Thursday Grab Bag

Unlike my good friend Parkes (pictured above looking suspiciously like Nomar Garciaparra with his hand on his balls), I was unable to listen to last night's call-in portion of Prime Time Sports. Unable, of course, because the sound of Mike Toth's voice give me seizures. Now that I'm up to speed on the situation, I think it's fair for me to say that have a slightly different take on it than he does. Specifically, I would like to thank Mike Toth and his staggeringly unfunny lack of professionalism for giving us anything to talk about besides the most frustrating team this side of the Washington Generals. Seriously.

Go Fly A Kyte
Zing! You see what I did just there? Amazing!

It always kind of feels a bit ridiculous to get into a flame war with someone just because you disagree on a few points about baseball, but... I'm going to have to continue making an exception for Spencer Kyte, the Jays writer for Bugs and Cranks.

I'll do this for a couple of reasons. For starters, it's an awful lot of fun. Secondly, Kyte enjoys fanning the flames of idiocy way too much, and I just can't resist pissing on those flames every once in a while (OK... a lot). I realize those are basically the same reasons, but... seriously, it really is fun. And I mean... getting bent out of shape about AJ Burnett's sarcastic hat tip, or his salary, or his .500 record? WTF, is this guy 60?

Or how about basically encouraging Jays fans to throw temper tantrums like a bunch of four year olds who are sick of being told they have to be patient?

Anyway, anyway... clearly the most important reason is the third one, which is that he doesn't seem to quite comprehend the concept of doing something behind someone's back. To wit: He's written that Parkes taking a shot at him... on our blog... in full public view... makes us "bunch of gutless pukes who like to call people names behind their backs."

This seems odd, considering he's upset about our lack of response to his requests for a spot on our podcast-- which, unless I read an email from him while drunk and then completely forgot about it, I'm pretty sure he was doing on his own blog. BEHIND OUR BACKS! (Note: I very well could have read an email from him while drunk and then completely forgot about it).

That's about it really. I just kind of thought that was funny.

From the Good Idea Dept.
I would have never thought to have written An Open Letter to the Toronto Blue Jays Baseball Club that didn't include multiple cuss words or screams for the head of Paul Godfrey, but the guys from the excellent Ghostrunner on First blog managed to do so, and even made and excellent point in the process: why not lower the Rogers Centre fences now that the Field Turf has eliminated the possibility of countless ground-rule doubles?

Deadspinning the Jays
I'm not sure if the video that Deadspin procured the other day of Jays fans heckling Troy Percival is more embarrassing because of how fucking lame the heckling is, or because ... well... no, it's totally the lameness. And yet Leitch writes: "We enjoy heckling as much as the next guy, but yeah: This is a bit much." Really?

Honestly, is that serious? I genuinely can't tell.

And there's more from Deadspin! Lately they've been posting old-timey Grantland Rice-style game recaps, written by Robert Weintraub of Slate. I was waiting to post this until the sting came out of the loss that's described, but I'm starting to think that just isn't going to happen. So, if you can bear it, here is an oddly-written recap of the Beej blowing it in Anaheim.

Viagara and Allan Ryan (It's Not What You Think)
A note on the Star's website today, written by Allan Ryan, reporting that the New York Daily News is suggesting Roger Clemens used Viagara as a performance enhancing drug (not that kind of performance), and that this is an increasingly common thing-- at least according to the always trustworthy Victor Conte. Anyway, I don't really care about that, and normally I would have just linked straight to the original story, but it reminded me of the awesome moment on this week's Wednesday's with JP where a caller asked about smoking at the Rogers Centre, and said something about how much he likes to smoke, drink whiskey and eat meat-- to which JP replied, "This isn't Allan Ryan, is it?" Gold!

Hale Pretty Much Nailed It
Over at the Mockingbird. Seriously.