Man Well Lee.

Two winters ago I went to a card store that sold you three Mario Lemieux cards for 25 cents from a gumball type machine. I got my brother about 20 of them.

I dropped by there today and bought 50 cents worth (FIDDY CENT?) of “Classic” Toronto Blue Jays cards.

Yeah, i’m getting ready for another season up in the 500 level in Skydome.

Gibby and the boys will be back from Florida soon, and playing in the cement bowl by the lake.

Word is, the team is going to make a run for the wild card this year.

Go Jays go.

So what’s the best card I got today? A Dave Stieb.  You should see his ’stash.

The worst? Manny Lee.

Schilling for your thoughts?

Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt “Bloody Sock” Schilling has a blog.

You can read it here. 

I like the part where he talks about working in a new pitch, a Change-Up, into his arsenal.

There is also a moment where he talks about a single solitary slider pitch and worrying that, if it’s the best one he’s ever pitched in his life, that it’s wasted being pitched during spring training (as opposed to say, the seventh game of the world series to get Albert Pujhols to ground out into a double play).

He’s at his best when he takes us into the minutiae of baseball. Waving off the catcher, for example.

He’s not so good when he’s sorta shilling products – like the part where he’s  talking about some 38 studio/video game company he has going.

Schilling, stick to Schilling.

Evidently Matt Stairs is a hoser.

Read a nice article this morning about Toronto Blue Jay Left Fielder/DH Matt Stairs. He’s Canadian and from New Brunswick. At some point the reporter refers to him, in a reverent way, as a hoser.

It’s good to have that hoser on the Jays.

Southpaw?

Looking at the Jays starting rotation and you see another hole left by the departure of Ted Lilly.

Chacin’s our only lefty.

Burnett, Halliday, Towers, Thomson, Zambrano – all righties.

We’re starting to look like the Red Sox.

Big Hurt

The Jays jsut got older this off-season.
We got “Rolls” Royce Clayton and Frank “Big Hurt” Thomas.

I’m sure FT has a ton of home runs left in his body – I remember watching him in batting practice last year and just watching him launch ball after ball into the stands.

But then, during the game, Thomas didn’t do much. And he didn’t strike fear into the fans the same way that Big Papi or Manny Ramirez do when they come up to bat.

No worries. He’s a Jay now, so he’ll be welcomed to the team.

I’m more concerned with our pitching this year. Perhaps J.P. has a couple more moves before April, but it remains to be seen what he can pull off.

Let’s start with locking in Vernon Wells to a long-term contract extension. He’s great on the team.

- Who puts pie in rookie’s faces during their interviews?
- Who throws a ball to outfield fans during the game?
- Who keeps winning gold gloves?

Vernon is the heart and soul of this team. They have to sign him – no matter what it takes.

Atta boy Jays (sorta)

The BlueBirds finished the home part of their season with a 5-0 win over Boston last night.

They’re now in 2nd place – passing boston.

You know, really Boston is beat up right now, and they’re missing a number of their big players (ManRam is out). They also traded David Wells for a resin bag at the deadline. These aren’t excuses for the RedSox,  just clear what is.

The jays have played this last weekend like it matters, and Boston just mailed it in. So the jays deserve to be in 2nd.

But you know, all this reminds me of the 1998 winter olympics where Canada lost the bronze medal game in hockey to the finns.

This was after they lost to the U.S. in the Semi-finals.

Third place didn’t matter and Canada justmailed it in against the finns.

I think Boston and CAnada 1998 are similar – both played their season for first place, and after that was lost to them they didn’t seem care about 2nd or 3rd respectively.

So next  year, be like Boston and go all out for first place Jays. Who knows, you may get the wild card.

Glaus = Tall-stop.

I think it's a great idea that Troy Glaus (Gloss) play short-stop for the blue jays.

I like Hillenbrand – let him handle third, and put that hulking Troy in short.

There are people out there that talk about natural positions. And they can point to how Russ Adams is now at second base.

My point of view is that they're baseball players – at some point you can play other positions in the field. (Save for catcher – which is a totally different skill-set all together.)

Yes, i'd love to have a Miguel Tejada play for the Jays at short.

But that's not an option.

I like what Gibbons is doing here with Glaus – shake it up, why not?

I mean, he's stuck with putting Josh Towers back on the mound (1-8) this series against Atlanta, why not shake it up and try to get something close to a winning lineup.