By Stephen Johns

It’s been (warning! understatement alert!) an interesting week in Toronto Blue Jay Land. Seven days ago, they were floundering under a lame duck manager. This week, the team is still floundering—but at least they’re showing signs (albeit tentative ones) of turning things around. One week—six games—is a negligible sample size; it’s barely sufficient to draw any sorts of conclusions, let alone meaningful ones. Still, as fans, we’re cautiously optimistic.
Cito Gaston was bound to have a galvanizing effect on the team: he is, after all, the greatest manager in Toronto Blue Jays history, the man who guided them to back-to-back world championships without ever really getting the credit he deserved. We’re still getting used to seeing him back in the dugout (not to mention hearing the names “Nick Leyva” and “Gene Tenace” spoken in context again), yet while we’re not claiming to possess any inside information we’re assuming he’s a much more inspiring presence than, say, a manager who fights his starting pitchers. As for J.P. Ricciardi, the embattled general manager: firstly, remarkably, he still has a job. Secondly, his unilateral war with Adam Dunn reached its apotheosis this week when Ricciardi announced that he’d apologized for his comments…only for Dunn to deny he’d received any sort of apology from Ricciardi whatsoever. From the looks of it, there’s some sort of J.P. Ricciardi impersonator on the prowl. We can’t take credit—we wish we could, mind you—but that’s still all sorts of awesome in our books.
Tonight is Flashback Friday at the Rogers Centre. This used to be little more than another hackneyed Blue Jays promotion; tonight, however, it’s as appropriate a moniker for the game as anyone could’ve concocted. The Atlanta Braves are in town, still managed by Bobby Cox…Cox, who managed the Blue Jays from 1982 to 1985. He and Gaston matched wits in the 1992 World Series; they’ve faced each other once since then (a three-game interleague series in 1997), but their presence in the dugouts will nonetheless recall better days for Toronto baseball. Better days, yes—but more interesting days than those we’ve been experiencing of late? That is much more debatable.
Photo by Triborough from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.