Forward Thinking Please

Hopefully the hiring of Alex Anthopolous means the endless reminiscing of the Blue Jays organization is over for good.

Enough already. Enough with the endless Summer of ’93, the endless Flashback Friday.

If one of the most used sports cliches of the modern era is "I'm just trying to move forward," why is it the Jays are seemingly stuck always trying to move backward?

What didn’t work for the Argos with Don Matthews and didn’t work for the Maple Leafs with Cliff Fletcher clearly hasn’t worked for the Jays with Paul Beeston and Cito Gaston.

Basic rule in sports. Going back never works, so why try?

Beeston looks prepared to move on. Gaston should. The opportunity available right now for Anthopolous won’t come along again, the opportunity to start with a fresh slate, with his own people, with all the pointless ties to the greatness of another era dismissed because today is today.

This is a franchise that has insulted the intelligence of its fan base repeatedly in recent years and now needs to put something on the table that looks new and sets the tone for a different era.

Sadly, the suggestion you here most is that the Jays should now bring Pat Gillick back as some kind of senior advisor. Again with the back-to-the-future stuff. Gillick is different than the others because he has gone on to have all kinds of success in his post-Jays career, but the symbolism of bringing him back, even if he were willing, would just further amplify the sense that this baseball organization lacks new answers to new problems.

Assuming he won’t sign, Roy Halladay must move on. The notion of bumping the payroll up over $100 million next year and trying to compete with the Yankees and Red Sox immediately doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

The club needs to take a step back, build a base around Adam Lind and Aaron Hill, and generally become a more resourceful type of team. When J.P. Ricciardi arrived eight years ago, the idea was that this would become Oakland East, that the Jays would become one of those franchises who played the game the right way, invested in youth and gradually become consistently competitive not through money but through ideas and commitment to those ideas.

That was before Frank Thomas. And B.J. Ryan. And A.J. Burnett.

Well, this is another opportunity to get back to that way of thinking, or establish another new approach. Anthopolous didn’t have to sell his ideas to the organization – is there a reason the Jays didn’t look around for replacements for Ricciardi, by the way? – so it’s difficult to fully understand right now how his approach may differ from the Ricciardi years.

Most important, however, is that Anthopolous must make it clear he has no more interest in endlessly trying to replay 1992 and ’93 again.

Gotta cut those ties for good.

Reasons Not To Go

To the cacophony of concern over minuscule Jays crowds this week, let me add a personal experience.

For the 11-year-old boy's birthday, we and another dad and son took in the Yankees game eight days ago at the dome. Picked up the tickets, $50 per, which got us great seats eight rows up along the first base line.

Bought the obligatory overpriced food, and were in place for the first pitch. So far so good.

Joining us for the game in the seats directly in front of us were three young men and two girls, girlfriends to two of the guys. Right away, it was clear that the intent of the men was to quaff as many beers as possible over the course of the game, and of course it had to turn into a marathon.

Now, you can wonder about the financial I.Q. of people who imagine it makes sense to drink wildly overpriced beer to excess while paying no attention to the entertainment on the field, but whatever. As the game wore along, the swearing picked up, as did the volume and the general distraction as they clearly weren't all that interested in the game. They wanted to drink beer and find ways for someone, anyone, to pay attention to them. And, naturally, they always imagine themselves to be the funniest people in the building. By about the sixth inning, it was impossible to ignore them, and the fact there were two small children very close by didn't really impact on them and their behaviour.

Predictably, by the ninth inning, internal tensions had grown, and one stood up, drilled his buddy with a right hand and stalked off.

Now, I should tell you my son and his pal found all of this wildly entertaining. But to me, these were reasons not to go to another Blue Jays game. For roughly $200, you basically buy a lottery ticket and hope you don't get stuck with drunken idiots nearby. Meanwhile, the objective of the organization seems to be to encourage maximum beer consumption, and the results are predictable. It wasn't an awful experience, but it was unpleasant. Call me a prude, I guess.

All this would be fine, it seems to me, if the Jays were grappling with excess demand. But they're not, and crowds of 11,461 and 11,159 this week suggest big problems may lie ahead with the baseball team seemingly sentenced to endless mediocrity.

