Zen Dayley: 589 reasons why Jeffrey Loria is ...

Laughing like a hyena over the Florida Marlins had a crowd of less than 600 for an afternoon game is just a little reactionary.

Just listen to the excuses. It was a day game. It was too hot out (90 degrees and humid). The Marlins play in a football stadium that is terrible for baseball. They're fading out of the playoff race. They would get more fans out -- maybe even like 3,000 -- if they got a new ballpark. (Even the U.S. economy going into a nosedive won't stop politicians who want to build big shiny things, and all off the pro-stadium pols in Miami did get re-elected.)

All of that is true, of course, but excuses are like what the common anatomical comparison for Jeffrey Loria and David Samson, the Marlins owners. There's some poetic irony that has to be pointed out.

When Loria/Samson (and Claude Brochu) was chasing away whatever portion of the Montreal Expos' fanbase that hadn't been killed off by Quebec politics and a 65-cent Canadian dollar, no one wanted to hear about any extenuating circumstances. Small crowds at the Big Owe (did you hear the Habs might play a game there?) were proof that Canadians Didn't Get It.

It's long past time to still be bitter about what happened to the Expos. It bears pointing out how it's a different story when it's in an American city. The Marlins, whom Loria/Samson got in a sweetheart deal, have games where the number of bodies in the stands doesn't crack four digits.

This summer, there has scarcely been a day that goes by when you don't read about the Washington Nationals having poor attendance (13th in the NL, despite a $600 million ballpark) or dismal ratings for local radio and TV broadcasts (although those are not the most rock-solid metrics). Four years on, the Nationals will finish with a worse record than the Expos did in their final season, 2004. (They were mathematically eliminated yesterday.)

The saddest part is you won't hear a peep out of anyone in Canada. Someone should point out that Loria, Samson, Bud Selig and MLB wanted to solve their problem in Quebec, and created problems in Washington, D.C., and South Florida. It's hard to see what basis there is to believe either locale will ever yield a team that's in the top half of MLB teams in revenues. That won't stop them from working harder than they ever did for Montreal, which once had a five-year run where it was in the top third in the NL in attendance. Washington, D.C., will get second chance after second chance. Miami, Fla., will get a new ballpark.

The MLB mafia is getting their just desserts, served to them in luxury boxes.

(Link via ShysterBall.)

Errata

• It's a little funny that baseball finally just got instant replay when it was talked about as far back as 1985. (That link is to a Bob Uecker appearance on The Tonight Show when Johnny was still in his prime and wasn't marking time for heir apparent Jay Leno David Letterman.
• No no-hitter for CC Sabathia, but you knew that already.
• Thank god the comedy trope that "Pedro Alvarez is Spanish for J.D. Drew" is passe.
  
  Drew, as far as a lot of people are concerned, came into the majors with two strikes against him because he wouldn't go to the team who drafted him. He's been a brilliant, if brittle, player at times. It doesn't matter one bit with people since he made such a bad first impression when he wouldn't go to the team who drafted him.
  
  Judging by the reactionary press Alvarez is getting in Scott Boras' spitting match with the Pittsburgh Pirates over whether Alvarez' contract is valid (shame on MLB for not having a drop-dead cutoff to get first-rounders signed and giving Boras an opening), he's going to have the mark of Cain on him. Some people, illogical and ignorant as it is, never forgot that Eric Lindros refused to go where he was told to go by the NHL, either.
• Attending a game at the new Nationals Park in Washington is an underwhelming experience. People could be just as bored and disappointed in Montreal, you know.

Damn, the Jays

• Paul Godfrey calling the first-place Rays an "aberration" makes you wonder if he keeps J.P. Ricciardi around as a cover for his own ignorance. The statheads knew as far back as the winter of '06-07 that Tampa Bay was going to be good
• A.J. Burnett as a Red Sock or a Yankee, which would be worse? By the way, there's talk, it's just talk, that the Jays could be the new home for Hideki Matsui. A left-handed hitting, gimp-kneed 35-year-old who "mix(es) torrid spells with periods of pointlessness" (Baseball Prospectus 2008, pg. 341) and can only play left field ... that's the perfect formula for how to retard Adam Lind and Travis Snider's development.
• The Triple-A dominoes are falling. The Syracuse Chiefs have told the Jays "it's not us, it's you," while the Buffalo Bisons are no longer with Cleveland. The Buffalo Blue Jays? It's probably going to happen.
• A little more concrete info on Chad Beck, the right-hander picked up in exchange for the Eck Factor: "A scout who saw him recently said he never really had a feel for a change-up or a split, but the scout liked his arm, liked the command of his fastball, liked the movement on his fastball.
  
