Here we are again, just like every single other year — be it at 10-21 in 2013, or 27-14 in 2009 — with Jays fans (not all of them, mind you, but enough of them to drown out the many silent voices of the sane) headed for the deep end, yelling and screaming and spraying piss in all directions in a manic, flailing, attention-screaming leap into utter incoherence brought on by their apparent failure to have learned the lessons of all the other baseball seasons they’ve supposedly watched. Granted, being Jays fans, for most of their lives the creeping feeling of impending doom at every apparent wrong turn made by the club has more-or-less been right — a fact you’ll be reminded of frequently by these jackaninnies, presumably barely able to keep the drool from spilling from their bottom lips as they tell you about twenty years with no playoffs, as though the failings of the Gord Ash and J.P. Ricciardi eras have anything to do with anything right now. The thing is, nobody on the sane side of the door to the fucking padded room is trying to tell anybody that there’s nothing to be concerned about with this club, or nothing that doesn’t need to be rectified damn quickly if they want to keep their heads above water, or that “it’s early … and they’re still going to be great.” Yet I get fuckwits calling me an apologist, a Kool-Aid drinker, a “Wilner,” because I refuse to validate their overly-emotional piss-poor knee-jerk reactions.
It’s annoying. Though, yes, I suppose it comes with the territory. And yes, addressing these crackpots not only gets old real fast, but also makes their voices seem even louder than I think they really are. It’s just… every single year. Every. Single. Year. And how difficult is it to grasp that grand pronouncements today about how awful and desperate the team is — meaningless regurgitated negativity-posing-as-cleverness garbage like “20 years of this,” or “can’t lose a game like that” — are as impossibly dumb as ones from a week ago — a damn week ago! — about how good things were looking after a road trip in which the club, by all rights, should have gone 7-2?
I’m no Pollyanna. I wrote in March about this season likely being yet another “grim ritual march to mid-season irrelevance,” for fuck sakes, and if we’re being honest, that probably still is what we’re going to eventually end up staring at, given the construction of the roster. There was always the possibility of things working out really well, though, too, and absolutely nothing about that outlook has changed. The Jays were 10-21 last May 31st, and even though the fell off the map in the second half, they did claw their way back to 38-36 and just three games back of the second Wild Card spot, tied with a Cleveland club that made the playoffs. If they can do that, then what in the holy fuck is anybody going on about with the downpour of negativity?
Maybe, as usual, I’m overstating it. But… yeah, there are problems. Yeah, you’re allowed to be pissed off when the Jays lose. Yeah, the team may not be on their way to the World Series. But most of us knew that all along and are happy just to enjoy the ride and see where it takes us. Especially since I’m pretty sure there’s a word for the type of fan who spends most of his energy racing to be the first to plant his flag in the pretend-notion that he knows the season is doomed: it’s called being a fucking shithead.