If you have an outstanding team people desperately want to see, maybe you don't have to worry about whether some people have to grin and bear it when seated near people whose objective is to drink and be loud in general, not loud as baseball fans.

But if you have these Jays, you better make sure that's not happening, ever. If a family can't be guaranteed a family experience, why would a family ever return?.

One Long September

Just 29 Blue Jay games to go and one big question looms.

Will this team win 70 games? It's going to be close, quite probably, a sensational swoon given that in May many were talking wild card and praising Cito Gaston as a magician.

Gaston and Paul Beeston are the Teflon Tandem, blamed for nothing, while J.P. Ricciardi is blamed for absolutely everything.

But 70 wins? Really?

The truly noteworthy part about being at the ballpark Thursday night, meanwhile, was the absolute indifference there is to the horrible season being experienced by Vernon Wells, one of baseball's highest paid players.

The Yanks brought all their big contracts to town and put them all on display in a powerful showing. The Jays have two biggie deals - Wells and Roy Halladay - and on a night Halladay wasn't pitching Wells once again really didn't figure much in the result. He went 0-4 with a walk and a run scored, didn't make a play of significance in the outfield and struck out to end the game.

Ho-hum. Just another nothing night.

But people don't seem to really react to this. They just shrug. No significant booing, as you might expect in a town where the likes of Bryan McCabe and Vince Carter were vilified in recent years.

It's as though Jays fans feel helpless in the face of Wells' gigantic $126 million deal signed in December of '06 that has made him the game's most untradeable player.

He got $25.5 million to sign, and while playing for a mere pittance of a salary this year - $1.5 million - the dollars really take off next year. It''s $12.5 million for 2010, then $23 million followed by THREE more seasons of $21 million.

In June, baseball people were wondering if Wells was off to a slow start and would turn his season around. As folks in the game love to say, it's a long season.

Well he hasn't. And fans, at least Thursday night, seem to have just accepted it, seemingly knowing that even if they decide to boo their lungs out at the worst contract in team history, they better be prepared to do it for five more years since Wells isn't ever going anywhere.

Maybe that's why fans boo individual players sometimes, hoping that management will ultimately decide to send that player packing.

But the Jays can't do that will Wells and the fans know it. This isn't B.J. Ryan, where simply dumping the player will mean a short-term hit, albeit a big one.

Backloading this contract, it appears, will be as destructive as the overall dollar amount.

And the fans seem resigned and simply shrug.

The Untouchable Cito

In his first go 'round with the Blue Jays, Cito Gaston could never get reasonable credit for his work, even when it resulted in two world championships. For years, the call-in shows featured caller after caller lamenting Gaston's managing abilities and wondering what the club would be capable of if Tony LaRussa, say, was in charge.

It was terribly unfair. Never really made much sense.

Curiously, however, what we're hearing and seeing these days is the reverse juice of those years and the way in which Gaston is regarded in the Toronto sports culture.

Now he doesn't win. And he can do no wrong. Caller after caller on the radio shows skewer J.P. Ricciardi, with Vernon Wells a close second, yet Gaston remains untouched.

Speculation is rampant over whether Ricciardi will be back, or whether Paul Beeston will translate his interim presidential status into something more permanent.

But there's little debate on whether Gaston should be back, or is the right man to lead this franchise. The closest we've heard is Cito himself suggesting he might like to have more time to play golf, but hardly ruling out another year in the dugout.

Since winning the '93 World Series, Gaston's managerial record is less than scintillating, with a .463 winning percentage in parts of six major league seasons with no playoff berths. Gaston's Jays winning percentage from '94-today is worse than Jim Fregosi (.515) and John Gibbons (.500) during their respective terms in office.

Yet both Fregosi and Gibbons were chased out of town, while Gaston has gone from No. 1 scapegoat in the winning years to Mr. Untouchable in the losing years.

Never an unkind word is said any more about the manager who once never got nearly the credit he deserved. He is part of the corporate Rogers program to sucker Blue Jay fans into focusing on the past rather than the current state of affairs, a program that includes Beeston, the ugly blue "vintage" uniforms worn on Friday nights and the recent "anniversary" celebrations of the '92 and '93 champions.