  "From what I was told earlier in the year, he had only just begun to tinker with a split, a pitch that the organization thought might work for him given his arm angle.
  
  "He's done well as both a starter and a reliever, but it sounds like people seem to see him in the bullpen down the road."

Zen Dayley: Before the spiked shoe drops

Who says the Jays never win anything? Boston Celtics GM Danny Ainge is a former Jay.

• First things first: Read Allen Barra's article about how incredibly bogus it is that Marvin Miller, the one-time most powerful man in baseball, isn't in the builders section of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Late commissioner Bowie Kuhn, whom Miller consistently outwitted for about two decades, is going in, which is a joke.
• Mike Wilner's summation after a 7-0 Jays loss: "It won't be fair, and it's the players' fault, but it's getting harder and harder to believe that they're going to be able to shrug this off ... we're getting closer and closer to where people pay for it with their jobs."
  
  May 25-June 1 was the last time that the Jays hit more homers in a week than the five the Brewers bashed out tonight. It's so bad that it sounded completely alien during the radio broadcast when Alan Ashby recited Milwaukee slugger Ryan Braun's Triple Crown stats from 2007. A player hitting .324 with 34 homers and 97 RBI in less than 500 plate appearances is just completely unfathomable for someone who's been on the austerity diet of watching the Jays hitters for the last season and a half.
  
  More Wilner: "Russ Branyan has played 18 games and he would be tied for team lead in home runs if he was on the Jays."
• Desposed Mariners GM Bill Bavasi couldn't hold his tongue about Erik Bedard:
  
  

  "On why Bedard can't go longer, Bavasi says it's a good question, but one that has to be put to Bedard.
  
  " ' He'll have a stupid answer for you, you can count on it,' Bavasi said. 'He'll have some dumbass answer.' "

  Well, that just reeked of bitterness.
  
• John Buzhardt, a half-decent pitcher from the 1960s, died at age 71 over the weekend in South Carolina. One reason none of us had heard of him was that he had the misfortune to have his best years with the White Sox when they had seasons of 94, 98 and 95 wins and never won a single pennant. Ouch.
• Ottawa Rapidz manager Ed Nottle is priceless, and here's hoping he doesn't catch any flak over this):
  
  

  "I always said the day I retire from baseball — and I've spent too many hours in anti-drug programs — but the day I retire, I am going to take about a four-pound joint and go out in a cornfield somewhere and find out what I've been missing. But give me a cold beer a cigarette and a ballpark, and I'm happy."

  Some people will cry "think of the children" and that baseball is a family game, but kids need to find out that reefer is often helps you put up with your family.
  
• It's good to know that Paul Godfrey and Patrick Elster have apparently spread the gospel of setting out your fanbase to American airport gift shops.
  
  RandBall has a post up relating how a shop in the Minneapolis airport -- smack dab in Vikings country -- there had a huge display of Green Bay Packers memorabilia with "a sign stating that this was 'Minnesota's other home team.' "

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

BATTER UP: NEW YORK YANKEES

It's baseball season, that mystical, wonderful time of year where you commit to a team for six months, knowing full well they won't win. Here's a starting nine for the New York Yankees.

1. Is this the year? It's 50-50 at least the Yankees will finally end up watching the post-season like the rest of us. They're depending on some hitters who are in inexorable decline.
   
   Jason Giambi might be "like a cat" at first base; unfortunately, the cat is Garfield.
2. Girardi, destroyer of arms: It's been noted by plenty of people already, but three of manager Joe Girardi's starting pitchers from the 2006 Marlins team developed sore arms. That's who you want deciding when Joba Chamberlain (pictured) and Phil Hughes have had enough.
3. How good is Joba? It's almost like he flew to New York from spring training in Florida without taking a plane. He'll average better than a strikeout an inning as a 22-year-old in his first full season. Anyone who can do that touches greatness if their team doesn't burn them out inside of five years.
4. The Babe only tried to eat the outfield wall once: Take it from the blogfather, Will Leitch, who calls visiting Yankee Stadium "the biggest rip-off in all of sports" and describes as it having "the nostalgic architecture of an International House of Pancakes."
   
