RIDING IT OUT AS THE JAYS FADE AWAY

This space has gone on for some time about baseball's skewed schedule and playoff format as it relates to the Blue Jays, and after losses such as last night's 13-3 special against Kansas City, the whole schtick is really starting to get tired and whiny -- and that's just for the guy writing it, never mind the readers.

However, it's worth noting some of the suggestions Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci included in his "Commissioner for a Day Column": Cut interleague and intradivision games, and penalize the wild-card winner. Sounds a little like:

"There's even more irritation toward baseball for wanting to have it both ways by playing an unbalanced schedule [i.e., more intradivisional games] and offering interleague play but offering only one wild-card berth in each league."
-- Out of Left Field, Fri., June. 30

It does bear noting that Verducci isn't advocating for a second wild-card berth, but rather giving wild-card teams one fewer home game in the first round of the playoffs.

As far as the Jays are concerned, early July is often the point of the season where the naysayers start in with the told-ya-sos and it has to be gently suggested to The Geek is usually has to be told that maybe he and the Jays should go on a break, and when it's OK to come back, he should start start thinking about next year. Six games out in the AL East and sinking like a stone, and the pitching, hitting and defence has all gone in the crapper.

It's too early to join in with that crowd, not if you're committed to, or mildly certifiable, about this baseball team, even if, like I did during my shift at the Sun last night, politely ask the sports guys to switch to another channel after Kansas City took a 3-0 lead against A.J. Burnett. (To their everlasting credit, they flipped over to the CFL game on TSN.)

So like George Costanza on Seinfeld when he invested in a bad stock, we're riding this one out. No, it's not a sign of character to go around feeling shitty about a silly sports team, but it beats the dilettantes who run at the first sign of trouble.

It's going to be different tonight. You betcha. Troy Glaus will come out of his slump. Someone might actually get a Kansas City batter out in a key situation. They might even remember how to turn a double play.

OTHER BUSINESS

• Just an update on Ryan VandenBussche. The NHLer has had one of the charges against him upgraded to assault causing bodily harm. One of the officers involved in last Monday's mêlée outside the notorious Turkey Point Hotel has a broken nose.
  
  Incidentally, getting back to point made here earlier, a lot of media outlets reported VandenBussche's arrest since any athlete involved in an alleged crime is treated as news. How many outside the local market made or will make note of the subsequent court proceedings?
• José Théodore and his girlfriend, Stephanie Cloutier, are demanding a retraction and on-air apology over a TV report that the couple had separated after his much-publicized dalliance with She Who Must Not Be Mentioned By Name.
• Italy 2, France nil. So it is written, so it shall be done.
• Girlfriend-Friendly Sports Movies. Learn it, live it, love it.
• Hometown Breakdown note: Is it a sign of getting older when peope whom you've covered as players are now coaching? My alma mater, Queen's University, has hired 26-year-old Brett Gibson as its new men's hockey coach. It was only four years ago when I wrote a freelance story for the Kingston Whig-Standard about Gibson, who was then playing for the Saint Mary's Huskies in Halifax; one of his assistants with the Golden Gaels will be Andrew Haussler, who around that same time was the centre-fielder on a junior men's fastpitch team that I wrote some articles about. Yours truly wishes them all the best.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.