Gaston's classy, laid back demeanor has something to do with his teflon status in his second stint as Jays manager, as does his obvious affection for the city compared to Ricciardi, who prefers not to live here. But perhaps it's more about the fact that every unsuccessful team - and even some successful ones - have to have a lightning rod for criticism.

On a team blessed with talent, Gaston was that lightning rod.

On a team mired in mediocrity, others get that dubious honor. And he just cruises, with essentially no ongoing examination of his work and it's results.

Winning Just Doesn't Attract

Maybe people just miss Paul Godfrey that much.

Nah, that can't be it.

You do have to wonder, however, that with only one winning major league sports team in this city - okay, two if you want to include Toronto FC, which I don't - the Toronto Blue Jays are suffering from a significant attendance hit these days.

Yes, there are complicating factors. The season has barely started, the dome is much nicer open than when closed and baseball attendance in general is down (about 7 per cent), although not as badly as some feared it would be when projections suggested tough economic times might knock down attendance across-the-board by 17-20 per cent.

Still, you'd think a winning team in this city at this time would attract some people.

Instead, the Jays appealed to only 18,331 customers on Saturday for a game against Baltimore, and then a tidy little crowd of 20,418 yesterday as the club completed a sweep of the Orioles.

In all, average attendance so far is about 20,200, the worst in a decade and well down from last year's average of 29,626.

Again, yes, there are reasons. For instance, neither the Yankees nor the Bosox have come to town, although that's almost become an artificial way for the Jays to pump up their attendance numbers since those two clubs bring a travelling band of fans with them. And there was that no-beer game that one supposes would have discouraged some from attending.

That said, it should be noted that not only are the 18-9 Jays playing well these days, they have almost no competition, with both the Raptors and Maple Leafs having started their summer vacations long ago.

This is a baseball team that has the market to itself. Yet the numbers aren't there.

Nobody's expecting things to be like they were back in the salad days when the Jays attendance peaked at a 50,098 average back in 1993. But since a low of 20,209 in 2002, the fans had been slowly but gradually coming back, and last season the club's average attendance was sixth best in the American League.

Now back to this. Lots of reasons for it, but at the end of the day, it's peculiar that a city that should be starved for a winner doesn't seem interested in a once-beloved baseball team that's off to a start that equals the best in its history.

Good Things About Losing

Personally, I've always liked the fact that when Canada gets its butt whipped at hockey, there's an outcry.

Seems like that's been a productive dynamic over the decades. It made us look at our game after '72. After losing at the World Cup in 1996, the Olympics in '98 and suffering an embarrassing defeat to Kazahkstan at the 1998 world junior championships, Canadian hockey authorities held the Open Ice Summit that did a useful and thorough examination of the game in Canada.

There will always be those who say nothing was wrong in the first place, but they're wrong. Skill and speed in the game is embraced far more today than it was a decade ago in this country, and we're producing far more highly talented offensive players than grinders and goons.

So when we lose, we care. That's a good thing.

Contrast that with the absolute lack of any widespread outcry in the United States over the defeat of their national baseball squad at the World Baseball Classic to Japan on Sunday night, which was followed by the thrilling Japanese victory over South Korea last night in the championship game.

Right now, the main response I'm hearing from the U.S. media is "Who Cares?," truly an indictment of the way in which that country feels these days about its national pastime.

"Did you shrug your shoulders? Did you shake your head? Did you even bother to do any of that before flipping over to see the college basketball scores? " wrote Mike Vaccaro in the New York Post.

"And that's the problem. The World Baseball Classic is doomed to remain a glorified exhibition for as long as that indifference lingers and lasts in the mindset of the United States. Sorry if that sounds parochial.

"Apologies if that seems like the ugly ramblings of an ugly American. Sometimes, the truth ain't pretty."

Others, like William Rhoden of the New York Times, read more into the U.S. defeat.

"It was as if the United States was being reintroduced to a game it invented. The American game, for better or for worse, has moved to lavish new stadiums and supports lucrative player contracts. It is built on power and entertainment — a deadly combination, we’ve discovered, in an era of performance-enhancing drugs," wrote Rhoden.

"Meanwhile, nations like Japan and South Korea have learned our game, digested it and improved upon it by going back to the basics.

"'The world has caught up with us,' Bob Watson, a Major League Baseball vice president, said after Sunday’s loss."

