Navel Gazing Announcements and Self Pity

Just a couple things before I throw myself fully into back peddling mode. First, I'm no longer the Weekend Editor at Walkoff Walk. I've eased into the role of semi-regular contributor like an old man into a hot bath. I contributed during the week all year but my weekend output was spotty, but now you can find me posting something over there most days. My post today, in fact, was linked on the front page of SBnation.com. So there! Friend of GROF J from 3:10 to Joba is the new weekend guy, do check him and Walkoff Walk out. Especially if you like baseball, children dressed as animals and/or money, and metahumor.

Secondly, I participated in the Blogger Nine Innings series for the New York Daily News's "Touching Base" blog. It was fun. It may seem that I joked about kidnapping Evan Longoria and bringing him to Canada, but I was deadly serious. You get the stained rug, I'll get the getaway car and valid alibi.

New Yankee Workshop

Okay, so I made a somewhat rash statement about hating on the Yankees. It isn't that I like the Yankees but, over time, I've begun to "root" for the Yankees. Not the Yankees as much as The Better Team. I want The Better Team to win, all the time.

For as long as I've done this, I've beat the "Jays are a good team" drum. They get unlucky, they face long odds, blah blah, you know the song and you do the dance too. I've gone to some length to show appreciation for how good a team, on paper or in practice, I think the Jays built. I've only scratched the surface of rooting out their isolated or situational shortcomings that keep the Jays in third, or fourth, or generally out of shouting distance of playoff berths and Meaningful Baseball.

I see teams like the Twins and I see dumb luck. I see the benefit of circumstance. And I resent it.

I resent "shitty" teams get to play one game playoffs and division series and months of meaningful baseball that fills the building while the Jays, and we fans, don't. We don't get that. We get a concrete tomb made worse by the bizarre string of misfortune and bad timing that is all so far out of our control and our understanding that if fuels this wild resentment and hatred, not of the Yankees and Red Sox who spend money and run their organization free of fiscal and karmic restraint. I can't hate them for doing their job, I can only hate those that don't do their job as well but reap rewards.

I resent the scorn heaped upon the players and officials doomed to one of sports' most futile pursuits and the praise directed at those that couldn't do it at "the highest level", the place the Jays must conduct their business every day.

I want the Yankees or the best team to win because the Jays are (or have been) on of the best teams and they don't. I'm glad the Phillies made the World Series because they too are one of the Best Teams.

I know this runs against the original Davey V Goliath sports trope, but I'm a broken man. I don't want to become as bitter as the beat grunts who long only for a good story, good baseball and good management is a good enough story for me. And that is what I'd like to encourage in AA and the Blue Jays brass: good management. Have a plan and see it through. Make adjustments that don't leave you grasping for a new plan after the last one failed.

Again, I'm not rooting for the asteroid or anything like that, I just wish for just desserts. Maybe one day it will be our turn to eat.