Do people is the Toronto area care about the Blues Jays

[The_Admiral]

To be serious:

The escalation of the Yankees-Red Sox arms race has pretty much doomed the Blue Jays as far as any of us can see, and in the process has killed off a lot of what used to be a really substantial fanbase. More than anywhere but Pittsburgh, Jays fans enter every year knowing there is no way they can legitimately contend for the division. That they play in a disgusting plastic-concrete white elephant that can't be replaced because they so recently spent billions of tax dollars building it doesn't help get asses in seats either. You'd think this would be a bigger deal than it is, but apparently baseball feels any revenue they get out of Canada is just gravy, rather than the critical piece of the puzzle that a world-class city is, and so the fact that Toronto is dying on the vine here doesn't really seem to bother anybody. (Montreal was just an expendable "small market," despite being larger than Cincinnati, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Denver, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. )If anything, that idiot Cowley from the S-T just trolls Toronto for drawing 12,000 against the White Sox and says Canada doesn't care about and thus shouldn't have something as American as baseball, despite the fact that baseball's roots are just as much in southern Ontario and Quebec as they are in the northeastern U.S., not to mention the fact that Toronto doesn't even claim to be Canadian if you ask it where it's from at some really hip party.

While the Blue Jays have had major setbacks due to running a pretty lousy top-to-bottom organization for several years, they're still primarily screwed by forces beyond their control, and even if they started running a model organization, they've still lost so much ground to the Yankees, Red Sox, and now even the Rays that they can't really hope to catch up for quite some time, if it all. It's a pretty bleak outlook, and not even the kind of hard cap that some people want would fix it, because the Red Sox would just game the system and beat them within those constraints, anyway.

[zer0dotcom]

Are the Blue Jays on the newspaper alot or on tv and it seems like they dont do well with attendence so do people in the Toronto area even care about them?

They care more than some people care about proper grammar and punctuation.

[The_Admiral]

I remembered a thread like this from last year when Cowley wrote his silly-ass column about Canada not grasping baseball. I found this:

So pretend the Jays where an US franchise I dought that he would be saying the same thing.

Between Joe Cowley, this thread-starter, THIS guy, and me, it's obvious that something about discussing the fortunes of the Toronto Blue Jays makes you retarded.

[infrared41]

To be serious:

The escalation of the Yankees-Red Sox arms race has pretty much doomed the Blue Jays as far as any of us can see, and in the process has killed off a lot of what used to be a really substantial fanbase. More than anywhere but Pittsburgh, Jays fans enter every year knowing there is no way they can legitimately contend for the division. That they play in a disgusting plastic-concrete white elephant that can't be replaced because they so recently spent billions of tax dollars building it doesn't help get asses in seats either. You'd think this would be a bigger deal than it is, but apparently baseball feels any revenue they get out of Canada is just gravy, rather than the critical piece of the puzzle that a world-class city is, and so the fact that Toronto is dying on the vine here doesn't really seem to bother anybody. (Montreal was just an expendable "small market," despite being larger than Cincinnati, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Denver, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. )If anything, that idiot Cowley from the S-T just trolls Toronto for drawing 12,000 against the White Sox and says Canada doesn't care about and thus shouldn't have something as American as baseball, despite the fact that baseball's roots are just as much in southern Ontario and Quebec as they are in the northeastern U.S., not to mention the fact that Toronto doesn't even claim to be Canadian if you ask it where it's from at some really hip party.

While the Blue Jays have had major setbacks due to running a pretty lousy top-to-bottom organization for several years, they're still primarily screwed by forces beyond their control, and even if they started running a model organization, they've still lost so much ground to the Yankees, Red Sox, and now even the Rays that they can't really hope to catch up for quite some time, if it all. It's a pretty bleak outlook, and not even the kind of hard cap that some people want would fix it, because the Red Sox would just game the system and beat them within those constraints, anyway.

Nothing to add here. I just wanted to point out an excellent post in an otherwise ridiculous thread. Well done Admiral.

[Lights Out]

I would agree with most of that post if you replace Toronto with Baltimore and the Blue Jays with the Orioles. (Well, I guess you'd have to delete the stadium part too, because the O's have a nice one.) I think the Jays can compete soon. They've ditched The Albatross Formerly Known as Vernon Wells, and they have a fun, exciting, good team.

If the Rays can make the leap to seriously contending with a small market, a pitiful excuse for a fanbase, and a tiny payroll, I don't see why the Blue Jays can't do the same.

[The_Admiral]

I'd posit that Baltimore's just as scorched as Toronto is.

[Lights Out]

Baltimore's scorched until Angelos sells the team, IMO. With the right owner, the Orioles can be right back to contention if they play their cards right.

