Take out the part that breaks my heart
And makes me sound uncaring
If you eliminate the swearing
Then I could show my mother
That you can go from one chord to another

I had the good fortune (and deep pockets -- thanks so much, ticket resellers) to attend games one and two of the ALDS at Rogers Centre. I've been to a lot of baseball in that ol' barn -- my personal record was 66 games in 2003 -- and Bauxites, nothing came close to this in terms of noise. Sure, opening day and Mr. Sub gym bag day had sold out crowds, but they were never into watching the ballgame. This was something entirely different, and amazing.

I was also fortunate to be able to take my dad to game one and my oldest son, who attended thirty or so games as an infant in 2005, to game two. We sat in the finest cheap seats in baseball, one section removed from the Cheer Club's beloved 518.

Here was our view. Click on the picture to see a larger version.

The best of luck in the ALCS, gentlemen.

Hello, Bauxites. I made you something stupid:

Your pal,

NFH

Wouldn't you like to keep moving
Your life would be slightly improving
When you better come on by
And take a letter down
And send it out as sympathy

She cried "Bingo", you finally clued in
I guess I never thought to look there
What you took you can give back
But I never kept track

I made a list of all the ways to get even
If I'm gonna get back at them
I made the list up and you made it, I'm teasing
But it's hard to keep track
When you're watching your back
But I gotta get back at them

If at first you don't succeed...

It's on, babies.

A passing remark from my man Dave Till:

"All I can say for sure is that I've never seen a period of short-term dominance greater than what the Jays were doing this August."

Last night, Slaughtergarde had a fantasy hockey draft that took under four minutes, and then I tried to trade two sawhorses for Mike Smith.

It wasn't the best of times, it wasn't the worst times. It was just like all the other times.

It was pretty irritating, to tell you the truth.

It's nice to finally be invited to the dance.

It has been a great regular season.  To be able to ask the question, "was this the best Blue Jay regular season in team history?", without gales of laughter ensuing is a rare treat. So, let's do it.  With some statistics and some flights of fancy.

When we last left Slaugtergarde, the baseball fantasy league where all the statistics are fake, the league had a disastrous draft and then fell apart due to rampant, uncontested cheating. Friends, I agonized for a long time about how to modify the rules to reward ingenuity while preventing cheating, and I came up with a brilliant plan: this time, there will be no rules.

You may have heard some worry expressed about the Taylor Swift effect - how bad things happened to Washington, San Diego, and Houston after the 1989 tour came to town.

It's worse than that. Much, much worse. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Consider: