Odds and Sods

Thursday, July 20 2006 @ 10:16 AM EDT

Here are a few random thoughts about various Jays- and baseball-related things.

• I can see into the future, and here's what is going to happen next to Shea Hillenbrand:
  
  • Estimated date on which Shea Hillenbrand starts playing for his new team, probably in the AL West: July 31.
  • Estimated date on which Shea starts a hitting streak for his new club: August 1.
  • Estimated date on which one of the Toronto papers prints an interview with Shea in which he rips his old club: August 15.
  • Estimated date on which he reverts to his normal hitting level: August 22.
  
  I agree with Mike Green's post in the other thread: there are probably at least three versions of what happened yesterday. But if Hillenbrand did write "The ship is sinking" on the clubhouse whiteboard, he deserves to go.
  
  
• It must be fun to be the Boston Red Sox right now. They have the division lead, and just finished playing Kansas City, a team that is rather easy to beat most of the time. Now that they've finished pounding the Royals into mush, they can sit back and watch their divisional rivals beat each other up all weekend. There is much rejoicing in New England!
  
  
• The baseball season can be cruel. In its six months, the average player spends about 500 hours playing or watching baseball games. He performs endless weight reps, flexibility drills, skills practices, and wind sprints. He spends dozens of hours on airplane flights, eats weird food at odd times, and endures arrival times at all hours of the day and night. He plays through pain, illness, and ordinary household crises. And all this work can be outdone by the outcome of one or two bad games.
  
  
• I have recently finished reading two books on Barry Bonds and/or steroids. I was struck by the similarities between Bonds and two other men with enormous achievements on the field and tremendous difficulties off it: Ty Cobb and Pete Rose. All three men shared a single-minded focus on the game and their place in it, to the detriment of everything else in their lives. Given what happened to Cobb (who died alone, bitter and in pain) and Rose (who wound up in jail and out of the Hall of Fame), you have to wonder what will happen to Bonds.
  
  
• I still haven't quite figured out what I don't like about the writings of certain Toronto baseball columnists. (And if you think I'm going to name names here, you're crazy.) I sometimes get the impression, though, that certain writers look down on the very idea of being a Blue Jays fan. It's like they're carnival employees, and we're the rubes.
  
  But I've also realized that baseball writers and fans will always be at cross-purposes. By its very nature, a baseball writer's perspective is different from a fan's perspective: a writer sees the team close up, day after day, and his job is to examine the team with a dispassionate eye and report what he believes to be the truth. A fan, on the other hand, may be aware that their team isn't good enough, but is still hoping wildly anyway, because that's what we do.
  
  This is why I've never wanted to visit the clubhouse or ever meet any of the players: it's more fun to be a fan than to be an insider, I think!

49 comments

https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20060720101616641