Hi! Thanks for visiting my website; I hope that, wherever you are, you are still enjoying this year's baseball season. As we enter the final week of August, many of the playoff spots are still up for grabs, as are all of the major awards. The Yankees just took five straight games from the Red Sox, while the Cardinals are in danger of falling out of their perch atop the NL Central. The Detroit Tigers, as expected, have folded up like a cheap suitcase... that is, a cheap suitcase filled with motherfucking snakes that have jumped out to bite the opposition.

I don't know if anyone will actually read this, as I have been updating my site this year about as often as I clean my balcony - which is to say, pretty much never. It's just been one of those years. But the time for action is drawing nigh; the pigeon poop is starting to pile up and get a little disgusting. But if you ignore the pigeon poop and focus on the skyline, you can see the CN Tower, and beside it, the Rogers Centre, where my home town team, the Toronto Blue Jays, have been making a few headlines the past month.

As for what to do about John Gibbons, I confess that I am conflicted. My thoughts, in somewhat random order, are:

• from what I know of Gibby, I like him - even though, when I re-read this interview from last year, he strikes me as someone who is very different from myself, perhaps the complete opposite. But I like him anyways.

Caveat #1: in addition to the hoopla surrounding Gibbons and Ted Lilly, there are a lot of people in the city disappointed over the team's quick exit from postseason contention, and who think that Gibbons should be fired regardless of the Lilly thing. I don't share that view; I had modest expectations for the team entering the season, and if they can win 85 games I think it will have been a really nice year. And it would put them in a realistic position to aim for 90+ wins in 2007.

• even after two years, I haven't really figured out Gibbons. For all I know, he could be anything from the next Bobby Cox to the next Butch Hobson. In a sport in which conformity rules, I find it impossible not to admire someone who marches to the beat of a different drummer. Gibbons does, I think, bring a certain je ne sais quoi to the ballpark that other managers don't have (though I concede that I may be looking for something hidden under the surface that isn't actually there)

Caveat #2: Gibbons also gets a lot of criticism in this city for his bullpen management. Of course, ALL managers get criticized for their bullpen management, because all baseball managers handle their bullpen the same way. Gibby occasionally does something mystifying but otherwise is not an exception; his successor will be the same as well

Caveat #3: Though I just wrote that all managers handle their bullpen in the same way, there is of course one powderfinger each year who has everything blow up in his face. Hello, Terry Francona

• in the interview referenced above, Gibbons is asked what he would change about himself. He says "a little more self-discipline maybe". No shit; I guess we're not making great progress on that one.
• also in the interview, he describes himself as a 'hawk'. This is fine, as long as you recognize that the key to being a good hawk is knowing when to be a dove, and that the key to being a good dove is knowing when it is time to be a hawk. Unfortunately, once people define themselves as one or the other, they feel that they have to be consistent all the time
• the conventional wisdom seems to be that his behaviour is unacceptable, that the players don't respect him, and that other players don't want to come here
• the conventional wisdom is often wrong
• an alternative approach: Gibbons could have remained in the dugout, and ordered Lilly to drill the next batter. Having blown an 8-0 lead, it's very likely that Lilly would have been thrown out of the game, saving Gibbons the trouble of having to make a pitching change. Maybe Gibbons would have been tossed as well, in which case him and Lilly could have gone into the clubhouse and played pinochle together, and then get showered with praise the next day for 'sending a message'. Remember, there is nothing wrong with violence in baseball - you just have to use it correctly
• reaction here in Toronto has been mixed. Most agree that Gibbons overreacted; some think that he should be fired, others don't. Much of the worry in the city is about whether Vernon Wells will leave as a free agent, and whether other free agents will want to come here (the cynic in me believes that quality players will still come to Toronto - if they're offered more money than they can get elsewhere)
• among those who think that Gibbons should be dismissed, leading the charge is Richard Griffin who argues that the manager should have fired immediately afterwards. I am suddenly reminded that it has been ten years since Richard wrote this immortal sentence on August 9, 1996:

  "Instead, knuckleballing, defined here as the ability to make a stitched cowhide spheroid dance for a distance of 60 feet, six inches, will probably be named a demonstration sport at the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney, along with a couple of those phony closing ceremony demonstration events, like the one with young girls tumbling on some sort of a bowling-alley trampoline, or the other one where the object seemed to be hopping up and down on a bicycle through a lumber yard."