   (Our man Pete Toms has a different take on Yankee Stadium.)
   
5. Derelict Jeter: All the cucumber slices and mud packs can't hide the wrinkles developing in the 34-year-old shortstop's game. He's still got another couple years before people really notice, but the signs are there -- less power, fewer steals.
6. Taunt selectively: It works like this with which Yankees get booed. Jeter, Robinson Cano, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera are untouchables. Three of them have that whole supple arrogance of grace quality going for the, while Posada's just nails; you couldn't catch 120 games a year for 13 years and not be nails.
   
   The gloves are off when it comes to Giambi ("SHRUNK-en GO-nads! Dunh dunh duh duh dunh!"), Johnny Damon (declining badly and bailed on the Red Sox), Mike Mussina (crybaby suck) and A-Rod.
7. Still OK to kick Clemens around: By Bill James' count, the Astros and Yankees were 32-36 in Roger Clemens' starts across the past three seasons.
8. Pinstriped grief porn: There's something icky and discomforting about the Yankees' recent side trip to play a benefit game at Virginia Tech one year after those 33 students were massacred by a sick nut. What kind of group jumps at the chance to attach itself to such a gut-wrenching tragedy? The horror of that day goes way beyond a photo-op for a baseball team.
   
   It's like what Leitch says in his book about the Yankees' practice of playing God Bless America during the seventh-inning stretch, "If you wait, the ushers will actually chain your section closed so you cannot leave. Why? Because the Yankees Are More Patriotic Than You Are."
   
   It's irritating when a shallow patriotism -- any shallow ism -- is forced on people. Of course, it goes without saying that Paul Godfrey is big on playing God Bless America, which is a wretched song next to America The Beautiful, whenever the Yanks are playing at Rogers Centre).
9. Need-to-know: Rightfielder Bobby Abreu is due for a bounce-back season as long as he's spotted against lefties, let's see how long the Yankees stick with the plan to throw the kid pitchers and the jury is still out on Mussina. The Yankees probably only make the playoffs as the wild card.
   
   They'll be back in full force over the next five years, though, having sunk a lot of money into some prized prospects, to say nothing of what they'll reap from doing business with China.

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

BARRY BONDS: BREAK OUT YOUR TINFOIL HATS...

The gut reaction is that the story making the rounds today that the Blue Jays briefly discussed trying to sign Barry Bonds is part of a larger fiction.

Paul Godfrey was on Toronto radio (AM680) today and related that they had talks that "lasted about five minutes" about signing Bonds. It doesn't pass the sniff test. Chalk it up to the feeling that major-league baseball would not mind having some plausible deniability with regard to the Bonds issue. The weeks will become months. Bonds will stay unsigned and people will cry conspiracy, but good luck proving it when there's a cache of news stories the Tampa Bay Rays or Toronto Blue Jays gave him some consideration.

Bonds is a headache times a thousand, but he averaged a home run every 12.1 at-bats last season while having to drag his tired old body out to left field. He slugged .565, led the National League in on-base percentage and he's still one of the 30 best hitters in the game. He could still play, but, as you know, he has more baggage than Mila Mulroney.

The opinion here about his perjury case remains the same: "Thirty years? He won't serve a day."

HOW ABOUT YOUR OWN BASEBALL CITY?

That Paul Godfrey, he just has a silver foot in his mouth (hat tip to Molly Ivins). Witness his quote about Toronto hosting games for the 2009 World Baseball Classic:

"You'd like to think that you'll be able to attract fans from some of those baseball cities in the northern U.S. ... I mean, you see a city like Detroit and with Magglio Ordonez likely to be with the Venezuelans, that would be a draw."

Like The Tao of Stieb (welcome back; nice find) says, "Jeebus Cripes on Segway, Godfrey! Can you stop fixating on bringing fans from outside of Toronto to the city, and start thinking about your own fan base?!"

