You know, something that really resonated for me when I'd had a conversation with a
guy who wasn't from Canada.
This was around last year in the 2016 baseball season when the Jays were doing really sort
of mediocrely.
It wasn't that they weren't going to finish close to the top of their division, it's
just they were playing poorly in a season in which they eventually went for the second
consecutive year to the CS, to the championship series.
And the guy was saying, you know, I really don't like how you guys are fans and by you
guys he was meaning like, you know, the established Canadians that were here for a while.
He goes, I'm not a real big baseball fan, but I'd gone to a couple of games and I like
the game and I like the experience.
And he said, you guys are fickle fans.
And he was a football fan, a soccer fan from Turkey, and he's like, you know, we support
Galatasaray, his team.
We support Galatasaray no matter what.
If they're winning or they're losing, we're going to show up for every game with our scarves
and whatever football fans do, and we're going to cheer them on no matter how good they're
playing if they're having a bad season, if they're having a mediocre season.
And that really resonated with me again, like I said, for the reason that, yeah, I think
the fans in Toronto, the sports fans can be very fickle, it doesn't apply in the case
of the Maple Leafs.
For some reason, other than this last year, which was a pretty stellar year with a bunch
of rookies, they can pack the Air Canada center to the, if this was happening in Montreal and
that the hockey team was so utterly bad, there would never be that kind of fan support.
For some reason, the owners of the Maple Leafs have succeeded in creating a kind of an ethos
where being a Maple Leaf fan is not about hockey, it's about being a Maple Leaf fan.
But the Jays are a different ball game here in this town, and if the Jays are not doing
well, for some reason people talk smack against the Jays.
That doesn't stop Roger Center from filling up more than 45,000 fans for almost every
single game, but it's just, it's a bizarre phenomenon that you'll have people talking
smack against the Jays.
This year in 2017, the Jays are not doing very well.
They're 51 and 57, it's two thirds of the way into the season.
The rate and a half games back, they're in last place in the East, in the most competitive
division in all of sports, not just in baseball, in all of sports.
The AL East, the American League East, is the most competitive division.
The Yankees, Boston, Tampa Bay, Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays is the most
competitive division in all of competitive sports anywhere.
It's the most, it's the division that has the most parity.
But what I want to say is that baseball can be a metaphor for life, and I think the reason
that baseball expressions have entered the zeitgeist, have entered the lexicon or the
jargon, you know, whatever, all we need is doubles and singles, you know, made it to
first base, hit a home run, grand slam out of the park, strike out, you know, all these
different expressions that have entered, especially in corporate language.
I think because baseball is a super metaphor for what's going on in life, you know, you
could be having a mediocre season, it doesn't mean that the season is over, two thirds
of the way of the season and you're still in last place doesn't mean you can't pull
off a comeback.
You know, if a batter is having a bad slump, you're just in a slump, you know, if you're
not locking down deals or if you're not getting gigs or you're not getting jobs, you're just
in a prolonged slump.
It doesn't mean you're going to be in the slump for the entire season, and another way
of looking at it from the flip side, just because you had a great season last year doesn't
mean you're going to have an automatic great season this year, you still have to put in
the work.
You know, you still have to go out there, after four at bats, every single game, do you
work, do your batting practice, do your drills, get on the plane, travel to the different
cities, have road games, do your stretching, you know, I love baseball for that reason.
It's one of the most grueling sports, Europeans that come to North America that watch baseball
games and say it's slow and boring, they really don't know what they're talking about.
It's so difficult to hit a ball that's being flung at you at oftentimes over 90 miles
an hour to try to hit it with a stick that's, you know, not wider than, I don't know, four
inches across and that whatever is 20 or 25 inches in length, you know, whatever the dimensions
of the average baseball bat is, it's a completely difficult game.
And the fact that some of these guys can have seasons where they hit one-third of the time,
in other words, one out of three at bats, but they end up having a, what's called a
333 batting average, or they can hit 40 to 50 home runs in a season, you know, the fact
that they can do things like that just goes to show you how much of a skilled individual
you have to be to play the game of baseball.
But again, the point of this little sort of comeback video blog is I have this year in
particular with the Jays doing so poorly in the standings, I've had so many opportunities
to take that particular situation and to derive so many lessons from it and to help a lot
of people too by kind of relating any difficulties that they may be going through to whatever
the Jays are experiencing as a team, as a collective.
So maybe just to reiterate some of the lessons from this particular blog, first of all, don't
be a fickle fan, don't be a fickle individual, don't be fair weather, you have to be stalwart,
you have to be there for people no matter what, and you have to be there when you start
something, you have to stick it out, you can't just, you know, go into a thing and then drop
people just because things are not going so well.
That can include a marriage, a relationship, a business proposition, or any other endeavor
that you choose to embark upon.
The second lesson is it's not over till it's over, you know, Yogi Berra really, if he in
fact is the man that coined the expression in popular baseball, lexicon and lore, Yogi
Berra, the famous catcher for the Yankees in the 1950s, he is the guy that actually said
it ain't over till it's over.
So it ain't over till it's over, the season's not done yet and the Jays are only five and
a half games out of the second wild card spot.
So some interesting things could happen between now and the end of September.
Maybe the last thing is baseball is a really tough game.
Anybody who thinks that baseball is an easy or a boring game or that it's a bunch of fat
guys, baseball players have the top trainers, talent, exercise coordinators, weight training
programs, just as rigorous, just as grueling as any other sport, be it tennis or football,
you know, or whatever, European football, soccer, it's just as difficult, sometimes
even harder.
I mean, I would say the only other athletes that work harder than baseball players are
hockey players because hockey players have to do every single other thing that every
other athlete has to do, but they have to do it on skates.
Anyway, come back, video blog, August the fourth, 2017.
My name is Adam Daniel Mazay and I'm thinking of giving a new title to this one because
the old title maybe doesn't apply anymore.
I'll think of something.
I'm coming up with a good title wishing you many, many good things.
