36 after 48 games.
  
  Let's look at some other demigods of despair: The '35 Boston Braves (38-115, for a .248 winning percentage) started 14-34. The 1916 Philadelphia A's, whose .235 winning percentage remains the lowest since 1900, started 15-33. Yikes.
• With the Hurricanes poised to leave Buffalo crying in its collective beer, it's time to review the gathering of conference finals predictions from two weeks ago: the Toronto Sun's Al Strachan was the only one to have the Edmonton in 5 / Carolina in 6 combo. Clearly, Carolina needs to take a dive tomorrow night, just so Strachan won't be bang-on.
  
  Buffalo has faint hope of coming back, but it's worth noting who else picked the Oilers and 'Canes: ESPN.com's E.J. Hradek and Barry Melrose, Wes Goldstein of CBS Sportline and yours truly. By the way, whenever Bob McKenzie appears on TV this week, start screaming, "Anaheim and Buffalo! Anaheim and Buffalo!" If anyone asks, explain why.
• This you have to see: some of those whiz kids at MIT wrote a program that transforms their dorm room into a dance club. A lame dance club, but nevertheless, it's pretty impressive. Far be it for me to suggest these geeks could have better spent their time going to an actual dance club and meeting actual girls, but at least there's proof someone wastes more time on the computer than I do.
• One game doesn't prove anything in baseball. It does bear noting the surprising Detroit Tigers are playing their first game of the season against the Yankees today -- and Randy Johnson didn't give up a hit until the sixth inning. Pudge Rodriguez broke it up just moments ago.