EMK19

I’ve always followed KBO since my younger days so I’m very excited at least KBO is back in business. My team Lotte Giants had a feel good comeback win last night, with Dixon Machado being the main offensive contributor (unthinkable in MLB, lol). There are two former Jays playing in the league this season btw; one of them is Nick Kingham, who got the opening day start and did well last night going 7 innings 3 ER’s but was on the losing end of a 3-0 loss for his team SK Wyverns (With his opponent Warwick Saupold getting a two hit complete game shutout). The other is Seung-Hwan Oh, who’s winding down his career with his original team Samsung Lions.

Saw it coming... hopefully best case scenario it can be similar to 1995 (though due to totally different causes obviously) where we started again late April. If not I wonder how much longer the suspension can go on for before deciding to cancel it all for the year... hopefully it never gets to that point though.

Yeah, I'd think he'd regularly be around 90-92 which is obviously not enough as a two pitch pitcher, and that's only assuming his breaking ball is serviceable which we have no clue about. Would be awesome for versatility though, being able to play corners in both IF/OF and as a RP to boot. Really doubt he would be someone Shatkins would be interested at this point though. Maybe he'd find a taker over in Asia (not sure how much he has been demanding over the past yr but I'm kind of surprised he hasn't ended up there yet).

Oh god, I was a heartbroken little kid when I heard the news of the trade, since McGriff was my favourite player(#19 in my username is actually from his number w/the Jays) and Tony was my second favourite at the time. Since I was a kid back then with my exposure to NL being extremely limited besides from baseball cards, I had no idea who this Alomar dude was and I had not been overly impressed with Carter when he was with the Indians in ‘89. Trading away a young home run champion w/ great patience at the plate and a 4-time GG all-star for guys with lesser stats and accomplishments (on paper) just didn’t make much sense to me at the time, especially since we were already competing for the division every year with that core (of course falling short but by no fault of those two). I was quicker to warm to Alomar as he elevated his game to elite status (and once Tony came back in ‘93 it felt like a full win), but I never fully warmed to Joe besides his ‘91 division winning hit and the ‘93 HR, and also never had quite the same affinity for Fred’s replacement, John Olerud.

I was not in favour of Nike putting the swoosh on the front either (like most fans), but with the current jerseys I think I will eventually get used to it. If the deal was always to allow the sponsor logo on the front, at least the swoosh is the least conspicuous logo out of all the brands (imagine if the Under Armour deal never fell through and we ended up with that UA logo on the chest instead... ugh). But insisting on putting the sponsor logo on front of throwback/heritage jerseys really annoys me; these should try to replicate the old jerseys as close as possible and seeing the Nike logo on the front just looks wrong and completely out of place. It should be kept on the jock tags or at most, on the sleeves. Of course, there’s always Mitchell and Ness but those cost arm and a leg...

I’ve been thinking, should we be a little more relaxed in terms of retiring player’s numbers? Jays seem to have what is pretty much an unofficial requirement of HOF induction for the team to retire a player’s number, and while I don’t exactly want us to retiring number every few years (and eventually run out of popular numbers like the Yankees), I think we have a few true franchise greats that had longevity with the team/had many marquee moments/put up great numbers such as Fernandez, Stieb, Delgado, and Bautista that should be given serious consideration for it despite them falling short of HOF. While the Level of Excellence is nice I feel that it doesn’t get the deserved recognition from non-Blue Jays fans as much as a retired number would (I wonder how many non-Jays fans remember that LOE even exists...). I know a big part of the decision in us retiring Alomar’s number was that he was the first one to go in wearing a Jays cap, but stats and achievement wise with the Jays I do believe that Tony was almost/just as good as Robbie in a lot of the areas (GGs, playoff performances, offensive numbers), and spent much more time with our team to boot. Tony may not have been as complete of a ballplayer or charismatic as Robbie was but as far as honouring his time in a Jays uniform goes, I say he is just as deserving if not more in some ways. It would also be nice too in that we get to honour a franchise great of our early years. We have Robbie as a symbol of our early 90’s teams and Roy for our post new Millennium years so Stieb/Fernandez would be a good candidate for the 80’s (though Tony overlaps a bit into the 90’s as well).

Why not if there’s a decent deal? Granted the prices there usually not the best if another place is selling the same item, but I find that the clearance section is worth keeping an eye on once in a while for deals for jerseys/shirts (including Player authentics and game used stuff too if one’s into those, not easy to find that elsewhere in person). Huge variety of Jays only merch too so if anything it’s always nice to stop by and browse.

By the way, I stopped by the Jays shop (Eaton Centre) the other day and all outgoing Majestic jerseys are finally on clearance sale; IIRC it seemed to be about $30 or so discount off both blank and name/numbered jerseys. I’d suggest getting these Majestic jerseys at a cheaper price while you can since the new Nike replicas seems to be equal quality to the outgoing Majestic cool base ones from what I’ve seen; so there’s really no need to pay the premium just for the swoosh. This is especially so for the throwback jerseys since the it seems like Nike will still put the swoosh on the chest in those, which will just look odd on throwbacks IMO.

RIP Tony. Him and McGriff were two of my favourite players on the Jays when I started seriously following the Jays as a Kid. I’ve said this on another thread but IMO he had skills equal or greater than some of the HOF SS’s and always seemed so underrated as a player. Loved his brief rental comeback in ‘93 then two more times after that (and seemingly only getting better in hitting as he aged). Will always be my favourite Blue Jays shortstop and never be forgotten.

Definitely enjoyed all the sports talk shows essentially cutting a wrestling promo bashing the Astros interviews today, lol.

Nothing with a curve in that angle shown in the pic lol, but yeah, probably what it was (+ fold over it)

https://m.sports.naver.com/news.nhn?oid=477&aid=0000232251 Just found this photo from a Korean news site and while I’m sure that’s just a fold on his pants I’m almost sure they used this picture on purpose, lol.

Odd how theres no one between #15 and #22... I’d figure they’d be popular numbers, even though #19’s been left open as respect to JB (at least that was the story last yr; if that’s the case then may as well retire it?).

Even though he has managed to surprise many with his bat, we all knew coming up he was a glove-first type of guy.

Only if it was a Toronto Raptor...