The WBC games in Toronto could be like the 1994 world basketball championship all over again. Remember Greek-Canadians pouring into the streets to celebrate after Greece beat Canada and every xenophobe gnashing their teeth about people celebrating after Canada lost.

They missed the point -- the fact that can happen is what makes this country great. (And did this make any of the xenophobes devote their energy to Canada Basketball? Evidently not.)

(Apologies for not having linked to any of the weekend stories about the 2009 WBC; it had been reported in the States a couple weeks ago and yours truly heard about games being played here a few weeks before that, so it just seemed too obvious.)

Related:
Global showcase coming to Toronto (Jeff Blair, globesports.com)

MORE POWDER-BLUE BLUES

Guhhhhhhh, it just gets more embarrassing to see the Blue Jays organization suck up to Red Sox fans.

Drunk Jays Fans gets credit for the find; the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, the Jays' farm team in the Double-A Eastern League, are going to have a Bobblehead Night for Jacoby Ellsbury and Clay Buchholz this summer. Neither ever swung a bat or threw a pitch for the Fisher Cats, but they play for the nearby Boston Red Sox and well, there's profit to be had, right?

First it was selling tickets to Boston fans before offering the ducats to local supporters; now this. This is what happens when a screwhead like Paul Godfrey dictates the culture of an organization. Paul Beeston and Pat Gillick would never in a million years let one of their farm club muddy the Blue Jays brand. Major-league baseball teams typically have some sway over the promotions their affiliates hold. Suffice to say, the Fisher Cats sure didn't have to worry about offending the highers-up when they decided to smooch a little Masshole keister.

New Hampshire isn't hard up for fans. They set a club attendance record last season and that wasn't all from visits by Portland, Boston's farm team in the Eastern League.

YOU CAN'T SHAME A SNAKE IN THE FIELDTURF; OR, GODFREY JOINS THE FLYING BURRITO BROTHERS

This is Paul Godfrey's burrito out the car window. (Video by Drunk Jays Fans.)

The fallout from the Blue Jays letting Tigers and Red Sox fans -- especially the latter, some (not all, mind you) of whom are beer-flinging louts with sewer mouths and social attitudes not of this century -- have first shot at tickets for a couple of April series pretty much reprises the middle act of Anchorman. With a simple act of selling out, everything changed. This is pretty much, "I'm Paul Godfrey. Go fuck yourself, Toronto."

The Jays blogerariat, which like Toronto itself, takes in all kinds, even if you're a Drunk, a Taoist, a Bottom, a Chucker, a Ghost or even a Base player, pretty much spent the weekend hammering out a conclusion that as far as Jays fans should be concerned, Paul Godfrey's ass is grass.

Hardcore fans were pretty much quietly resigned to having Godfrey as president of the Jays. It was much the same as how, on a scale that is a million times more important, that bleeding heart liberals like me back in the first half of 2005 were resigned to having George W. Bush as leader of the free world. With Godfrey, you shrug off his call to play God Bless America at the seventh-inning stretch, the reality he long ago killed any part of himself that could embrace loving something so irrational as a baseball team and the likelihood that he went to a stylist or image consultant before he grew a beard in order to better resemble a human being, never mind an actual man of the people.

What could you do? It's business as usual in Toronto, where purely business decisions rule the day with the local teams.

OH SAY, CAN YOU SEE?

The common thread is there didn't seem to be any way to get through to people. It was only after the levees broke in New Orleans and Anderson Cooper emoted on CNN that people finally got it about Bush and Dick Cheney. Obviously, this a huge overstatement for rhetorical effect. No one should try to trivalize Katrina.

However, the Jays being so bush-league finally makes it clear what has been wrought by Rogers Communications' uninterested ownership (thanks again, Dan Rowe).

Other than for money, why would you want some of the fans from Boston as guests? Some of them have a little trouble accepting they were guests in a foreign land and the customs are a little different. That much was obvious during the 2005 home opener, when many got sauced on the higher alcohol content of Canadian draft beer and started tossing refrigerator magnets out of the upper deck, striking their social betters in the good seats. Of course, this being Toronto, a few people had to imitate the Americans.

