Jaywalker

Baseball season is over. The Blue Jays pushed the World Series winners to six games in the American League finals, one game better than the Mets fared against the Royals. Jose Bautista showed the world that Toronto has style with his bat flip. Josh Donaldson won the Hank Aaron award and is in line for the Most Valuable Player award. We should be celebrating a successful season, the best in 22 years.

But we’re not. We’re mired in a he said-he said-he said controversy about the unhappy departure of general manager Alex Anthopoulos, the man who made this year happen. He said he turned down a new contract because he didn’t feel he was going to have the right fit with incoming president Mark Shapiro. Shapiro claims he did everything but shine Anthopoulos’s shoes to get him to stay.

Third man into the debate was young Edward Rogers, third generation scion of the ownership family. In an unusual interview with Sportsnet, owned by Rogers, Edward went through chapter-and-verse of what he claimed they did to convince Anthopoulos to stay. Now, I don’t know Edward, I’ve never clapped eyes on him, but no one talks as lyrically as he did in that interview. Here it is in all its splendour. Was there a ghostwriter involved?

Just when we thought baseball mattered again, the suits arrived and the party’s over. Fans of the late, lamented and losing Brooklyn Dodgers used to hold out hope by saying, “Wait ’til next year.” By the sounds of things, I don’t think we can say even that.