The Twit: MONDAY! (shoot me now) Edition

Aaron Hill: Boys and girls take note

‘Twas s nice little weekend in sport, that. Let’s dive right in with another edition of The Twit!

- Robert Ray made his Major League debut and went (almost) 6 innings, giving up 3 runs on 4 hits. Best part is that he seemed to settle down after conceding a first inning home run to Adam Jones.

- If you have a young child, and you are looking for a professional athlete for them to treat as a role model (careful now), look no further than Jays 2nd baseman Aaron Hill. As far as I can tell he is loved equally by his teammates, management and the members of the media who cover him (and probably his Mom). Plus he delivers heroics as witnessed in the bottom of the 10th and 11th innings of Saturday’s game. First he booted the ball in the top of the 10th, spotting the O’s a one run lead, only to homer in the bottom frame to tie it again and in the 11th sealed the game with a walk-off base hit. NAILS.

- It was extremely difficult to juggle between watching the Jays game and the Pens-Caps opener. My brain was saying “playoff hockey is special, it only comes once a year (for two months, but still), and this series will be the most compelling story”. My heart was singing:

I managed to do a decent job as I didn’t miss any of the goals, and caught most of the pertinent Jays moments. Most importantly I got to watch every second of extra innings.

- Here’s hoping that the Pens/Caps series continues to be as good as the first game. Crosby and Ovechkin scoring, physical play from both sides, and the goalies stood on their heads (and sticks). If you haven’t yet seen the amazing save by Varlamov that preserved the final score, here it is in all its glory:

- I think there was a horse race or something. People wore hats. Not sure on the details though.

- The Jays  and Scott Richmond (4-0) just kept on rolling Sunday, getting the brooms out in what surprisingly was their first sweep of 2009. Goodbye Orioles, come back soon! They Jays now have eight of the 14 wins I requested when their current 20 games in 20 days started. Two more wins and they go .500 for that stretch. Starting tonight the Jays will see the Indians twice, the Angels twice and finish up with a three game set against the Athletics. Something tells me they can scratch two wins out of those games.

- Triple overtime in the Ducks-Red Wings game yesterday was pretty cool, and once again was the scene for two outstanding goalie performances. Chris Osgood held up a middle finger to all his critics and Jonas Hiller showed everyone why he was the right choice over Jean-Sébastien Giguère.

Snider: Take a long term view?

- I’ll come right out and be the first to say it. Maybe it’s time for Travis Snider to head to Las Vegas to work on his swing. I realize this comes after a weekend in which he made some spectacular plays in the outfield (Brian Roberts won’t soon forget The Travis). However, he’s in a 6-for-33 slump which leaves him with a .229 average. My reasoning includes an excuse to send him down six weeks, which would give the Jays an extra year of control over Travis, as Bart Given explained before the season began. Everyone kinda forgot about it after Snider jumped out to a fantastic rookie-of-the-year-ish start, but now the question needs to be asked: Would a platoon of Jose Bautista and Joe Inglett really be a downgrade at this point?

- Caught the last period of Bruins/Canes last night and it was highly entertaining. Cam Ward (recurring theme alert) was spectacular facing wave after wave of Winnie The Pooh attacks. At one point during a series of successive Ward saves, the usually staid Gord Miller ran out of octaves to which he could climb. Doesn’t get better than that.

- The Jays send Brian Tallet (1-1) to the mound tonight, and the Jays hitters will face Fausto Carmona (1-3).