The Jays should be busting ass to give Southern Ontario every reason to turn out in greater numbers, not take the lazy way out. God knows (but Godfrey will never understand) that you put up with enough to be a baseball fan in Canada relative to following hockey or the NFL. You give up summer days and nights to watch the team on TV (not that hockey fans' dedication is supspect, but when it's minus-20, the decision to stay in is made for you.)

You suffer people who are serious when they why Joe Carter is not in the Hall of Fame, or whether Roberto Alomar will be. You balance criticizing J.P. Ricciardi with getting mad when cable sports networks and the Toronto dailies when they get it all wrong by acting like missing the playoffs in baseball is the same thing as missing the playoffs in the NHL, which has twice as many playoff spots and no divisional rivals with $200-million payrolls. You put up with second-rate TV announcer crews since there's almost nowhere in this country for anyone who also has to pay for food and shelter to learn the craft of calling a baseball game -- and if we do come up someone who can such as Dan Shulman, ESPN will snap him up.

For all we do, Paul Godfrey and his corporate masters figure that they can sell our seats to people from Boston. The Jays should be busting ass to give Southern Ontario every reason to turn out in greater numbers. Instead they take a lazy way out and wonder why more people won't commit to their team.

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

NEW MEANING TO SELLOUTS...

It's probably totally uncool and pathetically naive to object to the Blue Jays offering tickets to fans of visiting teams (the Red Sox and Tigers) for early-season games before they go on sale to the general public in Toronto.

It is naive, since secondary ticketing is a huge deal to pro sport teams nowadays. It is also uncool, since this is business to Paul Godfrey and Ted Rogers and all their little worker ants. Never mind that as The Tao of Stieb notes, really creative thinking would be to find a way to get people who might actually root, root, root for the home team in those seats.

God, it's embarassing to be a Toronto-oriented sports fan sometimes, you just want to try to distance yourself from it .... hey, look, the Leafs won tonight, so they're only six points out of the last playoff berth!

Related:
Tickets? Anybody needs tickets? (Jeff Blair, globesports.com)

JAYS-SOX: AND THEN YOU GO AND SPOIL IT ALL... (OR, SHUFFLE OFF, BUFFALO)

Wednesday, Jays 6, Sox 4: Any temporary glow raised by Troy Glaus and Vernon Wells smacking the tying and game-winning homers (good thing the Massholes picked up Eric Gagné!) lasted only long enough for Sportsnet Connected to come on the air.

It's embarrassing enough to be 30 years old, home alone and watching a ballgame when your team is dead to rights in the playoff race. About 10 minutes after the final out, Connected played up the fact that the Buffalo News said John Gibbons "deserves consideration for manager of the year honors." No offence to that broadsheet, the city or its pro sports teams -- say, how is it possible that the Bills are already mathematically eliminated from playoff contention? -- but for most people, the reaction is "big woop what the Buffalo News says about anything other than the three major fires per day in North Tonawanda."

Instead, Sportsnet Connected practically treated this as the baseball equivalent of an author having her book praised by Oprah Winfrey. It must have been some convincing argument, yes?

"Gibbons has kept the Jays in shouting distance of the Yankees despite a rash of injuries. He lost closer B.J. Ryan for the year. Gustavo Chacin hasn't pitched since April. A.J. Burnett has been on and off the DL. Roy Halladay missed three weeks. Reed Johnson and Gregg Zaun missed most of the season."

In fairness to the News, the Jays aren't a team of interest and no one knows if the guy who wrote that is even a fan (most people in Western New York tend to go for the Yankees). But...

• Jeremy Accardo has filled in for Ryan to the extent B.J.'s shoulder surgery barely gets asked about on the post-game shows and besides, the value of closers is overrated;
• Opie Litsch has an ERA a full run lower (4.03 to 5.05) than Chacin did in 2006 in about the same number of innings;
• Burnett will end up throwing more innings than he did in '06, when the Jays won 87 games, which they won't this season;
• Doc will likely make five more starts, which would be 32 for the season -- the exact number he made last last season when the Jays won 87 games, which they won't this season (what, heard that one?);
• Reed Johnson? Three words: Matt effing Stairs. Oh, and get this: Zaun has already batted more times and caught more games than he did in '06. His broken thumb has clearly killed his stats, but how does that help exonerate Gibbons, who's written Zaun into the lineup card for 27 of the Jays' last 33 games? (Jason Phillips, who was signed on Gibbons' recommendation, didn't work out.)

