Our Enemies to the North

The Yankees host Toronto for four games in their final home series of the year.

The Blue Jays send their best four pitchers to the mound, starting with Roy Halladay tonight. Aside from wanting to lock up the Wild Card, and continue putting pressure on the collapsing Red Sox, the Yankees should want to beat the Jays for another reason:

Because they're a bunch of assholes up there.

No Justice, No Peace

In an unfathomably unfair decision, Major League Baseball has suspended Roger Clemens five games and Joe Torre one game for hitting Alex/Alexis Rios in the back with a pitch Tuesday night. These suspensions expose how backwards and twisted baseball's current warning/ejections/suspension system is, as related to HBPs.

Let's look at the chain of events:

1) Alex Rodriguez yells "Ha!" while rounding the bases, causing a pop-up to drop harmlessly in the infield. Hilarity ensues.

2) Blue Jays pitcher Jesse Litsch throws a hard object approximately 90 mph behind ARod.

3) Josh Towers, apparently in some sort of delusional rage at Tony Pena, drills ARod in the leg, causing injury.

4) Having had enough, and sticking up for his teammates, Clemens drills Rios in the back.

Now who escalated the situation here? Clemens gets punished for doing the exact thing the Blue Jays attempted to do twice, yet the Jays make off like bandits despite bringing a gun to a knife-fight.

This decision is startling in its hypocrisy, astonishing in its wrongness.

Hey...did Jays manager John Gibbons ever get suspended for trying to start fistfights in his own clubhouse?

Fuck the Blue Jays

I really used to hate the Blue Jays. Back in the heady days of the early '90s, when we were all debating whether Gennifer Flowers or Paula Jones was hotter, the Blue Jays were perennial division champs and the Yankees were also-rans. It's hard to recall that kind of Canadian-national-anthem booing passion now that the Jays haven't been a legitimate threat since the strike, thanks to a series of awful general managers.

Well, it's time to start throwing out the Canadian bacon again. What the Jays did this week was the most bush league thing I've ever seen. Steven Goldman said it best, but the Jays' response to "HA!"-gate was overzealous, disproportionate and irresponsible.

Throwing the ball behind ARod on Monday apparently wasn't enough. I guess that was more of a miss than a message from Jessie Litsch, because the immortal Josh Towers drilled ARod in the leg the next night. Thankfully, Roger Clemens was around for appropriate retaliation.

The Blue Jays were embarrassed by the "HA!" play because they fucked up and looked like Little Leaguers, so they took out their shame on ARod, who did nothing more than what countless players have done before. Unfortunately for ARod, it actually worked this time. The Blue Jays came across as frustrated, immature brats, humiliated that their ineptitude was put on display for the world.

It's time to hate this team again.