December 15, 2009 / 23:39
The Jays were in a tough position though. Halliday was leaving at the end of the upcoming season anyway. So better to get something for him now, rather than nothing down the line.
As far as crowd goes. There was actually no spike in attendance when Halliday pitched. Some games were actually sporting smaller crowds for a Halliday game vs the following game which would feature a bigger crowd. There is no real message sent by the Jays as the fan base is not big enough currently for the Blue Jay brass to worry about messages. They need to worry about building a good team first, and let the rest of the chips fall where they may.
December 16, 2009 / 07:54
I agree. A sad day both for Toronto sports and the Blue Jays as well.
I think the problems started when baseball's top brass actually pulled the plug on the regular season a few years back, just before the World Series. That pretty much confirmed what I already suspected from the greedy bastard owners.
The Jays have made many questionable moves over the last few years, but I don't know how they will recover from this.
December 16, 2009 / 09:48
Sadly, you are correct, Fred. It's been a couple years since I've bothered to go to a game (the Dome is really a horrid place), and with no percieved interest in the team by Rogers, why should I care! I know that where I work, there were still die-hards who made the trek fairly regularly, and they have tossed in the towel. I also feel that this season will be an attendence disaster, and that things will spiral downhill from here. Good-bye Jays, thanks for the memories and the 2 World Series all those years ago! My only question is, where could they re-locate too?
December 16, 2009 / 10:36
Pretty dismal forecasts...yes there will have some lean years ahead (as before) but there will always be another “Roy Hallady” around the corner waiting to make the break into the majors
…if my kids are indication of the next generation - the fan base is secure. My kids don't know the names of the players, salaries, era, stats etc...They just grab their gloves and we head downtown to the dome and watch the game and talk about it for days after. My only issue is with the price of the tickets. Hopefully management will realize the need to attract the fans and will reduce prices
December 16, 2009 / 10:52
The reports of the Jays' death are greatly exaggerated.
December 16, 2009 / 11:07
Your right Fred, Toronto doesn't have baseball fans. The baseball fans came from the greater GTA (Burlington, Milton, Oshawa, to name a few) at the mistake by the lake. I was one of them. Bench seats, first base line. Went to the Sky Dome once with my two boys, for free. A fan appreciation day. But alas, the price of baseball at the Dome lead me to support Triple A ball once again.
December 17, 2009 / 23:41
Fred, I think you are being a little over dramatic, this team hasn't sold well for a while now first of all, second look at what is coming up to this team
Kyle Drabek is going to be a stud, in three years we will forget about Halladay.
Romero won 13, hes a rock solid lefty, Brett Cecil another solid lefty, If they can get either Marcum or McGowan back at full health they have a very good rotation going forward.
Clean out Vernon Wells and Overbays locker and the cleaning house is complete you build the offense around Aaron Hill and Adam Lind two exciting young hitters. im intrigued. It sucks losing your best player but hey look at it this way, Wayne Gretzky was traded to the LA Kings and Edmonton won a cup shortly after he was traded...
December 18, 2009 / 08:26
The Jays will be here for a long time yet. Going to a Jays game is still one of my great pleasures. The trade had to happen. It's the way baseball works. You trade before the player walks. Free agency caused all this.
December 18, 2009 / 16:10
Fred, this is a ridiculous article.
The Blue Jays are bad - true. The Blue Jays are going to have very low attendance next year - true.
And to you that equals that the team is going to move? Well, then I guess the Marlins, Pirates, Royals, Reds, Rays, A's and Padres are all moving too. Because they, perennially, have lower attendance than the Jays.
Why is it, that anytime a Canadian team struggles, some immediately jump to the conclusion that the team will move?
Do you know what has to actually happen for a team to move? Ownership would have to sell the team, and then there would have to be no local buyer. Then, a buyer from another market would have to step up and find a place to move them.
You might recall that just the third part of this process took the Expos, who were in a situation about 50x worse than the Jays (the didn't even have games on TV or radio by the end) the better part of the decade to sort out.
Rogers owns the Jays, Sportsnet, The Fan and The Rogers Centre. Something tells me they might want to hold on to the team to provide content (and despite your assertation that there aren't baseball fans in Toronto, the Jays continue to score great TV and radio ratings).
The Blue Jays are going to have a bad year, but they are not close to moving. They just suck. There is a huge difference.
December 18, 2009 / 16:21
On another point -
I recall a couple years ago, Fred, you writing an article about how 'people in Toronto don't care about basketball'. I'm sure you probably thought that the Raptors were moving when they traded Vince Carter (Even though they've been a top ten attendance team the past few seasons).
I find it to be an aggravating trait among certain Canadian hockey fans that they seem to almost want 'non traditionally Canadian' sports like basketball and baseball to fail here.
Toronto is the 4th biggest sports market in North America and one of the most multicultural cities on the planet. It is not going to go back to the days when there was only NHL and CFL.
