Watching the Argos getting bounced by the Alouettes, the Bills getting downed by the previously winless Dolphins and the Jays in the throes of a sweep by the awful O's this past weekend got me to wondering.
Has there ever been a worse collection of teams in one year all playing under the same home roof, retractable or otherwise, than the 2009 residents of Rogers Centre?
I couldn't watch the Jays finish out their miserable 2009 campaign - at least not the final game because it wasn't televised on cable television. It's probably just as well. The airport information channel might have had a bigger viewing audience by the time the 11th inning mercifully arrived late on Sunday afternoon. That's when Brandon League threw the game away making consecutive fielding errors on a pair of sacrifice bunt attempts. It only seems fitting that in this season of repeated failures, the Jays would still be coming undone in October on a routine play that's among the very first things practiced in February.
That being said, I truly wonder how many die-hards stayed with the team on a digital channel to watch that underwhelming finish. Not as many as in years past I would guess, based (empirically speaking) on the declining attendance numbers and, anecdotally speaking, the rising level of apathy.
Think about this. The only time the Jays have ever really been at the top of the news cycle or the talk of the town in the last five months came in just these last five days. That's when the team 1) laid off two dozen front office employees, 2) was forced to quell a militant player uprising in its clubhouse, 3) fired its longtime head of baseball operations and 4) installed his successor, making 32-year-old Alex Anthopoulos of Montreal the team's new general manager.
The youthful Anthopoulos might start aging in dog years now. It's not enough that he has to figure out a plan to beat the two best teams in baseball. He has to first communicate that plan to an incoming president, ownership, his fellow executives and, most importantly, the skeptical ticket-buying public in Canada and get all of them to buy in.
Some will say that's unlikely, if not impossible, because those key stakeholders will view him as too young, too inexperienced and too "interim" to be taken seriously. To them, I would say this. Many years ago - long before he ever took over the interim presidency - my friend Paul Beeston said to me; "You watch Alex. He's going to be a GM someday. It might not be here in Toronto, but it's going to happen before too long." At the time, Anthopoulos was still in his twenties and was a scouting coordinator, one of the lower rungs in the baseball operations hierarchy. Beeston looked past the issue of age and saw the kind of traits that make for a successful executive.
Give them time, but so far Toronto reporters have yet to find that "unnamed player" or "scout speaking on the condition of anonymity" who is prepared to bash the appointment. Those who know Anthopoulos personally seem inclined to agree with Beeston professionally and respect his appointment, even if it does turn out to be temporary.
There are others, people say, that won't buy in because Anthopoulos is perceived as a pupil of the now vilified J.P. Ricciardi. In other words, "meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Nonsense!
I have a personal story that I think sheds some light on that issue. Anthopoulos is a real fan of basketball. Sometime in the days after the 2006 NBA Draft, he and I and another friend were talking about the Raptors top pick, Andrea Bargnani. My friend made the mistake of suggesting Anthopoulos would have picked Adam Morrison first overall because being a "J.P. guy" he would want the more polished college product - the kind of player Ricciardi has been known to prefer in baseball's draft. The conversation became less friendly and more heated and became less about professional basketball and more about personal beliefs. Anthopoulos has told me he always thought as a good lieutenant he should follow orders from above and support them to the fullest. That doesn't necessarily mean that once promoted to the rank of five-star general he'd be giving those exact orders himself. He has ideas of his own.
Basketball and personal philosophy aside, Anthopoulos will still face the same baseball questions as Ricciardi - How to nudge aside a pair of teams in the Yankees and Red Sox that have combined to make 23 playoff appearances in the years since Toronto last won the World Series? How to overcome the tremendous financial clout those two teams bring to bear in every aspect of player procurement (Major League free agency, International free agency and even the Amateur Draft)? How, in the face of those obvious disadvantages, to make Toronto and Canada care about what seems annually like a futile effort?
Up until now, the biggest event of the offseason ahead for Anthopoulos was his impending wedding. Now he faces something far more daunting than any menacing mother-in-law. He has to get down on one knee and make a proposal for a brighter future to his ownership, administration and fan base. For better (a charge for the playoffs now) or for worse (strip it down and rebuild for the future), for richer (an increased payroll to pursue new players) or for poorer (clearing out established stars for youth and potential), he has to make and follow a set of vows they can believe in and can only hope they say, "I do."