Y2K Goes Canuck

Hey everybody, it's Cheddar Ben, your friendly neighborhood Y2K Buffalo Bureau Chief, in with a dispatch from parts to the cold and merciless north.

I caught Los Mets' series finale up in Toronto yesterday afternoon, getting to take in the latest in a fine string of performances from Mr. Glass and a characteristically crappy showing from Steve Trachsel.

More on them in a second. I don't imagine much of Y2K's readership has been able to hit up the Rogers Centre (nee SkyDome) in downtown Toronto.

It is, from my admittedly limited vantage point, one of the more unique stadium experiences that the big leagues have to offer. The Rogers Centre is located in a fantastic neighborhood right in the city's heart, spitting distance from the CN Tower and more new housing developments than I can count.

My traveling party of three passed the delightfully kitschy Canadian Broadcasting Company studios, complete with an elevated overhanging booth for the Hockey Night in Canada crew. Let me tell you, it's something else.

That's to the good. In contrast, the atmosphere at the field level is decidedly surreal. The Jays seem to have been going for a "family-friendly" sheen in their pitch and tenor, and perhaps their ministrations ring true on native souls.

For me, it's a typical Canadian cock-up. The font used on all the scoreboards around the stadium is this weird, childlike crayon scribbles, lending the whole proceeding a nursery-room feel.

The big board lit up early in the game with a series of totemic animated montages of the Jays' players that came off as half Home Star Runner, half voodoo-laced South Park. Animated Greg Zaun was depicted as a hockey goalie, animated B.J. Ryan as a hunter. Animated Eric Hinske ... well, even the animated Hinske sucked. All very bizarre and inexplicable.

And the JForce. Oh, sweet mercy, the JForce. It is, unfortunately, the Jays' own in-house breakdancing crew, a crew of b-boys and one markedly mannish b-girl who performed after the eighth inning atop the two dugouts.

They took us by surprise, too, changing out of their t-shirt launching equipment before the seventh-inning stretch, when they showed up in tight black gear to lead the Rogers Centre in a vaguely fascististic mass calisthenics display. Then, with our guards lowered, they got crunk to a bad Chemical Brothers-knockoff beat a few half-innings later. For shame.

At the very least, they could have called this embarassment the JTeam, just so I could have gone back to the "In 2004, a crack breakdancing unit was sent to prison by a provincial court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security disco to the Toronto underground ..." jokes. At long last, there was no satisfaction.

But to the game.

The big picture is all good. In the rubber game of a series against a nominally contending team from the superior American League, the Mets looked like the superior squad from the get.

Mr. Glass launched a 2-0 offering from the soon-to-be-unemployed Josh Towers into the upper deck in right field, and New York never really looked back. That's important.

Then, they didn't let up. The box score doesn't flatter the aforementioned Mr. Towers in any case, but it's hard to convey how little faith the Blue Jays faithful had in this guy.

The Mets were clobbering pitches constantly, and though some wound up foul (DWright's massive bomb down my third base line) or caught (Julio Franco's laser in the fourth inning, sending my old-guy-boosting dad into a brief sulk), there was no disguising the fact that Towers was a dead man walking. Nobody was surprised by Beltran's game-opening blast.

In the same vein, everyone was shocked when Reed Johnson caught up to Mr. Glass' liner in the top of the seventh, the only one of his at-bats in which our young hero was retired. His season batting average has nosed above .300 (to .302), and in practically all the criteria for improvement you could imagine (selectivity, bad speed, attitude, defense), he continues to shine.

Even a few months ago, A.F.O.M.G. was considerably more bullish on his namesake than was I, but if what I saw Sunday wasn't the face of meaningful and lasting improvement, I'm not sure what is.

I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. But this is a team with loads of potential, one that is extremely easy to root for. Maybe it was just the polite Toronto fans, but there were a whole lot of smiles on all sorts of faces when the Mets came to the plate.

Endy Chavez earned some love in the field, Carlos Delgado was being ovated by his old audience (respect), there were the predictable but still pleasureable mutterings about Bradford's delivery and Franco's pact with the devil. A lot of conversation, a lot of positive vibes.

The caveats? Well, Trachsel was pretty subpar. Those who were watching on TV will know this as well, but the game was almost lost in the bottom of the fifth inning, after the Jays loaded the bases with one out.

With Lyle Overbay at the plate, Trachsel grooved a fastball down the middle that Overbay sprayed to the opposite field warning track, a couple of feet away from a go-ahead grand slam.

Instead, it was a sac fly to make the score 6-4, and after Shea Hillenbrand's smoked drive to right was caught, he had gotten out of it. Good enough on this day, I suppose. But not for many others.

Still, with an 11.5-game lead and Lastings in a leather skirt (check the AP writeup if you haven't heard...dude is HOT) there wasn't much to complain about. With a Moosehead Ale to boot? Not half bad.

Soon enough, I'll have the chance to go through the routine at Shea itself, and I'm looking forward to that experience, but this here was nothing to sell short.

For now? Keep your ear to the grindstone, I guess, and keep the faith.

Best,

Cheddar Ben