I’m going to paste a picture of the greatest player to ever wear a Blue Jays uniform. He is in his athletic prime right now, so no, the stats don’t currently bear that out, but he will be, by the time his career is finished.
His name is Roy Halladay, and the performance the rest of his team put forth tonight makes me feel like a complete fucking idiot for following sports in the first place. This wasn’t some loss in April we’ll all look back on and chuckle about at the end of the month, when the Jays are battlin’ for that 83rd win. This was complete HORSE SHIT, but it’s not about the non-hitting wastes of space that made up the lineup tonight, it’s about me. (And Roy.)
In today’s troubling times, a baseball starting pitcher simply does not finish his games. He is pulled after around a hundred pitches and they go to the bullpen. That makes Roy Halladay an aberration. He decided one day to try to induce ground outs (instead of going for strikeouts) and lah, ahhhh, dee, daaah, he became better at it than anyone else in the world. I couldn’t give myself a year and dedicate myself to Bomberman for a dead console system where there are no other players and be world class at it. So the respect I have for Roy is unparalleled.
It is also more than the rest of the Jays have for him. Look at this fucking shit – two hits against a lefty in Jon Lester? This team is designed to murder lefties. That’s why they play in a different country, to escape the warrants. But not tonight! Ho, ho, ho, not tonight!
Alex Rios, 0-4. David Eckstein, 0-3. Matt Stairs, 0-1. Scott Rolen, 1-4. (He’s playing his ass off so far, so none of what I am saying applies to him.) Vernon Wells, 0-3 with a walk, and a complete inability to get Rolen home that I would have wagered my house on if I could have found a bookie to work out the logistics of my mortgage payments. Our “DH” went 0-3 with two left on base. The new kid – Adam Lind – who I screamed (well, screamed on the Internet) to get into Toronto…. yeah, any time you want to get your first fucking hit kid, feel free.
I don’t blame Gregg Zaun for any of this because when your catcher will most likely lead the team in on-base percentage, he gets a free ride. But Jesus Christ, what a bunch of hitless fucks. Halladay pitched his fourth straight complete game, and he’s 2-4 on the season. He’s going to be the first guy to get Cy Young votes with 20 losses, because the fucking hopeless team behind him TEE HEEs their way through their trips through the plate.
Oh, and the center fielder we gave $126 million to couldn’t cleanly field a goddamn baseball and throw home, in an attempt to get David Ortiz out, who was running from second. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME.
I thought I was “helping” when I went to every Jays blog I could find, in order to get Adam Lind up. But Jesus Christ, this is hopeless. I know the flu has made its way through the clubhouse, but I am sick to death for making excuses for these guys. I know, because I have been here before.
In case you are just visiting the site, the other awesome sports team I follow is the New Orleans Saints. And let me put it this way – since Joe Carter ended the 1993 World Series, the Saints have been in four more fucking playoffs games than the Jays. And the Saints are terrible! I could easily name 20 hilariously awful mistakes of the Saints and not even get into the “Billy Joes.”
The game I just witnessed tonight, with Boston beating Toronto 1-0 with Roy pitching what might have been his best game of the season, considering the lineup, was akin to a game played at the end of October of 1999 between the Saints and the — at the time – winless, expansion, Cleveland Browns.
I had gone to Grand Junction with my friend Fodge to hit up the Halloween parties. (The Joker, thank you.) There was one television with the NFL Ticket there, so on Sunday we caught the first half of the Saints-Browns game, and the second half of whoever the Bills were playing.
There was a graphic at the end of the Bills game that showed the rest of the scores in the league, and the Saints were beating the Browns by a few points with six seconds left to go. Well! Surely they had it wrapped up! We left the bar and drove back to Fort Collins.
Twenty minutes into the trip, we get the update on how the early games went. Tim Couch threw a Hail Mary to Kevin Johnson in the end zone, giving the new Browns their first victory. The Saints lost to a team made up of some draft picks and players that NOBODY ELSE WANTED. I was much more passionate about sports back then, so I screamed “FUCK” and didn’t say a word for the next hour. The next day I read that Willie Roaf — who was pretty much the Roy Halladay of Saints players — was disgusted with the other fuckers on his team, and the staff, and said that he was their best trade piece and they should move him.
(Oh, and I gave myself a sinus infection because I snorted a line of pixie stix at a bar table while we were out Saturday night. )
I’m not saying I expect the same thing out of Roy. For the terrible shit the Jays have pulled this season (I went to figure out what they are batting with runners in scoring position, but my monitor is an old SyncMaster and can’t display digits that low) it wasn’t quite as bad as what the Saints did to Roaf. Also, nobody is having sex with Roy’s wife on the sly. But how can he not be frustrated. He was actually playing in the same game with those miserable shits that let him down for the fourth time this season. He has to see them every day. Every fucking player that played tonight owes him a goddamn apology.
Halladay is too nice a guy to say anything, but we DESERVE to see him say he wants to be traded. We DESERVE to see him say he doesn’t want to re-sign in Toronto after 2010. We DESERVE to see him win a championship for Arizona, or Cleveland, or Anaheim, or whoever. How many years has J.P. Ricciardi had to put a team around him? (Er, five.) What a complete crock of horseshit.
We’re going to lose the best player we’ve ever had, the only pitcher that I drop everything to watch, because of the gutless, shrunk testicled play of the rest of the team. It makes me sick. I don’t think there is a chance in hell Roy sees this – but he’s the only decent thing about baseball in my life and a lot of other Blue Jays fans. I now know how Steve Carlton lost 10 games in 1972. I’m watching it, and Roy Halladay is living it.
