Spencer Fordin, writing about Tosca's Spring Training (bench) decisions, provides us with yet another thorough gem. Of note, Fordin is the only (as of yet) Jays "reporter" to acknowledge the mere existence of Mike Colangelo as a NRI in the first place, and even more so as a legit contender to break camp.

(Last year, Colangelo broke camp with the A's after hitting .400 with a .426 on-base percentage in [just] 50 plate appearances!)

Another nice snag, Steve. Fordin points out something I hadn't considered:

The Blue Jays won't need a fifth starter until April 14, which means that the team can probably make due with an 11-man pitching staff for the first two weeks. That means that when the Blue Jays break out of their Spring Training home in Dunedin, they may do so with 14 position players.

That's not great news in the Linton household, but encourages all the other position candidates (Werth, Aven, Clark, Colangelo, Wise, Huckaby...) by creating two available bench spots, at least temporarily, instead of the one I had assumed.

Remarks Tosca, "Obviously, Canadians feel about hockey the way that Americans, one time, felt about baseball." In a real interview this might have led to a few more interesting questions. This piece however is an improvement over the embarassing Steve Nash grope.

Obviously, Canadians feel about hockey the way that Americans, one time, felt about baseball.

How true, how sad. I'm not much of a hockey fan -- it's my iconoclastic nature, plus I was never any damn good at it -- but I'd be sorry to see the day when hockey's hold over Canadians becomes as fragmented and compromised as baseball's place in American culture has become.

Tosca's observations on Cuba were also very interesting. It hadn't occurred to me that the professional and intellectual classes had left the country -- Tosca could have added that more than a few went into prison and didn't come out -- but it makes sense. There's a pattern of behaviour detectable in tyrants who want to consolidate their power: get rid of the professionals. People who wrongly cite Shakespeare and say we should "kill all the lawyers" should visit Cambodia sometime: when Pol Pot came to power there, that's exactly what he did. As recently as a few years ago, there were something like 50 lawyers in the whole country. It's also the reason why no free press exists in a dictatorship. Knowledge is the primary enemy of despotism, and the despots know it.

People who wrongly cite Shakespeare and say we should "kill all the lawyers" should visit Cambodia sometime: when Pol Pot came to power there, that's exactly what he did.

The quote, of course, is from Henry VI, Part 2... in Act IV Scene 2, the despicable Jack Cade and his followers are planning their two-bit revolution. It is Dick the Butcher, one of Cade's henchmen, who is speaking.

These days, we'd have no trouble identifying these men as "terrorists".

Shakespeare's point is that the lawyers and courts (Cade and his followers actually do hang the court clerk in the third scene) are, even in the worst of times (Henry VI Part 2 takes place against a backdrop of civil war) our protection against the arbitrary tyranny of the gun, the rope and the knife.

Cade and his followers are actually a literary homage to a rich tradition of anti-lawyer, anti-government and anti-judicial "outlaw" activists that actually persist right down to the present day. Our own tax resisters, "common-law court" nuts, militias, and Oklahoma City bombers can actually trace their antecedents back hundreds and hundreds of years... though not to the forebears they are usually keen to claim.

Knowledge is the primary enemy of despotism, and the despots know it.

Victor Hugo believed that knowledge -- the light -- would cure all the world's problems. While I think if everybody was intelligent and could think critically we would have other problems, I'm inclined to agree on a macro level. On a micro level? Forget it. All my "knowledge" and "education" have done is make me unemployable, somewhat elitist (in the good, non-threatening way), deeply suspicious of everything the media and the U.S. does, and a little grumpy. It's kinda cool knowing what pulchritudinous means, though.

Bob Elliott talks to the Little General in today's Sun:

"You're always learning. The more you learn, the more you realize there is a lot that you don't know."

Maybe it's like the old saying goes. There is only one Sparky Anderson, one Yogi Berra, one Casey Stengel and there is one Carlos Tosca.

Since I'm no longer critiquing Mr. Elliott's prose or taking issue with his opinions, even when they're wrong, all I can say is, "huh?"

I always prefered the word defenestration myself. Makes me laugh.

Warning: non-baseball rant ahead!

Today's Vancouver Sun headline--quoting Alliance MP Chuck Cadman--decrying the Reyat sentence as proof that "Canadian justice has hit a new low" made me wince.

Why is it that big media does such a terrible job presenting all the facts in most judicial controversies objectively?

Let me be clear: Reyat was a deluded fool, and a patsy, responsible for many deaths.

But Chief Justice Donald Brenner of the BC Supreme Court knows the sentencing laws. Reyat is *not* getting 5 years for pleading guilty to manslaughter, he's serving 25. They're actually counting the 10+ years he's spent in custody, you know? And in the criminal law those count for double-time.

A few disjointed thoughts:

Coach, congrats on your incredible restraint... Writing Huckaby in as the #1 catcher is as big a stretch as I've seen in a long time. Does Bob E. know something we don't know?

I'll vote for defenestration too... fun to say and a fuuny meaning. Reminds me of the only time I can remember that my HVAC prof took a break from being the most boring man alive and told us something amusing.

If we're throwing in random tangents, how about this baseball-related one: Kevin Millar. Am I the only one who finds the situation ludicrous? "Hey Kevin, in the real world if you agree to a $6.2M contract to go to Japan for 2 years, it's not real difficult to honour it." And if Theo Epstein is so smart and wants Millar so badly, why did he let it come to this? Here's a nice scenario: Bud Lite decrees that Millar has to be posted, the Yankees outbid the Red Sox, they then exercise financial restraint with lame-duck Millar and pay him $1.5M on a one year contract, who sucks it up so badly in April that he spends the rest of the season cheerleading with our dearly departed Mr. Mondesi.

And I'd like a Beemer too.