Monday, June 23, 2008

Then again, nobody will be watching the Jays in September anyway

Lost in the Cito madness was the news that Welcome Back Veterans, a charity whose purpose is not meant to be denigrated by anything following this dependent clause, has an awareness-raising event or something during MLB games on the July 4 weekend and September 11. As far as I can tell, the American flag will be morphed to fit each team's cap logo and blue will feature prominently in the uniform.

Hat tip, so to speak, to Uni Watch, where Paul Lukas points out that the Blue Jays are included in this. Sort of.

Their "honouring" of an American charity consists of combining the Canadian flag (an excellent, simplistic symbol of our country that everyone not descended from Diefenbaker can be proud of) and the Fighting Jay (none of those things). Ugly evidence here. I'm sorry for linking to that. The Jays have worn the stars and stripes in the past, most of the team is American, these games will be in Chicago and Anaheim, and WBV is MLB-connected, so American flags would have been more appropriate than bringing in the maple leaf for an event partially tied to Iraq. But at the very least MLB recognizes that they have a team playing in another country. Nobody needs to be reminded what song preceded OK Blue Jays on March 31, 2003.

That recognition would be enough progress to declare "the slope is positive" and move on, except that Lukas--who comes across as a sharp guy and really should know better--openly wondered if Canadian soldiers were even in Afghanistan. In a post about an event honouring veterans. So many wars, hard to keep track...

1 comment:

Rob said...

On a related note, THT's Monday interview with Eric Seidman contains this simple bit of maudit anglais ignorance:

The most surprising thing I've learned is that players can just decide to change their name pronunciation whenever they feel like it. I refuse to call him Erik "Baydarr." Absolutely refuse.