Echoes of Canadian hockey after '72, huh?

The question is whether watching Japan capture the first two WBC events will alter the way in which the U.S. plays the game, and it doesn't sound like it. There was more talk about whether the U.S. had access to the right players for this event rather than whether they play the game in a way that will be successful internationally.

"Perhaps the result would have been no different had the U.S. had a better roster. But it would have been nice to see the two best American pitchers, Roy Halladay and Tim Lincecum," wrote Bill Shaikin in the Los Angeles Times.

"It would have been nice to see Ryan Howard or Mark Teixeira playing first base, instead of a second baseman named Mark DeRosa. It would have been nice if Adam Dunn had been used at designated hitter instead of in right field, where he did not even try to throw out two runners on sacrifice flies that were not terribly deep."

Somehow I don't see an Open Field Summit coming for U.S. baseball.

 

 

Bits and Pieces of Truth

So here's what we're supposed to believe.

At a time when he was in the first few years of a ginormous 10-year, $252 million contract to play professional baseball, Alex Rodriguez was merrily popping and otherwise ingesting a little of this, a little of that to juice his talent, all along knowing it was illegal stuff but not really having any idea what he was putting in his body.

According to Rodriguez, it could have been anything. Sugar. Strychnine. Cod liver oil. Flaxseed. Human growth hormone. Vitamin C.  He had, and has, no idea what it was he was taking.

That's a little hard to believe.

Other parts of the carefully managed A-Rod/A-Fraud/A-Roid confession yesterday, on the other hand, were very believable.

That Texas Rangers team, it would appear, was Steroid Central for years, long before Rodriguez got there. That he says a "culture" was prevalent in the game and with that team that told players that taking performance-enhancing drugs was acceptable makes sense. That he felt pressure to do whatever he could to justify the biggest contract in baseball history makes sense as well, although it's a sad commentary on the insecurities of a superb athlete.

That baseball was turning a blind eye to an awful lot of shenanigans in those days as Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa put the game back on the front page with their home run-hitting feats is a fact, and it's rather humorous now to hear so many baseball people say they had no idea what was going on in clubhouses back then. The union, for goodness sakes, was apparently tipping players off to "random" drug tests, so somebody knew something.

C'mon. Everybody saw the explosion of muscles everywhere. Heck, McGwire's bottle of androstiendione was there in his locker for the world to see. Instead of an investigation, however, what we got was an admonishment not to ruin the fun and anyways, how could steroids help a guy hit home runs anyway?

Remember that? People used to say it all the time. Happily now, in Feb., 2009, in the week of Darwin's birth when the evolution of man in sport should be better understood than ever before, you're not hearing such nonsense as much.

So there are parts of Rodriguez's story that sound logical, and parts in which his conveniently foggy memory make him sound like Roger Clemens alleging that Andy Pettitte "mis-remembered" things from the good old days.

That said, Rodriguez was smart to get out in front of this story. He learned that from Pettitte and Jason Giambi and clearly has seen that the way in which McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro and Clemens have handled allegations against them is not the way to go. I would still argue that if McGwire had come clean about his drug use, the path to the Hall of Fame would now be clear.

The crucial difference for Rodriguez when compared to McGwire and Clemens, however, is that he's still playing. He has a chance, over the next 7-10 years, to make all this seem like a bad memory, to perform clean at such a level that he'll be viewed no worse than someone like, say, Santonio Holmes, who dealt drugs as a teenager and went on to catch the winning pass in the Super Bowl.

The list of athletes with checkered pasts is long indeed, and that's the opportunity at hand for Rodriguez, to make his drug use of the early part of this century part of his past, but not his lasting legacy.

The biggest obstacle to doing that is the fact that he's just not a well-liked athlete by the media, his teammates, other players and his coaches.

Being A-Jerk is likely to now catch up to him more than being A-Roid.

The best and the, uh, not so best

It's the great contrast in Toronto, a comparison between substance and style.

On one side, Roy Halladay.

On the other side, Larry Tanenbaum.

Care to guess which one's substance and which one's style?

Halladay, for going on a decade now, has been the city's Quiet Superstar, a title he reinforced again Thursday night with his second 20-win season, another year in which he has been non-complaining and largely brilliant, and the team has been mediocre.