[Sport]

We're not giving the Blue Jays enough credit for their on the field success. In the last ten years they've had seasons of 86, 87, 83, 86, and 85 wins. It's reasonable to believe they'd have won even more if they'd played in another division, but to lump them in with the Royals, Nationals, Pirates of baseball would be inaccurate. They've had some solid teams.

Everything else, agreed.

[The_Admiral]

I didn't lump them in with those teams, though, except for sharing Pittsburgh's resignation to never finishing first. A good analogue to the Blue Jays would be the Cubs, of all teams, where the team's broadcasting overlords make sure to apply enough band-aids to keep the team superficially competitive while failing to address the massive systemic faults and shortcomings within the organization. Doing so would enable the team to be a perennial success, but it would require a massive teardown that instead forever goes procrastinated. The difference is that the Cubs' biggest threat is just the Cardinals and their creepy salvage yard of grit and determination, itself an ultimately unsustainable business model, while the Blue Jays contend with corporate monoliths.

Only the Braves ever really managed to make baseball-as-programming-filler work. Tribune and Rogers, not so much.

[friarcanuck]

If the Rays can make the leap to seriously contending with a small market, a pitiful excuse for a fanbase, and a tiny payroll, I don't see why the Blue Jays can't do the same.

You forgot to mention their stadium too.

[AnythingChicago]

The Johns Hopkins Blue Jays? Probably not, box lacrosse is more their thing up in Canada

I dont think people in Baltimore care about the Blue Jays either.

Ehhhhhh!(That was a buzzer sounding). They do care. Anne Arundel County (Baltimore area) is the lacrosse capital of the world ( I'm not joking or over exaggerating). Everyone is all like "Hey, man. Are you going to the Faceoff Classic? It's gonna be SICK!" and I'm like "No, I don't find amusement in almost-grown men hitting each other with sticks and trying to get the ball into the reasonably large net, which takes very little strategy and intelligence. I wouldn't be this pissed unless I didn't here a "baseball is just hitting a goddamn ball with a stick" nonsense every day. It's a lot more than that, it takes knowing the count and whether or not to be passive, (3-0 count), agressive (1-2 count), or looking for a good pitch to hit (2-1 count), and then reading the pitch perfectly, timing it spot on, and getting perfect trajectory, bat speed, and level of the swing to propel the ball a long distance. As in lacrosse you just whip the stick around and get it passed a goalie (which is far easier than shooting a 3 or kicking a goal in soccer).

/lengthly rant

[Still MIGHTY]

The Johns Hopkins Blue Jays? Probably not, box lacrosse is more their thing up in Canada

I dont think people in Baltimore care about the Blue Jays either.

Ehhhhhh!(That was a buzzer sounding). They do care. Anne Arundel County (Baltimore area) is the lacrosse capital of the world ( I'm not joking or over exaggerating). Everyone is all like "Hey, man. Are you going to the Faceoff Classic? It's gonna be SICK!" and I'm like "No, I don't find amusement in almost-grown men hitting each other with sticks and trying to get the ball into the reasonably large net, which takes very little strategy and intelligence. I wouldn't be this pissed unless I didn't here a "baseball is just hitting a goddamn ball with a stick" nonsense every day. It's a lot more than that, it takes knowing the count and whether or not to be passive, (3-0 count), agressive (1-2 count), or looking for a good pitch to hit (2-1 count), and then reading the pitch perfectly, timing it spot on, and getting perfect trajectory, bat speed, and level of the swing to propel the ball a long distance. As in lacrosse you just whip the stick around and get it passed a goalie (which is far easier than shooting a 3 or kicking a goal in soccer).

/lengthly rant

You are high and ignorant.

Have you ever even tried it?

As someone who has played all of the sports you referenced (and even lacrosse in a place that is far from a lax hot bed in SoCal), you are incredibly wrong. You don't know how many idiot football/baseball players I've seen call lacrosse a dumb/ sport then go out and pick up a stick and legitimately try to play and look stupider doing it. There is technique in cradling the ball, in passing, in shooting. There is strategy in the field (extremely similar to basketball and hockey in sense of strategy). Defensive rotations, defensive structure, offensive structure/rotation, Man-up, man-down, faceoffs, etc, etc, etc.

It's 1000x harder than just going out there to "whip the stick around and get it passed [sic] a goalie."

[Lights Out]

My sport requires way more intelligence than your sport.

[AnythingChicago]

The Johns Hopkins Blue Jays? Probably not, box lacrosse is more their thing up in Canada

I dont think people in Baltimore care about the Blue Jays either.

