I find satisfaction in what they lack

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“Wait ‘til next year!” is the refrain made famous by fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers, unable (until 1955) to take home the World Series crown. The Blue Jays didn’t suffer through four World Series losses in seven years like Dem Bums did, but the 2015 season saw a team built (and then rebuilt on the fly) to win finally broke through and permitted October baseball back across the border.

No rationally-thinking human could fault most Blue Jays fans for lingering in 2015 a little bit. The rush of winning every game for two months, the “scrap this junk and come back with something plausible” ALDS, the incredibly disappointing series American League championship series - it was sensory overload for a fanbase locked in solitary confinement for a generation. No baseball fan should feel an iota of guilt over a refusal to accept that the Kansas City Royals - the fucking Royals! - won the World Series and the Blue Jays did not.

A quiet offseason, compared to the explosive trade deadline, doesn’t have too many of us champing at the bit for the year to start. The way the Red Sox and Yankees tooled up for a run back to the post-season has us dragging our feet on getting 2016 underway. If many Jays fans shouted “wait til next year!” this winter, I certainly missed it.

I’ve been fighting a feeling, a niggling feeling that won’t go away. What if there is no “next year”, not for a while? What if last year was next year?

The Player Haters Guide To The Second AL Wild Card Spot

It's August and the Toronto Blue Jays are sitting in a playoff spot.

Pinch yourselves, folks.

We're less than a month away from Meaningful September Baseball (tm), and with 47 games left on the calendar the Jays and their fans find themselves in the unfamiliar spot of fending off teams with designs on sneaking into the one-game crapshoot.

There's an important step that needs to be taken from going to fans of an also-ran to fans of a serious playoff contender. That step is hate. Hate, hate, hate.

To help guide you through the next month and a half of pure seething hatred towards the rest of the sopping garbage juice that is the other AL Wild Card hopefuls, here is a handy guide to properly hating the other five contenders.