He has been the best player on any team - baseball, hockey, football, basketball - in this city for a long, long time, and probably should have a greater profile than he does based on his accomplishments, demeanor and contributions to the Blue Jays.

Others have been major stars - Chris Bosh and Mats Sundin come to mind - but Halladay has been better than any of 'em, arguably the best pitcher in baseball for three or four seasons, with one Cy Young Award on his resume so far.

That's substance.

Then there's Tanenbaum, a wealthy developer and, it should be noted, a philanthropist.

But when it comes to sports, it's been all style, all talk, no substance.

Hearing Tanenbaum's comments on Thursday that he and MLSE aren't interested in just winning one Stanley Cup, but want years of "competitive" teams based on slow, intelligent and steady growth was just too funny.

Being stuck with a very weak-looking roster, it would appear, has the Leaf chairman in search of a new public pose, and a cynic would not think that by publicly admitting that a lousy season lies ahead, and maybe more than one, the Leafs have just bought themselves another three years - five? - before anyone can demand the appearance of a quality team.

He can't tell you who the GM of this team will be in June. But trust him, MLSE has a plan in place. A new plan.

With Tanenbaum as chairman, the Leafs have, as has been the case for much of their history, squandered first-round draft picks and prospects in search of the quick fix.

Now, suddenly, it's time to build slowly, carefully?

The man's found his new hockey religion?

Then, to suggest Detroit executive Steve Yzerman couldn't possibly fit the bill for a new GM because he would be a "rookie" was not only insulting to Yzerman, but given that the Leaf organization sought to hire a new GM in the spring and couldn't find a single, qualified and acceptable candidate, nearly laughable.

Tanenbaum, as a sports executive in this town, has never accomplished a damn thing.

But he can dismiss Yzerman with a wave of his imperial hand?

It's all MLSE blather, all talk to continually try to placate the customer while urging him or her to keep paying while always promising good times are just around the corner. We've got it all figured out this time, the company line goes. The Leafs, with Tanenbaum as the corporate face of the franchise, have made a big deal about buying out expensive veterans in recent months, suggesting it's a large sacrifice but one that must be made, while at the same time making sure it's all paid for by icing a team that will spend roughly $10 million less on the maximum allowed on player payrolls this season.

All baloney in a $2,000 suit. All sizzle and slick rhetoric. Sadly, some fools find this chatter reassuring, as though their hockey team is finally on the right track with the right people steering the ship even though it's the same people at the top who have been full of it time and time again.

Halladay, by contrast, is a true sportsman of substance, the Quiet Superstar for a city where winning rarely happens anymore, where the best idea anyone has is to try to steal another city's NFL team.

Oh yeah, Tanenbaum's in on that one, too.

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THE MAIL BAG RETURNS!

Damien Cox is back with his weekly Maple Leafs mail bag. He'll answer your questions in his blog every Thursday starting next week. Click here to submit a question.

Time for Change

This is one observer who keenly waits for baseball's second season, the excitement that will begin shortly in eight cities and produce extraordinary tension and drama. TV - particularly high-def TV - highlights baseball like few other sports, focusing in on the raw nerves of players and coaches in the late innings of a tight ball game, without helmets or masks to cover the human condition on display. The wild card has only added to this, producing more baseball that matters.

Once again, however, we won't be seeing any of that live here in Toronto. In fact, HD television wasn't even invented the last time we saw a Blue Jay playoff game. The Quebec Nordiques hadn't even moved to Denver the last time post-season baseball happened at the dome.

The past 10 days, in fact, have proven emphatically the dangers of getting too excited about winning a few baseball games or losing a few baseball games.

It's a sport where the big picture is all that matters, where a player can't be judged by a hitting slump in May because by September his numbers may end up being exactly what they were projected to be, or even better.

For the Blue Jays, the past month has been an exercise in understanding the big picture, not focusing on two weeks here or two weeks there.

But my goodness, what a turnaround in fortunes there's been.

Less than two weeks ago, the club was basking in the warmth of a September hot streak. Cito Gaston looked comfortable and serene again as the club's manager, various bats were booming that hadn't boomed much all year, kids like David Purcey and Travis Snider were appearing to be sure-fire factors for the future and J.P. Ricciardi's job seemed secure for at least one more year.

