The Bandwagon

It happens all the time and it seems in this city with more frequency than others. It is the bandwagon jumpers. The so-called fans who cheer the team when they are doing well but are quick to abandon, criticize and forget about them when they are doing poorly.

In hockey it is usually evident in May and June (well not for the past 5 years but normal Mays and Junes). There is a sudden increase in Leafs fans across the city. Many people who have not even watched a game the entire season will suddenly hoot and holler as if they live and die by the team. These same people will be hard pressed to name more than 2 players on the team. When they get eliminated those same "fans" forget about them until the next playoff season.

The same happened for the Blue Jays in the past month and a half. Due to their torrid start there was a sudden increase in the number of Jays hats seen around the city and people were buzzing about the team. After one sweep, however, against the Red Sox people were pushing each other to jump off the bandwagon. The following are paraphrased comments by these bandwagoners. "They can't compete with the AL East": right, the same AL East we had a winning record against last year, the year before, and the year before that? "They can't compete when it matters": Well, considering it's May and there are about 120 games left it is a little bit too early to judge this team's ability to compete when it matters. "They don't have the depth": Considering the Jays are probably pitching with one of their relief pitchers as their number three (or 2a) and are still in first that's deep enough for me. "The season's over": It's baseball, not football. As the axiom goes every team is going to win 50 games and lose 50 games. It's what you do with the other 62 that make the difference. They currently sit .5 games ahead of Boston. If someone had told me preseason that the Jays would rank there at this point I would have laughed at them, so I'll take it. As for you bandwagon jumpers, I hope you don't get hurt your legs on the fall down. After all you're going to want to climb back up come October. Magic Number: 120.