• ten muthafuckin' years... and yet, it seems like only yesterday that knuckleballers and tumbling girls were menacing the sporting world.
• by the way, I'm currently developing a screenplay called (motherfucking) Squid on a Boat. Any Hollywood stars out there, let me know if you're interested
• Winston Churchill once said that to "jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war". Or something like that. He may not have even said it, it may have been Harold MacMillan (playing the role of Joe Garagiola). Anyways, it's still good advice for major league managers, as demonstrated by baseball's own Churchill, Tommy Lasorda, in Game Four of the 1977 World Series
• I'm a big fan of the 1970's generation of managers - Tommy of course but also Earl Weaver, Dick Williams and especially Billy Martin - who weren't afraid to mix it up with one of their players. If Gibbons is half as great a manager as Martin was, then he should stay
• my ongoing appreciation of Billy Martin (and campaign to get him into the Hall of Fame) is admittedly pretty juvenile, and probably has nothing to do with the realities of running a baseball team in 2006
• for tonight's game, Cito Gaston is going to be at the Dome to sit in the cushy seats and spend a few minutes on the airwaves. This, combined with the Lilly thing, has been prompting some fans and the media to wax fondly about the Cito years. But they seem to be curiously forgetting an incident in April 1997 in which Cito publicly suggested that three of his critics in the media were motivated by racism, and not the performance of the team. My memory is growing cloudy, but it sure seemed a much bigger deal at the time than the Lilly thing. The point being that, while Cito's record from 1989-1993 is truly awesome, no one is without blemishes
• the other point being, that time heals most wounds

I think that Gibbons should stay as on manager for the remainder of the year. And for 2007, assuming that the team doesn't go 10-25 the rest of the season. My general philosophy is that if you are going to hire a rookie manager, you should willing to be patient with him (as you should with a player); the team has improved in each season under Gibbons' reign, and is in decent shape to take another small step forward next year (though I grant that they had nowhere to go but up).

Another reason for keeping Gibbons is that I do think that this team can make a run in 2007; and if he is fired... well, I appear to be in the minority, but I'm just skeptical over whether this can be a seamless transition. In five years as GM, J.P. Ricciardi has fired two managers in midseason; when Carlos Tosca was turfed in 2004, I wrote:

"...I suspect that Ricciardi has fired his last Blue Jay manager. If the next guy doesn't work out, I can't imagine that J.P. would be allowed to start over again with another manager. Of course, I would have said the same thing five years ago about Bobby Clarke and the Flyers, and...well, you know."

Things change, time moves on... and my guess is that Ricciardi still has a free hand make changes if he so chooses. But I stand by what I wrote two years ago; if Gibbons goes, it's time to blow up the whole management structure, with Ricciardi going as well. It may not be a bad idea a year from now, if next season is a disappointment - but as a fan, I want to see these guys get another chance in 2007.

Caveat #4: Though I think that 85 wins will be a real good year for this team, I'm not entirely thrilled with how this season has gone. I mean, Jesus Christ, the Jays have 6-7 real solid young pitching prospects who keep getting bounced between Toronto and Syracuse and the starting rotation and the bullpen as often as J.P. changes his underwear (which is really often - he's an impeccably clean man). Pick a pitcher (McGowan, Marcum, Janssen, whoever), put him in the rotation, and LEAVE HIM THERE for 30 starts. You'll feel better afterwards.

Ricciardi also has a public relations problem, in that he keeps calling people who disagree with him idiots, and last week (in response to a Keith Law blog entry), said "it's so comical that I don't know whether to laugh or to throw up."

J.P. needs to lighten up. The four funniest words in the English language are:

• booger
  
• booby
  
• penis
  
• goat

"Booger" was also used by Dr. Johnny Fever in the pilot episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, making it one of the coolest words in the language. Next time, I suggest that J.P. just say something like "well, isn't that just a booger?"

The dog days of August are, indeed, pretty boring. It's the dog days; everybody is just going through the motions, either looking ahead to a playoff race in September, looking ahead to next March. Here at work, we have a whole bunch projects lined up for the fall, but everyone's taking time off and just trying to take it easy before it gets really busy. If nothing else, I thank the Jays and their cantankerous manager for breaking into the humidity-drenched boredom and giving me something to prattle on about before I go on vacation next week.

The Jays took the next game in the series, but on Wednesday were waxed 6-0. They are fighting for nothing more than second place, meaningless except that they haven't done it in about a decade. Things could be worse; also on Wednesday, Kansas City scored ten runs in the first inning against Cleveland, more salt in the open wound that is the Indians' horribly disappointing season (and they can get even worse than that: Cleveland came back and won the game 15-13, more salt in the open wound that is the Royals' past 15 years). Jays play the Royals tonight... if the team has indeed quit on the manager, then I guess we'll find out real soon.