Today, things are much different. The club is now 3-5 since losing a theoretically important back-end of a double bill in Boston, Shaun Marcum appears lost for all of next year, the possibility of finishing ahead of the Yankees is the "goal" left to play for (do you think the Yanks have their eye on that prize?) and with A.J. Burnett likely heading out the door as well, spending millions of dollars more on free agent players to buttress the lineup appears to be the likely plan.

It's the same plan that's been in play for a while now, different than what was sold seven years ago when Ricciardi took over. Then, the Jays were supposed to become the Minnesota Twins of the east, a smart, resourceful team that didn't spend zillions on other team's players but developed its own and throughout the organization played the game the right way.

Ring a bell?

Seven years later, there are some younger players on the big league roster, and some good ones. But no progress has been made in the standings despite an enormous infusion of cash. Fifteen years out of the playoffs is 15 years, and Ricciardi's teams haven't made so much as a dent in that problem.

So now its a straightforward choice. With next season looking damaged already because of the loss of Marcum, Dustin McGowan and probably Burnett, keeping Ricciardi now probably means keeping him for another two seasons, minimum. Could he ultimately produce a winner? Well, Joe Madden would tell you anything's possible.

On the other hand, changing management now could be an opportunity to re-define what this team seeks to be and offer the fans of the ball club at least the hint that year after year of mediocrity isn't acceptable.

Its one thing to constantly lament playing in the American League East with New York and Boston, but quite another to have watched Tampa Bay zoom past the Jays as well. Would Toronto baseball fans have willingly endured all those years of horrific losing in Tampa to be where the Rays are now, or do fans prefer a the steady drumbeat of being competitive but not nearly good enough?

Its an intriguing question.

Two weeks ago all those wins had some, not all, Jays fans giddy with possibilities. In a city where the football team's gone south, the hockey team is already expecting a bad season and only the basketball team is a serious factor in its league, any team that can put together a string of victories is bound to get a lot of attention. Heck, a couple more wins and the Buffalo-Toronto Bills will be getting a parade up Yonge Street.

Today, the feeling about this baseball club, however, is more "here we go again," more helplessness than optimism.

You don't have to regard Ricciardi as the worst GM in the history of baseball to want change.

He put the team in this position, of that there is no debate. All season he asked fans to wait and see how the season played out, and it has played out in a defineable way.

Surely it's time to see if another executive can build on Ricciardi's foundation.

Unless more of the same is what you want.

Winning and Meaning

Of course a 10-game win streak means something. Of course it means all that was supposedly bad about the Blue Jays is now good.

Well, of course it does, but with one caveat.

If you believe that the Jays have truly accomplished something meaningful over the exciting two weeks, that J.P. Ricciardi deserves to stay and a bunch of players will carry this over into next season, then you also have to believe the opposite.

That is, if the Jays now lose five in a row, Ricciardi et al are bums and need to go.

If that's how you evaluate a pro sports team, by the length of their latest winning streak or slump, then you have to go both ways. Wins mean security and contracts extensions, losing must mean comprehensive change and mass firings.

The smart fan, of course, simply enjoys the 10 wins for what they were, a combination of skill and luck at a time of year when expanded rosters change the elements of the game to some degree.

Beyond that, this streak means no more than the 8-0-2 rush with which the Maple Leafs finished the 2005-06 NHL season.

That wasn't exactly a harbinger of good times ahead was it?

Nor, as colleague Dave Perkins pointed out when the Leafs were putting that season-ending streak together under Pat Quinn, did the 34-18 finish of the '98 Jays under Tim Johnson.

Or the 19-7 finish in '03 that led directly into a 67-94 record the next season.

It's not that winning when the games don't matter is meaningless.

It's just not particularly meaningful.

If Paul Godfrey and Jays ownership have their heads screwed on right, they'll evaluate Ricciardi on the basis of his entire record since 2001. They won't just look at Travis Snyder and marvel at the farm system, but will examine the entirety of the youth and prospects that have been acquired under Ricciardi's reign.

Finally, they'll have to understand that this is a team that has never been to the post-season with Ricciardi at the helm.

Logically, that will be a fact that only the wilfully blind will choose to ignore.