Ehhhhhh!(That was a buzzer sounding). They do care. Anne Arundel County (Baltimore area) is the lacrosse capital of the world ( I'm not joking or over exaggerating). Everyone is all like "Hey, man. Are you going to the Faceoff Classic? It's gonna be SICK!" and I'm like "No, I don't find amusement in almost-grown men hitting each other with sticks and trying to get the ball into the reasonably large net, which takes very little strategy and intelligence. I wouldn't be this pissed unless I didn't here a "baseball is just hitting a goddamn ball with a stick" nonsense every day. It's a lot more than that, it takes knowing the count and whether or not to be passive, (3-0 count), agressive (1-2 count), or looking for a good pitch to hit (2-1 count), and then reading the pitch perfectly, timing it spot on, and getting perfect trajectory, bat speed, and level of the swing to propel the ball a long distance. As in lacrosse you just whip the stick around and get it passed a goalie (which is far easier than shooting a 3 or kicking a goal in soccer).

/lengthly rant

You are high and ignorant.

Have you ever even tried it?

As someone who has played all of the sports you referenced (and even lacrosse in a place that is far from a lax hot bed in SoCal), you are incredibly wrong. You don't know how many idiot football/baseball players I've seen call lacrosse a dumb/ sport then go out and pick up a stick and legitimately try to play and look stupider doing it. There is technique in cradling the ball, in passing, in shooting. There is strategy in the field (extremely similar to basketball and hockey in sense of strategy). Defensive rotations, defensive structure, offensive structure/rotation, Man-up, man-down, faceoffs, etc, etc, etc.

It's 1000x harder than just going out there to "whip the stick around and get it passed [sic] a goalie."

Yes, at first try it is difficult. But so is catching a pop up or hitting a fastball. And those things take many years to master, as in lacrosse a year or so of practice will allow you to be able to cradle and hit the corners of the net on your shot. And, yes, there is strategy but not like in baseball. Lacrosse is 10 times more athletic ability than it is strategy, as baseball is about 1/3 physical, 1/3 reaction/mental, and 1/3 strategy.

[epper]

I really don't even know what you're arguing anymore.

[DelayedPenalty]

Baseball is harder than lacrosse vs. Lacrosse is harder than baseball. Half of you are stupid and wrong. Discuss!

[Sport]

Don made a joke that anythingchicago misinterpreted and then used that to go on a silly rant against the sport of lacrosse.

Both sports require a lot of practice and strategy, and it's silly to state otherwise. And before we get to it, yes, both sports have their own brand of douchey participants. I played baseball at a school with a state championship lacrosse team, I know both sports very well.

Back to the Blue Jays and Toronto, I think Toronto really does care about them, but factors such as a stadium that was built about 6 years early, and being in a division with New York and Boston, keep people from getting excited about the team. I can't say I blame them.

[AnythingChicago]

Don made a joke that anythingchicago misinterpreted and then used that to go on a silly rant against the sport of lacrosse.

Both sports require a lot of practice and strategy, and it's silly to state otherwise. And before we get to it, yes, both sports have their own brand of douchey participants. I played baseball at a school with a state championship lacrosse team, I know both sports very well.

Back to the Blue Jays and Toronto, I think Toronto really does care about them, but factors such as a stadium that was built about 6 years early, and being in a division with New York and Boston, keep people from getting excited about the team. I can't say I blame them.

I knew it was a joke (or more like a random humorous statement), I just was in a ranty mood.

[Sport]

Don made a joke that anythingchicago misinterpreted and then used that to go on a silly rant against the sport of lacrosse.

Both sports require a lot of practice and strategy, and it's silly to state otherwise. And before we get to it, yes, both sports have their own brand of douchey participants. I played baseball at a school with a state championship lacrosse team, I know both sports very well.

Back to the Blue Jays and Toronto, I think Toronto really does care about them, but factors such as a stadium that was built about 6 years early, and being in a division with New York and Boston, keep people from getting excited about the team. I can't say I blame them.

I knew it was a joke (or more like a random humorous statement), I just was in a ranty mood.

You were in the mood to rant about something that he wasn't talking about? That's weird.

[AnythingChicago]

Don made a joke that anythingchicago misinterpreted and then used that to go on a silly rant against the sport of lacrosse.

Both sports require a lot of practice and strategy, and it's silly to state otherwise. And before we get to it, yes, both sports have their own brand of douchey participants. I played baseball at a school with a state championship lacrosse team, I know both sports very well.

Back to the Blue Jays and Toronto, I think Toronto really does care about them, but factors such as a stadium that was built about 6 years early, and being in a division with New York and Boston, keep people from getting excited about the team. I can't say I blame them.

I knew it was a joke (or more like a random humorous statement), I just was in a ranty mood.

You were in the mood to rant about something that he wasn't talking about? That's weird.

Well, people in Anne Arundel County idolizing John's Hopkins led to me wanting to pick apart lacrosse for some reason.