A general-interest sports column's bullet points will be off the mark occasionally. It happens. The onus here is on Your Home For The Jays for taking a throwaway observation and running with it, apparently without checking whether the rationale could even stand up in a faint breeze.

Besides, what does it say that Canadians in North America's fourth-largest media market can't form its own baseball opinion, but needs one from a U.S.-based writer in, what, the 50th-largest market? It's not participle physics or even the Bowl Championship Series, it's frigging baseball. We can figure out for ourselves, although this is the same network that had Gibbons playing on the "1986 Miracle Mets" (he did do that, but the nickname applies to the 1969 Mets) a while back.

(In fairness, Connected and sportsnet.ca sometimes comes in for criticism that would not be levelled at TSN and tsn.ca, since yours truly hasn't relied on either since the end of hockey season. By the way, check out The Tao's post on small ball.)

Tuesday -- Sox 5, Jays 3: Manager Boomhauer wasn't totally out of it for letting Roy Halladay pitch the bottom of the eighth. Aren't all y'all the same ones who complain about the overemphasis on pitch counts? Besides, Doc's splits suggest he's OK from the 101st pitch onward. Still, blind pig, meet acorn; acorn, meet the blind pig.

UPDATE: Chuck Swirsky opened his 1-4 show on The Fan 590 on Wednesday by inviting callers to weigh in with what changes they would recommend to Toronto's sports solons. His suggestion for what people should implore Jays president Paul Godfrey to do was, "Change the uniforms and the manager." Effin' A, Swirsk.

Monday -- Sox 13, Jays 10: In honour of the first day of school, write out, "I will not second-guess John Gibbons' handling of the bullpen," 100 times.

Doing so would presumes (a) there's still a debate over whether Gibby should be back next season; (b) that there's still a chance at the wild card and (c) it really matters whether the Jays finish 83-79 or 84-78. That's just mental masturbation, even though they probably will finish with a better record than one of the division champs in the National League... again.

That said... Josh Towers, who'd come in to mop up, should not have come out for a second inning of work after that eight-run rally in the Jays sixth cut the lead to 10-9. (The Red Sox got three -- a field goal -- to put the game away.) At that point it had gone from whatever gets you through the night to actually being in a close ballgame, so using a starting pitcher who hadn't worked in two weeks didn't make a whole lot of sense. Neither Scott Downs and Brian Wolfe -- isn't he supposed to be trustworthy now? -- each threw less than 10 pitches to live batters in Sunday's win over Seattle and didn't have a lot of ups, so they were ready.

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

RICCIARDI DISINGENUOUS, HARDLY INGENIOUS

Blue Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi has a tell when he's being dishonest about a ballplayer's health. His lips move.

Granted, there might have been strings moving J.P.'s mouth when the GM went on the radio (the Rogers-owned station which covers the Rogers-owned Jays) today. Ricciardi slagged Burnett for not being able to "realize the difference between being hurt and really being hurt." It gives off the whiff of someone higher up in the Rogers/Jays hierarchy (lookin' at you, Paul Godfrey), deciding the company line is that Burnett is back on the disabled list since he can't tell when he's really hurt.

Ya, right. No smart baseball man -- which Ricciardi is, sometimes -- should expect core Jays fans who try to know and understand baseball to buy such Grade-A bullflop. It is possible, though, that Ricciardi is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to cover the rear end of manager Goober Gibbons pointed Burnett toward the disabled list by asking him to handle a workload that he wouldn't dream of asking from Roy Halladay. If that's the case, he comes off pretty damn poorly.

Fans could accept that Burnett being a little bit hurt is like a woman being a lil' bit pregnant. There's no such thing with him. No one, even people in the game, knows what all goes into pitching and keeping a guy's arm healthy, so why shouldn't Burnett get benefit of the doubt if he says he's hurt, especially after the workload the Jays put on him a month ago?

