AAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA; or, Alex Anthopoulos Has Made A Trade

Anthopoulupagus

What can you even say, man, what can you even say? When the news of this Ironborn-reaving of a trade began to trickle out last night, Twitter was awesome, and not just because of the cackling of my bros; there was a broader cackling, too: Bruce Arthur suggested Jeffrey Loria be jailed; Jose Bautista shared his feeling that it was a good day to be a Blue Jay; and Buster Olney argued that MLB's worst fears about the Marlins had been realized, effectively killing Miami as a market for baseball. That is how you know your guy has really pulled something off that is legitimately historic in its proportion: when the other team isn't just looking bad for a couple years, but no longer viable as a major league franchise. Robert MacLeod's Globe and Mail headline this gave me a pretty nice feeling, too: "Blue Jays Plunder Marlins in Blockbuster Trade."

May I begin by recalling the last true Blue Jays blockbuster trade, in fact the only one they'd ever had until yesterday? Not the Vernon Wells deal, mighty though that was, and upon which I have reflected previously in these very pages, but the 1990 trade with the San Diego Padres that brought us Joe Carter, who would later hit a home run you have heard about, and Roberto Alomar, the greatest player we have ever had. At the time, I was like eleven, and with basically no knowledge of any west coast players on account of bedtimes, I was sure we had been robbed, because Fred McGriff had this cool upright stance and Tony Fernandez threw the ball sidearm. How wrong I was on that day! And so I know all too well that judgments made too soon after a big trade can be foolish. 

That said, this trade is ridiculous and I love it and Alex Anthopoulos is the greatest general manager ever and I want to kiss him on his face like all over it. So we got Jose Reyes, who is speedy and neat, Mark Buehrle, workhorse of workhorses, Josh Johnson, who was not awesome last year but who is without question a guy, and Emilio Bonifacio who is no less certainly a guy and in fact just the kind of guy I would like to have thank you, and all for Yunel Escobar who we hated he is the worst the middle-infield needs to be a queer-positive space, Adeiny Hechavarria who is probably going to be good, sure, Henderson Alvarez, of whom I am actually quite fond, and Jeff Mathis, who I don't understand why they extended last year anyway. Also prospects: I will not pretend to know anything about Justin Nicolo and Anthony DeSclafani other than that people who pay attention to prospects think they are good ones of those; I neither know nor care at the moment, if I may be perfectly frank with you on this matter. And oh yeah they are making us take John Buck back.

But this is just completely awesome. I have absolutely no reservations about any of this and I have serious doubts about anyone who does. If anybody goes like hrrrnnnn I don't know that's a lot of payroll to take on hrrrrrnnnnnn I suggest you stop listening to them immediately: Rogers are as rich as anybody who owns a sports team in North America (also Croesus), and they got the team and the building for a song, and nobody should care about baseball business stuff anyway because it's dumb and the worst and if you choose to sully baseball the greatest and weirdest game ever by talking and thinking and writing about it as though it is best viewed as a place to enjoy more capitalism because you don't get enough of that during regular business hours fuck you not because there is something pristine and pastoral that you shouldn't be sullying but because it is really boring to talk about those things you should be more interesting than that. 

In short, and in summation, I am exceedingly glad about this, mostly because of how we got all kinds of good players. 

Thank you for your time. 

KS