Remember before the Major League Baseball season began, when the Miami Marlins were like, “Hey, Toronto Blue Jays, would you like all of these good players that we signed to trick the city into giving us a new stadium?” and everyone else was like, “Oh snap, the Blue Jays are gonna be really good now”? Haha, that was a pretty funny overreaction, wasn’t it?

The Jays are currently in the American League East cellar, 12 games back of the first place Boston Red Sox and nine games south of .500. While they’re certainly not out of the playoff picture, they’ll really need to step up and do some heavy lifting if they’d like to eventually leap frog the Baltimore Orioles, Tampa Bay Rays and even the New York Yankees and Sox if they want to get into the postseason. Not exactly the simplest of tasks.

My advice for the Jays? Start having a little more fun. Take a good, long look at shortstop Munenori Kawasaki up there and the way he just won’t stop smiling and find a way to make it infectious. Bottle it, sell it, snort it, inject it – whatever it takes. Because he’s the only reason I care about the Jays right now.

Read the rest of this entry »

On paper (or perhaps pehper) the Toronto Blue Jays should be the team to beat in the American League East this season. With the core of the New York Yankees – Curtis Granderson, Alex Rodriguez and Mark Texeira – already injured and expected to miss significant time, the Bronx Bombers should be in for a down year. Additionally, the Boston Red Sox are coming off an unusual last place finish, which leaves the Baltimore Orioles and Tampa Bay Rays as the main threats to the Blue Jays’ divisional hopes. And thus ends the strangest paragraph I’ve written in several years.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Jays outfielder Jose Bautista is already psyched and energized to get the season underway, so he took to Reddit yesterday for an Ask Me Anything session, through which he answered some of the hardest questions that any athlete could ever answer – namely, what’s it like to play with Colby Rasmus’ goofy-looking ass?

Oh, and it also helped that Bautista was promoting MLB the Show. I’d certainly be excited if I were featured in a video game, and hopefully it would be called “Asslevania” and I play a vampire slayer who hooks up with Kate Upton. If anyone from Konami is reading this, I’m willing to write that plot.

Anyway, Bautista answered a ton of questions and seems like a generally great guy, so here are some of the better, more insightful answers for people like me who think Reddit threads are ridiculously confusing to navigate. That’s not a dig at Reddit, mind you, I’m just old and easily confused.

Read the rest of this entry »

"F*ck this, I'm outta here."

When it comes to the Canadian National Anthem, I know approximately two words and they’re both in the title. Because of that, I don’t bill myself as the kind of person who is qualified to sing the “O Canada” before sporting events, although I could offer a righteous air guitar and/or beatbox performance sans lyrics if the right lingerie football league team requested it. I’ll leave that up to them, though.

Not knowing the lyrics to “O Canada” didn’t stop singer Jeff Fuller – the tenor, not the former NFL receiver – as he showed off his pipes before yesterday’s Spring Training game between the Houston Astros and Toronto Blue Jays in majestic Dunedin, Florida. Fuller knew several more words to the official jam of America’s hat, but not enough to actually finish the song. So instead of honoring Blue Jays fans, he did a fantastic Tracy Jordan/Frank Drebin impression.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve been spamming the Rush message boards trying to find out what the band’s frontman thinks will happen in baseball this season, spam no more: MLB.com spoke with him about the 2013 Toronto Blue Jays. Well, they either spoke to him, or the bad guy from The Crow, I have trouble telling them apart. That’s him on the right. Photo credit to Geddy Images.

If you don’t want to watch the video, Geddy thinks that the Blue Jays will do well this year because they got Baseball Assets (Canadian slang for “Marlins players”). They might even reach the universal dream. But, Geddy warns, those who wish to be [contenders] must put aside the alienation, get on with the fascination, the real relation, and make sure Jose Reyes doesn’t hurt himself 40 seconds into the first game.

Can MLB.com find out whether or not Tim “Ripper” Owens thinks the Cleveland Indians will finish near the top of the central? This is important.

If I’m making a list of things I love and have to constantly defend, “baseball” and “Final Fantasy games” are at the top of the list. I’m a diehard Cleveland Indians fan who has had to justify every crummy “rebuilding” season of fire-sale trades, and I’ve had the “NO, FINAL FANTASY IV IS THE BEST ONE” video game hipster conversation more times than I’d like to admit. I mean, VI is better than IV, but I rep IV.

What I’m saying is that this preview of the 2013 Toronto Blue Jays season in J-RPG form is relevant to my interests.

I swear to God I played this game as a child. I think it was included on some Nintendo 90 games on one cartridge collection.

At the time it didn’t make sense, but now it’s crystal clear.

There’s a lot of gold to be found in the clip (Reyes being weak against artificial turf is especially choice), and while it might not live up to the epic Final Fantasy joke execution of lasagna using Merton in that one episode of Lasagna Cat, it’s what I like to see in my MLB parody videos. Spoiler alert: if you sleep at an inn with Colby Rasmus in your party, you can see one of four dreams about finishing in third place.

[h/t to Sportress]

Remember earlier this year when a dozen or so Miami Dolphins fans showed up to Joe Robbie Pro Player Sun Life their stadium to protest the ongoing employment of general manager Jeff Ireland and everyone was like, “Awwwww, those poor fans think they can make Stephen Ross make good decisions”? Well, Miami Marlins fans just made those Phins fans and their “Fireland” signs look like the million man march.

With news today that the blockbuster trade between the Miami Marlins and Toronto Blue Jays has been finalized, fans of South Florida’s embattled baseball franchise flocked to their year-old stadium to express their disdain with owner Jeffrey Loria for trading away half of their team for a group of players that doesn’t even include the Blue Jays’ top prospect. And as anyone would have expected, you could count the Marlins fans protesting on one hand.

But commissioner Bud Selig ain’t care, because this trade is in the best interest of something, apparently.

Read the rest of this entry »