The Jays have a poor track record with keeping pitchers healthy. Seen B.J. Ryan lately? Gibbons tempted fate by piling up the pitch counts for Burnett. A.J.'s problems started a month ago when he threw 372 pitches across three starts, which is unheard of in 2007 baseball.

That's 124 pitches on average. Halladay -- think of all the superlatives attached to Doc; competitor, winner, warrior -- has not thrown that many pitches in any single game since early 2004, when Gibbons was just a seen-and-not-heard first-base coach. The Jays treat one high-priced right-handed starter like fine China and treat the other like a Styrofoam plate.

It doesn't wash that the Jays are calling Burnett as a $55-million goldbricker, and so what if he ends up a No. 4 starter? The difference between being No. 4 and No. 2 is what, one start a season? Burnett doesn't have Halladay's rep, he seems to move to his own beat (it must be something about being a Capricorn born in the first week of 1977), but it's disappointing to hear Ricciardi play a blame game in order to cover his and the mothership's rear end.

Jays fans deserve a honest answer, not butt-covering. The ballclub had to know in the winter of 2005-06 that Burnett was high-risk, high-reward, but they felt they needed to do something headline-grabbing. They knew Toronto fans and media are a bit New Yorkish when it comes to not having time or patience for rebuilding programs. There would have been major eye-rolling if they said, "Wait until 2007, when Shaun Marcum, Dustin McGowan and Casey Janssen get here to form a supporting cast for Doc."

So why can't Ricciardi just come out and say that? It's all in how you endure this crisis, J.P., and lashing out at a player doesn't cut it.

Related:
Burnett a $55M fourth starter? (Sportsnet.ca)

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

TORONTO NFL TALK FLARES UP AGAIN

Memo to Bob McCown's missus: Remind your husband to update his will. You know, just in case.

McCown, The Fan 590's resident lovable bastard, has regularly said a National Football League team will never come to Toronto in his lifetime. Well, NFL commish Roger Goodell said earlier today at a media confab in New York that the league is open to coming to Toronto within a decade.

Maybe, maybe not. Whatever.

There is a certain resignation among the crowd who likes it the way it is, with two gamely struggling CFL franchises in southern Ontario and the Bills doing about the same in Buffalo, albeit on the much grander NFL scale. At the end of the day, if Larry Tanenbaum, Paul Godfrey, Ted Rogers and three-quarters of the NFL' s 32 owners decide there should be a team in Toronto, then, well, Toronto is probably going to get a team, in the worst way (literally).

The self-loathing Canucks -- AKA the "CFL sucks crowd" -- and Toronto trendies who are always waiting for something better to come along would be served ahead of the people who have supported the CFL emotionally and financially for years. That's neither here nor there, though.

Outside of "might is right" and market research, there doesn't seem to be much an emotional argument for bringing a NFL team to Toronto. Just saying, "A city of Toronto's size should have a NFL team," or that the Argos and the CFL suck doesn't cut it, thank you.

Over at globesports.com, it's about 5-to-1, by conservative estimate, against the NFL.

It's hard to see where the grass roots push is coming from for this. If it was left up to the general public in the GTA, the megacity would get a second NHL team before it got a NFL team.

TORONTO AND THE NFL (AGAIN)

Howard Bloom of Sports Business News (subscriber content) has an article posted that predicts Toronto will land the 34th National Football League franchise through the league's next round of expansion. (The 33rd team would be Los Angeles, most likely.)

Bloom notes that during Paul Tagliabue's term as commissioner, he ushered in four new franchises who dropped a total of $1.54 billion US in expansion fees into the other teams' coffers. Some estimates peg the fee for future expansion teams at as high as $1 billion US. Imagine how good new commish Roger Goodell is going to look to his bosses if he can get that kind of money from two or more new ownership groups.

In a word, ka-ching! So it looks like the all-important opportunity to join the league may present itself soon.

As noted yesterday, there's the right people driving the bid (Ted Rogers, Larry Tanenbaum and Paul Godfrey), enough capital, and most importantly, more than enough local interest in seeing the NFL come to Canada. The NFL is also well-aware of Rogers Communications' reach.

Rogers' M.O. is that content is everything. The NFL practically invented the notion that content is everything.

