Toronto Blue Jays - Articles - Zimbio

John Gibbons and the Underachievers

Thu, 20 Jun 2008 16:25:00 GMT

posted by sooze
Okay, so we totally thought Ned Yost would be the next manager to be fired. We were wrong! I know, there's a first time for everything, huh.

But seriously. Three managers fired in our days and none of them were in charge of the Milwaukee Brewers. Yes, they've won 6-of-9. But still.

The Toronto Blue Jays, in lieu of holding responsible the five players on their 25-man roster who are making over $10 million this season, canned .500 manager John Gibbons. The team's 35-39 record came after a five-game losing streak which left them 10.5 games behind the AL East-leading Boston Red Sox.

Two-time World Series winner with the Jays, Cito Gaston (fired by the club in 1997) will replace Gibbons as the new Jays skipper. Good luck, pal.

[Toronto Star] | [Larry Brown Sports] | [Walkoff Walk]

Toronto Blue Jays Tickets

Thu, 1 Aug 2008 00:59:52 GMT

posted by randomthinker

The Toronto Blue Jays, or “The Jays” as their fans call them are a professional baseball team located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Blue Jays are a relatively new team to Major League Baseball, starting as an expansion team in 1977. The Blue Jays started playing at Exhibition stadium and then moved into their own facility called the SkyDome in 1989. The SkyDome was purchased by Rogers Communication in 2004 and renamed the Rogers Centre, but most locals still call it the SkyDome.

The SkyDome has the ability to fully close during bad weather or stay open and there’s a hotel attached to the stadium with rooms overlooking the field. Because it can be closed it’s popular as a concert venue as well. The SkyDome was built for an astounding $570 million and struggled for years to turn a profit. Rogers managed to buy the stadium for the bargain price of just $25 million! It was announced in 2005 that the Blue Jays payroll would be bumped up to $210 million in hopes of attracting good talent and bringing another win to the team.

The Toronto Blue Jays had a great run in the 1990’s, winning both the 1992 and the 1993 World Series, but recent years have not been so kind to the team. They have struggled with management issues as of late and former team manager Cito Gaston, best known for managing the team during their World Series wins has been called in to be the team manager again. We’ll see if that translates into more ticket sales and a winning team.

If visiting Toronto, be sure to visit the Rogers Centre (SkyDome) and get some tickets to a Blue Jays game.

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Blue Jays cut ties with Johnson

Sat, 23 Mar 2008 17:37:00 GMT

posted by JmMetsBlog

...Reed Johnson was released today from The Toronto Blue Jays. You may remember the name being mentioned by writers as being available after Moises Alou went down.

Johnson, 31, was a 17th-round selection by Toronto in the 1999 First-Year Player Draft, and he spent parts of the past five seasons with the big league club. In his career with the Jays, Johnson hit .281 with a .342 on-base percentage over 610 games, serving as a left fielder and leadoff man.

The highlight of Johnson's tenure with Toronto came in 2006, when he led the team with a .319 average and ranked first among American League leadoff men with a .390 on-base percentage. Last season, though, Johnson suffered a back injury in April and missed roughly three months after undergoing surgery to repair a herniated disc.

He was quoted as saying:

"I prepared myself for it, In my mind, I've been released a couple times already. Once we signed Stew (OF Shannon Stewart), it was one of those situations where the two of us, I think, we're prepared for either a release or a trade."

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Prospect Analysis: Travis Snider

Mon, 26 Feb 2008 16:54:15 GMT

posted by RedStitches
Name: Travis Snider
Organization: Toronto Blue Jays
Position: Outfield
Born: 2/2/1988
Bats: Left
Throws: Left
Drafted: 2006, 1st Round (14th Overall)

Snider has been given the honor by multiple big league scouts of being the best hitting prospect selected in the 2006 draft. We like him just for the fact that he played for the Lansing Lugnuts, leading them offensively as he tore through minor league pitchers.
Selecting Snider was a major organizational shift for the Blue Jays, who previously frowned upon selecting players right out of high school. Consider this a wise move. According to Scout Magazine, one National League Scout had this to say of Snider; "The Blue Jays have themselves a legitimate threat. He's going to be a 10-time All-Star in the American League. I see him causing havoc in the major leagues within the next two years."
Snider is expected to begin the 2008 season with Dunedin, but will most likely be promoted to New Hampshire come the summer. The Jays are taking their time with Travis, but once he reaches the majors, lookout.

Blue Jays Fans Balk at Beer Ban

Sun, 14 Apr 2008 07:30:16 GMT

posted by thesharkguys
The typical baseball game lasts about as long as The Godfather parts I and II, with long periods of inactivity punctuated by short bursts to the bathrooms to piss out all the suds used to down all the peanuts in the gallery. In these cheap seats, especially during a "pitcher's duel" (baseball parlance for when even less than the nothing that usually happens, happens) the combination of heat stroke and freely flowing beer results in normally staid Toronto fans turning into warring savages in the upper deck.

Before the Jays moved into their cozy, retractable domed-roof confines, they occupied an outdoor stadium situated right by the lake, and on a typical opening day the "Boys of Summer" would be fielding ground balls in a snowdrift. During these lean years, it was nearly impossible to bear those temperatures without ingesting a Great Lake's worth of booze (picture the loogan in the accompanying photo clutching a stubby bottle of an aged Molson product and you'll get an idea of how 90 percent of the cheap seats looked in those days).

This season, in a bid to one up church as the place with the fewer number of empty seats on a Sunday, the Blue Jays have started a $2 promotion for nosebleed seating. This drew the kind of crowd that is not overly interested in whether inter-league play truly was the most exciting development in baseball in the last 50 years, but rather those who enjoy punching in the head people who take opposing stands on such mundane issues. Some 100 people were ejected during the Jays' home opener, a development that president Paul Godfrey links to booze: "“It’s really unfortunate when some of them feel it’s a night club here." It should be noted that if the Rogers Dome were a nightclub, it would be the worst nightclub on the planet.

Regardless, sports fans who want to support their home team for $2 bucks, get drunk, and knee their fellow sports fans in the face hopefully got enough of that in during the home opener because the organization plans to ban beer sales in the ultra cheap $2 upper deck seats, and is even considering ending the two-buck promotion due to the drunken brawling . Violent though it was, the cheap seat punch-ups marked the first time that Jays fans have enjoyed themselves at a baseball game since the team's back-to-back World Series wins.

Since getting faced in the cheap seats was one of the few fun things remaining about baseball, expect the tumbleweed to be blowing through the upper deck of the Rogers Dome and for the unruly fans to be exhibiting their Labatt lunacy in the comfort of their own homesfor the unruly fans to be exhibiting their Labatt lunacy in the comfort of their own homes.