Welcome to Frustrated Jays Fan
Issue one. Editor in chief: frustrated. Copy desk: also frustrated. Circulation: one kitchen, one cat, and whoever else has made poor emotional investments.
Hello, and welcome to the gentlest possible explanation of why I am like this.
This is Frustrated Jays Fan, a blog about the Toronto Blue Jays written by one fan who keeps mistaking April optimism for evidence. It is run, edited, written, and proofread from one kitchen, where the standings are checked too often and the cat has stopped reacting to sudden noises.
There are three desks: Grief Desk, Comics Desk, and Opinion Desk. The desks are, in fact, the same desk. The desk is in the kitchen. The kitchen has seen things.
This site exists because baseball is too long to suffer silently.
A normal person watches a bad inning, says something balanced like “that’s baseball,” and goes on with their evening. I watch a leadoff walk, begin pacing, and mentally draft a 900-word editorial about organizational culture, pitch sequencing, and why the remote control deserves hazard pay.
That is the difference between a hobby and a condition.
How this works
Posts will appear after games that go poorly.
Posts may appear after games that go well, but only if the win contains enough weirdness to require documentation. A clean, normal, responsible win is not impossible, but it is suspicious. I will treat it like a raccoon standing upright in the driveway: impressive, alarming, and probably not the beginning of a stable trend.
There is no editorial calendar. The Blue Jays decide.
If they win calmly, the kitchen rests.
If they lose in a way that makes the broadcast booth start using gentle voices, the presses roll.
The official editorial structure
The Grief Desk handles losses where everyone involved looks tired and nobody wants to say the obvious thing out loud.
The Comics Desk handles baseball nonsense: baserunning adventures, defensive misunderstandings, bullpen theatre, and any game where the phrase “technically still winnable” appears before the sixth inning.
The Opinion Desk handles emergencies, overreactions, and open letters written with the emotional restraint of a smoke alarm.
All three desks report to me.
I report to the cat.
The cat has concerns.
This is not analysis. This is a kitchen newspaper with a box score addiction.
Subscribe, or don’t, I am not your bullpen coach
If you’d like the rants in your inbox, the subscribe form is over there.
The RSS feed works too, because this site respects tradition, open standards, and the kind of person who still knows what RSS is without needing a nephew to explain it.
There is no comment section.
This is not because I fear debate. It is because a Blue Jays comment section after a bad loss would immediately become a second, worse baseball game. I already watch one of those.
Final note from the kitchen
Welcome.
Make yourself at home.
Check the standings only when emotionally prepared.
Do not place beverages near the scorebug.
And please, for the love of all that is decent and structurally sound, do not casually mention the bullpen unless you are prepared to stay for the full meeting.
React