All Talk: Beisbol

"My favorite players are Roy Holiday and Roy Oswald"

Spring is in the air, and with it comes a lot of unwelcomed precipitation, and a new season of Baseball.

Part 1: John Chidley-Hill from the Canadian Press joins me for an attempt to figure out the Toronto Blue Jays, 2 weeks into the 2011 season.

Download: Link

Part 2: I managed to track down Tug Haines, who is currently on a summer long tour of ballparks across America. We discuss his project Casual Fan, and speak about the mystique of minor league baseball.

Download: Link

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http://johnchidleyhill.com/

http://twitter.com/jchidleyhill

http://www.casualfan.org/

http://twitter.com/TugHaines

Photo courtesy of Tug Haines

'cism!

Congratulations to Jose Bautista who moments ago became the first player in Toronto Blue Jays history to hit 50 Home Runs in a season. Allow me to celebrate this joyous occasion by adding some paranoia to the mix.

Last season, Bautista hit 13 Home Runs in a limited role (336 at bats). Given the opportunity to be a full time player this season his numbers have skyrocketed. He just needed a chance to play everyday. Well, his improvement was so vast that people started talking about Performance Enhancing Drugs.

Last season, his teammates Adam Lind and Aaron Hill both had career years. Outstanding numbers all around. This of course was called a case of the players living up to their potential.

So we have a case of one excellent season being linked to PEDs, but when the same thing happened the previous year, no questions were being asked? Both Lind and Hill's numbers have fallen off dramatically this season. Why the sudden drop from last year? They'll tell you it had to do with injuries, or a slow start. Was it possible that they were using PEDs last season? No, of course not.

Only Latin players cheat...


Senor McGwire