The other day, ESPN’s Bill Simmons
(aka “The Sports Guy”) revealed the contents of an email he had received from a Toronto sports fan, "expressing..dismay that (A) Roy Halladay was traded, and (B) Chris Bosh is a mortal lock to be playing somewhere else next season. By August…Canada's best non-hockey player would be either Hedo Turkoglu or Aaron Hill.”Thanks, Sports Guy!
This gives me the opportunity to address something that’s been sticking in my craw for months. (In case you’re wondering, when something is "stuck in one’s craw" it manifests as an uncomfortable pressure building inside you…much like it does inside Poopypants after “Chili Night in Canada”).
I’m not going to debate the identity of which athlete (not on skates), playing for a Canadian team, should be considered the country’s best player, in the absence of Halladay & Bosh. At best, it would be a specious argument; at worst, I’ll end up in a psych ward because I finally decided to throw feces at the insane co-worker who continues to insist that Rafer Alston could have saved the Raps, if we’d only “given him a chance”.
Yeah, OK.
What I will address is the pathetic, defeated attitude expressed by so many Blue Jays fans at the (entirely expected) departure of Halladay and the unbridled panic that sets in amongst Raptors fans at the mere hint of Bosh leaving (which is, obviously, also, a somewhat predictable transaction).
I'm not suggesting the exits of Halladay & Bosh won't be huge losses to their teams. However, some people seem to think that the loss of Halladay and the imminent/inevitable departure of Bosh makes the city of Toronto akin to a Jessica Simpson movie crossed with a dark & stormy Canadian night…that is, talentless & star-free.
Chris Bosh & Roy Halladay are/were the most popular and most visible faces on their respective teams. Most talented? Maybe. Ultimately, that determination will be made over time, based on the entire careers of CB4 & the Doctor, and the career successes of their Toronto teammates.
Were/are they integral parts of their teams? Sure.
Does their departure signal the irretrievable downfall of their teams, going into the next (couple of) season(s)? Hell, no. No, no, no. In fact, I couldn't scream “NO” any louder right now if I were being told I was being forced to attend a Nickelback concert!
Perhaps, if the teams were both on the precipice of something fantastic, with all the other necessary winning pieces in place, then the absence of Bosh and Halladay would be the ruination of the team(s)...but neither team is in that place!
And people seem to forget that both basketball and baseball are TEAM sports.
In basketball, it is conceivable for a marquee, franchise player to carry a middling team beyond the mediocrity with which they're surrounded. Bosh has shown that he can be that player (case in point, the 2005-2006 season...March of '06, Bosh got injured, the Raps went 1-10 in subsequent games without him). But the team is not currently winning (last season 33-49, so far this season 13-17)...sure, Bosh is their best player, one of the best in the league, but the team, as a whole, needs a LOT of work. Losing him certainly won't *help* the team, but that alone doesn't guarantee the Raptors' downfall.
In baseball, one ace player does not a playoff team make. A pitcher usually works every 5 games. A team plays 162 games per season. A really good pitcher can generally be counted on to get 20 wins in a season (FYI, in 2003, Halladay's best season, in terms of his W-L record, and the year he won his first Cy Young award, he went 22-7 with a 3.25 ERA). Assuming your ace brings in 20 wins, that still leaves 142 games with which to contend. I'm no mathematician, but, that seems like a lot of games.
Let me put it this way: If you have a car with a brand new shiny transmission, but the car also has flat tires, no oil and a body infested with rust, you're not going to get too far, no matter how impressive your tranny (yes, "impressive tranny" could be used as a euphemism).
To summarize: Toronto fans, relax. Our teams have waaaay bigger issues than losing their superstars. Like the Jays' new fetus of a GM. And the fact that Marco Bellinelli gleefully admits that if he weren't playing basketball, he'd be working in fashion.
Anyway...a quick farewell to Mr. Halladay. As he displayed for his entire tenure in Toronto, both on-field & off, Roy Halladay left Toronto the epitome of class...as evidenced by the full-page ad he took out in the Toronto Sun...
Thanks for everything, Doc. You will be missed.
No comments:
Post a Comment