David Wells on Toronto sportswriters:
"No beat writers in any town I've ever played in are as ignorant, muckraking, or relentlessly negative as the guys in Toronto. In a region where baseball is just slightly less popular than hockey, football, basketball, curling, tobogganing, ice fishing and snowshoe racing, the local sports-hosers have absolutely no idea what they're talking about."
Boomer on Canadian baseball fans:
"Baseball fans in Canada simply do not understand what they're watching. Honest to God, there were nights where I just wanted to climb up in the seats at the SkyDome and start slapping."
Trouble is, there's just enough truth in both of those hyperbolic statements to make the Canadian reader a little uncomfortable. We're getting better at understanding and appreciating baseball here -- as prospects like Adam Loewen and Jeff Francis are making clear -- but still, 90% of the conversations I have with my countrymen and women about baseball rarely rise above "grown men in their pajamas getting paid millions to hit a ball with a stick." I can almost feel your pain, Boomer -- though I'm actually giving up all-night benders for Lent.
Gotta give credit to Richard Griffin for this line, too: "[Wells's] book might be the first unauthorized autobiography in publishing history."
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20030304093450999