Obviously hockey is huge here, but there are also dedicated, hardcore bases for basketball, baseball, soccer and more. Just because you, and perhaps your friends don't care about basketball or baseball, that doesn't mean those fans don't exist.
And finally, regarding the Jays, don't forget that this is a team that hasn't sniffed at the playoffs in 17 years. 17 years without a HOPE of the playoffs! In my opinion, having average attendance ranging from the low to high 20,000s the last few years is totally reasonable for a team in that situation. Did you know that teams like the Phillies and the White Sox were averaging around 20k a game earlier in the decade before they turned it around?
Anyway, I really like your blog, but as you can see this post has completely driven me nuts. I'm so tired of the 'this is Canada, so we only like hockey' argument. Frankly, it has turned me off hockey.
December 18, 2009 / 16:52
This article would hold weight if the author knew how to spell Roy Halladay's name properly.
December 18, 2009 / 17:00
Thanks Gary.. correction made.
December 18, 2009 / 17:04
This is one terrible, god awful abomination of a post. I mean, you can't even spell 'Halladay' correctly, yet here you are predicting the demise of the franchise without a single shred of anything remotely factual or without offering any sort of real analysis. All you serve up here is chicken little, 'the sky is falling' nonsense.
Look, It's rotten that the team had to trade Doc & I understand that the optics of that aren't the greatest right now but I would implore you to take a real hard, long look at what the conditions were when the Expos packed it in. Take a look at the facts & at the numbers & you'll see that in no way are the Blue Jays in the same stratosphere. It's not even close, so please spare us your ill-informed & misguided doomsday scenarios.
This post is embarrassing.
December 18, 2009 / 17:42
You're wrong, and anyone who thinks you're right is just as ignorant as you..
Major Leaugue Baseball now has something you may have heard of? Its called Revenue Sharing...
You might not be aware of this, but every time the Jays play in New York, Boston or any city, they get half of the gate revenue...
The Jays receive over 50 mill a year in shared revenue... So if Rogers really wants to make money they can simply turn the Jays into a AAA team...
The point is, we could put a team in Kingston, Ontario and they could work based on revenue sharaing alone...
December 18, 2009 / 19:06
Funny how an article lacking much of any critical thought is displayed on a site called Canadian Thinker...
December 19, 2009 / 16:37
No baseball fans in Toronto?? I would actually be kind of offended if it wasn't clear thatyou put absolutely zero thought into this post.
For what its worth, I'm a huge baseball fan and so are many of my friends. I'd say baseball is easily the second biggest sport in toronto. Do you understand how bad this team has been and for how long? That's why attendance is down. There are plenty of fans in the GTA.
You say the jays are gone, but fail to give one concrete explanation of how this would happen. There are several teams in far worse situations than the Jays - wouldn't they be more likely to move? And where exactly would the team move to?
Moving a franchise is a long, deliberate process. To say the jays are done when that process hasn't even started (nevermind finished)? Idiotic.
December 19, 2009 / 17:02
"You say the jays are gone, but fail to give one concrete explanation of how this would happen."
How about this?
This coming summer will be ugly. Crowds of ten and eleven thousand that were the exception last year will become the norm this year. There will be absolutely no reason for a Blue Jay fan to pay for tickets, parking and exorbitantly priced food next year.
There will be no upside, there will be no payoff. There will be nothing more than a faceless team playing in an outdated stadium in a city that offers many more attractive things to do and the break point won't be that far down the road.
No fans will mean a small payroll and a small payroll will mean no wins and that will take us back to no fans and with no fans there won't be much use continuing in Toronto.
December 19, 2009 / 18:57
Low attendance and a bad team does not equate to relocation. A LOT of MLB teams have had low attendance and a bad record over the past decades, and only ONE has relocated in the last 40 years. And the Expos were basically in a Coyotes situation for ten years.
If your post said 'the Jays are going to be bad, attendance will drop, and their place in the city is slipping' I would agree. But that's a big leap to actual relocation. Teams have been in a worse state than the Jays for a lot longer without people discussing the franchise being done.
I'm not saying it could never happen - but relocation is not close right now.
December 20, 2009 / 19:42
hmm? never thought of it that way? you might be right...i stopped going to games after that strike...
..everyone..including myself thought we would all go back as fans...and i didnt...i had found other things to do and watch and i was no longer interested...
..after years of riccardi and his four yr plan to winning team..which became five yr plan..then 7 yr..and on and on..i am sick to death of boring uncompetitive baseball...put it to sleep and be merciful.
December 22, 2009 / 19:57
If the Jays win, people will come. If they lose people won't. Just like it is for most sports teams (Leafs, Red Sox, Cowboys etc being the exception).
The team will be fine as long as their not a last place team the next 20 years.
They're not done. That's a huge overreaction, dude.
This is going to be huge. The Roy Halladay trade could prove to the largest most impactful trade in the history of Toronto professional sports.
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