... and no thanks to BJ's brutal ninth inning ;-) the Jays miss out scoring their own first shut out of the season in Sunday's win.  Although the Halos' lineup is no Bombers, I think Casey's a keeper.  Finally, some better-than-expected news from the Jays' pitching staff.  Josh Towers, it's on you Tuesday night.  Make my twonie worth it....

Today's game was a great example to me with respect to how much the internet has increased my enjoyment of the game.  I felt invested in Janssen's start today, because I've posted so many positive things about him on this site.  I was a huge fan of minor league baseball before I went off to college and then didn't pay much attention for the better part of a decade before communities like this one grew.   If not for having some like-minded fans to discuss the game with, I probably wouldn't try so hard to see New Hampshire when I can get the chance, and I wouldn't have enjoyed the time I've spent trying to play 'extremely amature' scout.

• As if by unspoken agreement, the ticket scalpers now line up in an evenly spaced row on the pedestrian bridge over the railway tracks. How very Canadian of them.
• Somebody's going to have to come up with a cleverer way of numbering the seats. I saw too many grown adults standing in the aisle of 522, looking as if poleaxed, because they didn't have a clue where to go from there. One large group, from a middle school somewhere, stood in the aisle between the bottom of the first (when they arrived) and the bottom of the second, as none of the adults in charge were able to figure out where to sit. (The group left during the seventh-inning stretch, so they saw exactly half the ballgame.)
• A possible solution to the above: instead of numbering the seats 1, 2, 3... and 101, 102, 103..., why not use Left and Right? Section 522, Row 7, Seat Left 5. People would understand that, no? (Of course, some people haven't the slightest idea how to figure out what row they're in, so it might not be that easy.)
• Why, oh why, do they sell popcorn in only one size (Super Ginormous)? One human being can only eat approximately 1/3 of a bag before feeling bloated. I suppose this is a profit-maximizing decision.
• And why do they fill the bag so full that you can't eat from it without major spillage? This must increase cleaning costs - and it's not like there isn't enough popcorn in the bag (see above comment).
• Re Escobar: ex-Jay pitchers always kick butt when they return to Toronto. This is because the Baseball Gods want to give our grumpier columnists an easy story-line to write about. ("Kelvim Escobar, a man sadly underappreciated by the stats-obsessed tall foreheads now running the Jays..." You can do the rest, if for some reason you want to.)
• Ted Lilly deserved better.
• Casey Janssen seems to have no fear out there. This may be a case of what is called "Beginner's Mind" - I think it's a Zen term, though I don't know much about Zen. Janssen just doesn't know enough about pitching in the major leagues to know that it's supposed to be difficult, so he's making it easy. He's throwing strikes, and the hitters are obligingly beating the ball on the ground. I'd say, at this point, that there is only one hole in the starting rotation now.
• The fans are more into the game now than they were a few years ago.
• Tim Langdon, the Jays' current PA announcer, sounds eerily like their old one (Murray Eldon). Eldon probably wouldn't look as good with a shaved head, though.
• Alex Rios. Wow. O to be young and so talented: the last Jay to have the world at his feet like that was Alomar.
  
• I was on the field for Camera Day. Up close, the Jays look to be a fairly friendly bunch - there seems to be a shortage of grumpy, tobacco-spitting malcontents. B.J. Ryan, in particular, looked relaxed and easy-going - he'd probably be a fun guy to hang out with. I didn't try to meet anybody, as the crowds were too great, but I could have struck up a conversation with McGowan if I'd wanted to - he was off to one side, and hardly anybody noticed he was there.