(Cronenberg : came to WEEI.com for the Whiner Line samples, stayed for the slurs on his homeland)
A : They don’t seem to register on the somewhat faulty cultural radar of former Deadspin editor Will Leitch, who in lauding Jason Bay for WEEI.com insists the unheralded (?) Red Sox left-fielder, “is such a perfect fit with Canada that if he hadn™t been born there, I™d insist he emigrate.”
Canada is the country we always forget about. It sits up there, freaking huge, but really doesn™t register much. The most famous Canadians are all famous because of America. (I doubt Michael J. Fox would have become a hero had Family Ties aired on the CBC.) Canada is modest, quiet, and strangely effective in terms of government™s assistance to its citizens; a guy who breaks his arm in Canada is gonna have a helluva lot easier time than I will, if I break my arm. (He will also cry less.) Canada does great things. But no one really notices.
Jason Bay has been one of baseball™s best players for five years now, but he has done so for a team that is perpetually in last place, in a city with a beautiful stadium but no actual fans. For a guy who once had Eddie Vedder encouraging fans to vote him into the All-Star Game, the odds that you ever gave Jason Bay much thought before he was traded here are minimal. And now, here he is, a linchpin of a team I still think is the favorite to win the World Series this year.
How will he do under the klieg lights of October? Canada™s record is spotty. The biggest Summer Olympics moment they™ve ever had involved Ben Johnson. Hardly anyone watches the NHL anymore. Right now the country™s legislature is in full turmoil. They didn™t make it out of the first round of the World Baseball Classic, despite Bay and Stubby Clapp. Heck, Sarah Palin has even stole their accent.
CSTB’s vast Canadian readership is more than capable of defending herself. I mean, themselves. But suffice to say the next time our Will is paired with another excitable sort for a television chat, I’d like the dance partner to be Don Cherry rather than Buzz Bissinger.