Long Ball Stories

After an off day following Toronto's rather disappointing four-game split in Minnesota, the Jays came home for a frankly meaningless three-game series with the Kansas City Royals, who are equally on the outside looking in at this point. From the perspective of yer humble scribe, any series that reaches its high point for the good…

After dashing the playoff hopes of the Baltimore Orioles, what could be more exciting than for the Toronto Blue Jays to fly into the Twin Cities for a four-game set with the Minnesota Twins, currently sitting in the second wild card slot in the American League? The Twins, henceforth never again to be derided as…

The next best thing to your team playing meaningul games in September is playing games that are meaningful for the other team. Especially if that other team is the Baltimore Orioles, 'cuz we don't like them birds so much here in Tranna. The three game series with Baltimore that ended the Blue Jays' brief home…

In a melancholy sort of way, there's something quite exhilarating about a September series between two teams no longer harbouring any hope of making the playoffs. The air is crisp and clear, September in the midwest, including the Canadian midwest, being the loveliest time of the year. The warmth of the day's sun lingers into…

One of the most remarkable developments in contemporary baseball is the incredible level of accomplishment that has already been achieved by players in their early twenties. Looking at the American League alone, consider that among the Blue Jays Roberto Osuna is 22, Aaron Sanchez is 25, and Marcus Stroman is 26. Mike Trout, a veteran…

One of the great things about baseball is that you can have exciting, tense games in a wonderful old park like Wrigley Field, and you can have tense, exciting games in a clangy, tin-can abomination like the Orange Juice Dome in Tampa Bay. One of the lousy things about baseball is your team can be…

There was a lot of anticipation surrounding Toronto's first visit since 2005 to the Chicago Cubs for interleague play this weekend. The Blue Jays had just wrung three games out of four from their perennial nemeses the Tampa Bay Rays. They were going to spend a weekend in Chi-Town, one of the best cities on…

Get this: at the start of today's action, eight teams were within three games of the second wild card slot in the American League. The bottom three of those teams, the Orioles, the Rays, and the Blue Jays, trailed the leading Angels by three games. And the record of the Angels? 62-59. Thus the Trash…

When I was in Catholic high school a long time ago in Detroit, we heard that at some of the schools the nuns who chaperoned the dances used to carry yardsticks: they had to be able to slide the yardstick between the boy and the girl during slow dances or there was trouble. At my…

Okay, let me get this off my chest right away: the Toronto infield doesn't work with Darwin Barney at shortstop and Rob Refsnyder at second. A fifth-inning mishandling of what should have been a double play cost Marco Estrada extra outs and extra pitches, and led inexorably to two tainted Tampa Bay runs that turned…