The Waiting Game

It’s really easy for Jays fans and writers to spin out of control as they stare into the abyss. It’s easy to drive your thoughts deep into the terrible. It’s easy to look at this 2018 mess and wail into the Internet and hope that someone hears it or reads it. But, it’s even easier for your howl to be heard if you’re an opinion piece writer for a hoity-toity newspaper that loves schadenfreude buffets.

I don’t like schadenfreude buffets. I prefer a proper antipasto charcuterie platter with lots of meat. Lots of meat from Scheffler’s in St. Lawrence Market.

I can’t help but think about how certain hot takes really just feed the pigeons like that old man who I see every Sunday morning in Grange Park feeding those little flying rats. They flock to him and chase the feed. They peck at each other. They’re hungry and anticipate the old man’s next toss.

There are plenty of tosses these days. A lot of pecking.

The 2018 season has been dire, zero straight, all sideways. And not a single positive ‘if’ that we thought up back in March happened. Every ‘if’ flipped its middle finger at all of us fans, the players on the team, and the front office.

The ‘if’ said eff you.

There is no denying that this season has been a horror story, a Stephen King tale with a killer canine, and a 1958 Plymouth Fury that’s possessed by some nefarious force. It’s been Jack Torrance chasing us down with an axe.

And now the meat is being slaughtered.

The truth is this hasn’t been fun for any of us fans, from the pissants to the cool kids. It hasn’t been fun for the players and it hasn’t been fun for the front office.

And now the pigs squeal.

No matter where you stand with this current organization, or how passionately you feel about some of the stuff that has happened this season, or about certain players, or the front office, we all want the same damn thing, right?

A fun baseball team to watch.

A fun baseball team that wins.

And a World Series championship.

It’s easy to look back in hindsight and think things. It’s always clearer in hindsight, especially for the near-sighted.

The last two seasons have been an arduous adventure that has left us all with a fat lip and a black eye. And since Josh Donaldson was traded at the eleventh hour, we’re all feeling a little exhausted. And it’s most definitely turned into the gasoline that all the doomsayers guzzle by the gallon.

So chug-a-lug, but don’t let it burn that tummy.

There’s no denying that it’s not fun to watch your heroes from the past turn into YouTube clips and memories. There’s no denying that at all. But, to lose sight of the future and get swallowed up by this shitty moment that the Jays are currently in doesn’t help anything.

Some people might look at this organization and see only a bunch of ‘boy wonders’ in the minors who haven’t proved a thing at the MLB level yet. But I’ve just seen enough MLB teams with deep, strong farm systems eventually have that talent and pipeline translate into MLB wins. And having the number 1 prospect in all of baseball sure doesn’t slow this process down.

The objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.

Having a farm system that wins at every level from Bluefield to Vancouver to Lansing to Dunedin to New Hampshire to Buffalo is eventually going to feed Toronto with talented players and it’s a sustainable cycle that leads to wins. The Jays’ system isn’t quite there yet, but it’s pretty damn close.

If Jays fans believe that this team will compete in three years, that doesn’t mean that they are buying any sort of advertising line. Maybe it just means that they see a lot of promising talent in the system.

But the pigs will squeal while some of us sit back and eat.