It's going to happen, even though the average T.O.-type can't justify it beyond, "Toronto should have a NFL team." This is conspicuous consumption writ large -- a NFL team would just be another affirmation that Toronto is, in its own words, a "world-class city," gee whiz, just like Jacksonville or Glendale, Arizona. That's neither here nor there, though.

This is not a "con" argument. What yesterday's exercise was about was identifying the key points in Toronto's pursuit of a NFL team, including:

• It's bad form to bogart another city's team. The Buffalo Bills and New Orleans Saints might be on the move, but let some other city risk the bad karma. How about it, Albuquerque?
• How would the Argonauts and Hamilton Tiger-Cats handle the challenge? Just asking, that's all. There's no "misty-eyed nostalgia" here about the CFL (my friend Greg Hughes' phrase), let alone any doomsday predictions.
  
  If anything, with smart marketing and good business tactics, both CFL teams could probably survive. That said, the Argos should start scouting Mississauga real estate.
• How much is this going to cost taxpayers, especially considering Paul Godfrey's chummy relationship with the Conservative Party, who could soon be in power federally and provincially?
• If the Rogers/MLSE partnership foreshadows a future merger, doesn't having that much media content and that many sports properties under one banner raise concerns that should temper any giddiness over, Hey, we're gettin' an NFL team!

Related:
Weekly NFL Picks (Thurs., Sept. 7)
Toronto Wants The NFL (Again) (Thurs., Sept. 7)
NFL Preview In 30 Minutes... Or It's Free (Wed., Sept. 6)

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

YANKEES, SOX FANS COMPLAINING ABOUT ROWDYISM? NOW THAT'S RICH

The long-standing suspicion that fans of the Evil Empires can dish it out, but can't take it, has gained some credibility today.

Blue Jays president Paul Godfrey (yes, you have consider the source here) told the Toronto Star's Richard Griffin that he has "received letters from Red Sox and Yankee fans complaining about the overzealous Toronto fans when they were here for games."

Here you thought Mike Mussina was the biggest whiner in pinstripes. Get a grip, Yankees and Red Sox fans. Yes, Jays crowds are bigger, louder and younger-looking this year, but most of the rowdies, so-called, at Jays games are university-aged kids from Forest Hill, Rosedale and Woodbridge who are home for the summer and are out for a larf, likely courtesy of a credit card graciously provided by the Bank of Mom and Dad.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, since at least they know who's the right team to support. There's just nothing to be worried about.

Boston fans have developed a thick shin, what with The Curse and all, but Yankees fans have long been a walking study in sociological vulnerabilities. What other team has fans who are so insecure they wear shirts reading SCOREBOARD and not-so-subtly point at them, even when the Evil Empire is losing? It's baseball. A good team is going to lose 40-45% of the time, so be mature about it.

As for the rest of Griffin's state-of-the-Jays sitdown with Godfrey, there's nothing there that's going to surprise fans who have been paying close attention, especially where next season's player payroll is concerned.

Related: Jays Fans.... Crazy? Nah (Aug. 10)
Money Tight in Ted Rogers' Neighbourhood (Aug. 2)

JOE BUCK FOLLOW-UP

My friend Dan Rowe, the good editor that he is, points out that the New York Daily News' Bob Raissman perhaps had the best take on Joe Buck's expanded role with Fox NFL Sunday. Raissman basically says Fox is intent on having a star announcer that it can brag about developing, much like CBS had with Brent Musburger in the 1980s. Too bad for Buck. The money and perks of that platform are great, but in the end, it probably leads to a guy getting burnt out and losing all interest in the sports he's covering.

You know the Musburger parallel well. In the 1980s, he was Big Event Brent, flying all over the place to call this game or that game, and eventually he lost interest, and the suits soured on him, and before anyone knew it he was Any Event Brent (hat tip to Norman Chad), reduced to calling World League of American Football games for ABC.

OTHER BUSINESS

• Recent stuff here: New York baseball sex scandals, the rundown on the Vikings opener, Neil's big debut, a requeim for 'idiot' baseball coaches, and why John Axford is the one baseball pitching prospect you should root for.
• Forgot terrorism, the Mideast, the environment. What's really important is the status of Chad Greenway's knee. (UPDATE, 8:35 p.m.: Greenway is out for the season.)

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