As I mentioned recently, I've been ploughing through the archives, loading some of the old site into Joomla, and have thought about commenting on some of what I have written in the past. This paragraph, from 2003, caught my attention:

Once again, at the end of May, I find myself writing about the local team, the Blue Jays. This is partly because I read and hear a lot of news about them, and partly because I'm often too lazy to read newspapers in other cities and find out what's going on around the league. I suppose I could write about something else... but there is some intriguing stuff going on in Toronto that is worth commenting on.

And so here we are in 2008. Thankfully, there's no health crisis here in Toronto that I'm aware of, but there was this sense of waking up this morning, taking a look around the web, and thinking... what the hell?

In May of 2003, the Jays went 21-8 and scored about a billion runs that month; that followed a terrible April that reached a low point on the 23rd, when the Jays lost to Tampa Bay, fell to 7-15, and the entire City of Toronto was placed under a travel advisory due to the SARS crisis.

The next day, Toronto's mayor, Mel Lastman, gave a blubbering, incoherent interview on CNN that was big news here, and even caught people's attention south of the border:

Now, here's the thing: Lastman was nearing the end of his final term, which had largely been a disaster; he had announced his retirement in January and had been largely invisible before the crisis hit (his health had taken a bad turn due to hepatitis C, which he acquired during a blood transfusion). I don't blame Mel for getting sick: it wasn't his fault. I partly blame him for running for re-election when he wasn't fit for office, but I also concede that he was prodded into doing so by his "friends" and supporters, chief among them former Metro Toronto Chairman Paul Godfrey.

Anyways, that's all old news; Mel's even made a bit of a comeback in the public eye recently. Who knows; if he had "retired" in 2000 and gotten better, maybe he'd have run again for mayor in 2003 or even 2006. And he might have won.

So last night, I watched the Blue Jays lose yet another game. I turned the teevee off, went to bed, got up. And I learned that after the game, on his weekly radio appearance, that Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi had his own blubbering, incoherent outburst:

Let me ask you something: what do you know about Adam Dunn?... He's a great hitter? He's a lifetime .230-.240 hitter, who strikes out a ton and hits home runs... You know the guy doesn't really like baseball that much?... Do you know the guy doesn't have a passion to play the game that much? How much do you know about the player? There's a reason you're attracted to some players and there's a reason why you're not attracted to some players. I don't think you'd be very happy if we brought Adam Dunn here. I think you'd be one of the guys calling me on Wednesday night complaining about all the deficiencies the guy has... We've done our homework on guys like Adam Dunn and there's a reason why we don't want Adam Dunn. And I don't want to get into specifics but we've done our homework on a lot of the guys that you guys keep mentioning to us. We're way ahead of you guys in looking at the things and there's a lot of things and a lot of reasons why we wouldn't go get those guys. I appreciate, you know, the advice to go get these guys but we know more about them than maybe the average fan does.

My first thought was that it was tampering; my second thought was that it was too ridiculous to be seriously considered as tampering. As I noted two days ago, J.P. appears to have been struck by a strange paralysis over the past two months. He's been like Terry Gilliam in Lost in La Mancha, standing around watching, helpless, while the whole enterprise sinks. I hope that he's not sick - but I'm guessing that, if he hasn't already decided to leave, it's been strongly hinted to him that his time in Toronto is nearing an end. Last night he blew up real good - I guess he isn't completely numb to his predicament. It's probably not Daily Show-worthy (and I think that Jon Stewart is focused more on the Mets right now), but has gotten some attention.

So here we are, Thursday afternoon; the Jays start their game in three minutes. I can't even finish typing this sentence and John McLaren has been fired. We are waiting to see what it will take for Ricciardi to fire manager John Gibbons... and for club President Paul Godfrey to fire Ricciardi. I have been writing for two years now that Gibbons and Ricciardi were joined at the hip, that you can't fire one unless you also fire the other; perhaps this predicament helps explain the team's unwillingness or inability to make a change over the past two years.

Now, I think, you can add Godfrey to the list, which makes it even more daunting to fire one of these guys, because then you have to fire all three. But it has to be done; many people think that the next GM has to be experienced, that they can't hire another rookie like Ricciardi and wait to see if he grows into the job. Young, old, it hardly matters, so long as Godfrey doesn't hire him. It's not so much that J.P. Ricciardi was a bad hire - as far as first-time GMs go, he was a solid candidate. It didn't work out; Paul Godfrey's problem, for his entire career in the public eye, has been an inability to both admit a mistake and then fix it - or perhaps, more precisely, to recognize that a person who was once capable in their job is now in need of a change.

EDIT: So a few hours after I post this, the Jays fire the manager and three coaches, and replace them with the manager and coaching staff of the 1993 Blue Jays. Ricciardi stays, for now; Godfrey also appears to be firmly in place. Funny thing is, I don't even have to change the headline of this article. The moves probably merit some sort of comment... but I am now officially on vacation. I am going to stay away from my computer for awhile, finish reading Humboldt's Gift, and just try to figure out what it's all about.