All entries by this author

Blue Jays are contenders in 2024 .. but it looks like the rise may have stalled .. can they finally take flight before it’s too late?

Mar 28th, 2024 | By | Category: Sporting Life

SPECIAL FROM ROB SPARROW, HIGH PARK, TORONTO. MARCH 28, 2024. When the Toronto Blue Jays finished their 2022 season, they made a determination that the status quo wasn’t acceptable. To that end, both a strategic and cultural shift for the Blue Jays in 2023 featured a vastly different style compared to many of the teams […]



Where are Blue Jays going in fateful year 2023 … as expectations continue to rise, what was good enough then isn’t good enough now ????

Mar 30th, 2023 | By | Category: Sporting Life

SPECIAL FROM ROB SPARROW, HIGH PARK, TORONTO. MARCH 30, 2023. 4:15 PM EDT. [NOTE FROM CW EDS : The Sparrow’s much awaited review of “Canada’s MLB Team” at the start of the fateful year of 2023 has arrived just in time for the Jays’ season opener in St. Louis today. And it is divided into […]



Blue Jays 2022 : This year’s lineup has World Series capability, but living up to that billing won’t be easy

Apr 8th, 2022 | By | Category: Sporting Life

SPECIAL FROM ROB SPARROW, HIGH PARK, TORONTO. APRIL 8, 2022.O the Joy of Opening Day 2022. Games provide distraction. In a world where one delicately navigates the atrocities and reckless tyranny in Ukraine, the continual struggle to cope with the ongoing complications and uncertainty of COVID-19, every little bit of joy matters. Baseball aficionados always […]



Blue Jays 2021 : Expectations will continue to rise; Montoyo says “Our guys are ready”

Apr 1st, 2021 | By | Category: Sporting Life

SPECIAL FROM ROB SPARROW, HIGH PARK, TORONTO. APRIL 1, 2021. Life for the Toronto Blue Jays, like everyone else for that matter, was and continues to be upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. A year ago, Canadian government border restrictions forced them to be baseball’s version of the nomadic warriors playing all of their games south […]



Blue Jays 2020 – one part of major-league sports in the time of COVID

Jul 25th, 2020 | By | Category: Sporting Life

SPECIAL FROM ROB SPARROW, HIGH PARK, TORONTO. JULY 24, 2020. The sporting world, like most everything else, stopped earlier this year on March 11 when Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz became the first athlete to test positive for COVID-19. In many ways the shut down of the NBA, and the other sports leagues that […]



Blue Jays baseball 2019 : Gibby’s Boys are all gone and so are the fans …

Mar 28th, 2019 | By | Category: Sporting Life

And then there were none … With the firing of John Gibbons at season’ end, and the off-season release of Troy Tulowitzki and trading of Russell Martin, the last vestiges of the best Blue Jays team in a quarter century are gone.  Slowly it seemed and then suddenly, the faces on the famous September 2015 […]



Blue Jays 2018 : Stocked with talent and caveats, they could be either contenders or pretenders .. or just a team in limbo

Mar 29th, 2018 | By | Category: Sporting Life

From the outset of 2017 something was amiss. The day before the first full-squad workout in the spring, all-star Josh Donaldson suffered a tear in his right calf and did not find his stride until late July. Then Canadian Blue Jay prospect Dalton Pompey suffered a concussion at the World Baseball Classic and spent the […]



Blue Jays 2017 : last year was close but once again denied .. how much longer will the window stay open?

Apr 10th, 2017 | By | Category: Sporting Life

Baseball is back in the great white north, signaling spring revival, while also commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Blue Jays’ inaugural game (April 7, 1977) at snowy Exhibition Stadium on the north shore of Lake Ontario. While it was an entertaining 2016 down at the ballpark known previously as the Skydome, last year once […]



Blue Jays 2016 : Last 87 days last year were magical .. this year will be a long season and glorious (we hope!)

Apr 8th, 2016 | By | Category: Sporting Life

There is symmetry in numbers…200 of them to be exact.  For that was how many days the Blue Jays had in 2015.  A mercurial season that began in early April and ended on the 200th day in heart breaking fashion, eliminated on a cold and rainy Kauffman Field in Game 6 of the AL Championship […]



Blue Jays 2015 .. long winter into drought that may be ending very soon!

Apr 11th, 2015 | By | Category: Sporting Life

As the Blue Jays head north after one of the longest winters in recent memory, they come loaded with baggage and a lot of questions.  Baggage in the sense that they now carry the longest playoff drought (21 yrs.) of any of the 124 teams in the four North American major sports.  Compounded by questions […]