Did I Jinx Them?

The Blue Jays that is.

In yesterday's post, I ended with, "they are up two runs after one inning. Yippee, their bats are alive." Their bats were alive -- they were up eight runs after six innings. Yet they still managed to lose the game when they went into extra innings.

I just don't know what it's going to take to bring my boys back to life.

For the past while, I've noticed that whenever the cameras pan the dugout, the players are lined up on the bench looking quite forlorn and dejected. None of them looks like he really wants to play ball, or like he is "into the game."

And poor Cito Gaston -- he just looks like he doesn't know what to try next. I sometimes wonder if he's thinking, "What the hell was I thinking when I agreed to come back to manage these bad news bears?" But we know that he is far too professional to say anything negative or to renege on that contract. He will do his utmost to be successful with this team.

But he can't be successful if the powers-that-be won't co-operate with him or won't give him anything with which to work.

Gaston can't improve team morale if he has nothing to offer the team that will help boost their morale. He can't calm team fears of losing their best pitcher when he himself doesn't know what is going to happen. When the whole team is worrying about losing their best pitcher, they are all affected by team plans. You've heard of the "trickle down" effect ...

Of course, each player recognizes that he is not contributing as he should, so he goes up to bat determined to make a difference. Result? He tries so hard he fails.

Individually, each player wants to succeed but just can't pull out of his own personal funk.

As a team, they absolutely want to succeed, but they can't pull off the wins because of individual failures on the field or in the batter's box.

The Blue Jays' biggest problem is hitting with runners in scoring position -- "cleaning up".

When upstairs doesn't talk to downstairs, the people downstairs start worrying. And when the people downstairs are worried, their performance suffers -- they don't "clean up" as well they might.

A large part of the game of baseball is played "between the ears."

It follows that communication is the key.