The front office weighs in

Holy cow!

When Your Working Girl expressed the simple wish to have the Blue Jays front office show they cared about the fans, she’s afraid she shocked a good many of her Gentle Readers by the fact that she cared about baseball at all.  And she was as stunned as anyone to think that her future calling might be as a baseball writer.  But in her humble effort to reach out in her hour of baseball need what she marveled at most was that, you, her Gentle Readers soothed her baseball soul with a flood of poetic baseball musings worthy of the memory of Phil Rizzuto:   

•  "I was in the Jays’ dressing room on opening day in April of ’77 at Exhibition Stadium shooting a Shoppers drug commercial and I still have an autographed ball signed by the whole team.”  
• "What do you think about Michael Iggy saying he is a Die Hard Red Sox fan- And he wants to be Prime Minister- Would that be Prime Minister of Boston, Massachusetts?
  ”
• “You might just be lucky enough to see Lind hit one just over the first baseman's head to drive in  the winning runs in the bottom of the ninth rather than hit one right at him.”
• "Pretty stunned of them not having enough programs to go around.  I notice there was no shortage of them at the F1 race in Montreal last year.”
• "Contrary to what baseball bards think, it's not the opera.”  

Your Working Girl was entertained, moved and inspired by the missives of her Gentle Readers.   In fact, she was so distracted by them, she almost forgot that the previous evening she had dashed off sternly-worded emails to Howard Starkman and Paul Beeston saying she would not darken the door of the Rogers Centre until she felt the Blue Jays brass cared.  (Your Working Girl believes it is important to be specific in her negotiations.)   But Paul Beeston’s email, which arrived at precisely 12:20pm on Monday afternoon, snapped her to her baseball senses.   As she read the note from Paul saying he wanted her to know the Blue Jays did care about the fans, didn’t want to make excuses and apologized for running out of programs, she could feel the ice melting in her cold, cold heart.

And when she received Howard Starkman’s note the following afternoon recalling his memories of the strike, the fun of baseball scoring, details of how the programs were printed, how he wanted her to know the Jays cared about the fans  . . . .and that he read Your Working Girl’s blog and liked it . . . she was pretty much convinced.  That two of major league baseball’s top executives responded so personally and so quickly to a baseball fan whose very good friend refers to as The Devil Lady of Baseball seems to be . . .  oh, what’s that adjective my sports fan friends use to describe their team when it does something well off the field . . .  uh, let’ see . . . classy.  Yes, classy.  How Paul Beeston and Howard Starkman responded was classy. 

For a lot of people who love the game, we just want it to love us back. 

And for anyone reading this who believes scorekeeping is the new knitting, I want to share a little authentic Phil Rizzuto with you.  As a man who had a brilliant career as shortstop for the New York Yankees, and broadcasted Yankees’ games on radio and television for 40 years, Rizzuto came up with a unique scoring notation:  “WW”.   It stood for "Wasn't Watching."

Unbelievable!

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