TSN articles fan comments concerning the Jays

[kwamebargnani]

"think we should keep Lind - even with a crowded BC position. Move JP to 1B/DH with EE - trade Lind for a young prospect that we lost in this trade. SOmeone here mentioned a trade for Marcum?? JP and Rasmus?? Thats alot for Marcum but I think he's a free agent...could be wrong. Report this comment!"

So there are still people who want to move JP to 1B/DH. That was mindblowingly stupid 1 year, sounds even stupider now.

[The_Hater]

The absolute worst argument has always been 'these players played for a bad team therefore they're bad players'. I just can't believe how often I've seen it thrown around this week.

I guess using that argument, all the Blue Jays returning players must stink too? Add all those terrible Marlins to these terrible Jays and we'll probably be lucky to avoid 100 losses this season.

Probably the only thing that could save our season would be adding Hector Sanchez from the Giants to our catcher rotation. He followed up his 685 OPS in the regular season by going 1-11 in the postseason but hey, the Giants won the Series so he's obviously a winner and should be able to teach the rest of them.

[The_Hater]

Don't usually visit the forums or comments on those articles, but I'm guessing the majority of them just don't understand or was never lucky enough to witness the feeling and buzz all over the city in '91 - '93. The buzz this trade has garnered for the team isn't quite there yet, but is starting to become somewhat reminiscent of that time.

A lot of people on these boards are probably too young to remember but there's virtually no doubt that the Jays were bigger, more popular and more talked about than the Leafs in Toronto for about a 5-7 year period. I think the damage of the 1994 strike can't be understated on home badly it crippled baseball in Toronto, it was the start of a steep decline.

[Yosemite Dan]

Don't usually visit the forums or comments on those articles, but I'm guessing the majority of them just don't understand or was never lucky enough to witness the feeling and buzz all over the city in '91 - '93. The buzz this trade has garnered for the team isn't quite there yet, but is starting to become somewhat reminiscent of that time.

A lot of people on these boards are probably too young to remember but there's virtually no doubt that the Jays were bigger, more popular and more talked about than the Leafs in Toronto for about a 5-7 year period. I think the damage of the 1994 strike can't be understated on home badly it crippled baseball in Toronto, it was the start of a steep decline.

I agree the Jays were a bigger deal than the Leafs in the late 80's and early 90's but the strike didn't cripple baseball in Toronto. It was the team itself. They started aging and players wanted out and Gillick was on his way out as well. The 1994 season was going badly as the Jays were hovering around .500 when the strike hit and weren't going to the post season if the season was completed. Attendance was already going down.

By the time 1995 rolled around, there was the World Series hangover as all the main players were gone, the team was a shadow of it's former championship team and Alomar started pouting and was traded. The fan base was used to having a team that was contending yearly with strong personalities and when that wasn't the case then interest waned severely. Interbrew then sold the team to new owners who didn't have the deep pockets they had. if Inter brew remained as owners and the Jays continued to spend freely and remain a contender then attendance would have remained high. The team didn't play a meaningful game in September after 1993 so it was difficult to expect that they would have 40000 and higher for every game.