Wednesday 14 April 2010

Let's play ball

Stan Behal's amazing front page photo of Alex Gonzalez feeling the brush of an inside pitch during the nail-biting Blue Jays opener is an award winner in waiting.

The Jays lost to the Chicago White Sox 8-7 in 11 Monday night, but Behal's photo, Joe Warmington's column and eight pages of coverage in the sports section Tuesday gave us a winning attitude.

Bye bye loser Leafs and Raptors, baseball is back in town.

It is early, but there is a feeling in the air this spring, something akin to 1992 and 1993 when Cito and crew took us to two consecutive World Series victories.

The Toronto Sun's love-in with the dreadful Maple Leafs might lead readers to assume hockey fronts are the tabloid's biggest sports sellers.

Well, they be wrong.

It was Blue Jays victories in 1992 and 1993 that pushed Toronto Sun paid circulation to new heights, including a 540,000-plus Sunday Sun milestone in 1992.

With the Jays coming out of the gate 5-1 before the opener, some bloggers were wondering when the Sun might get into Jays cheer gear. Now they know.

Hopefully, Tuesday's devotion to the Jays will continue.

The fan numbers are there, the Sun writers are there and with veteran lensmen like Stan Behal shooting from the sidelines, it can only be a good year for Toronto baseball fans.

3 comments:

  1. The fans are there?! Baseball is dead in this town. Hell, only 10,610 fans at Wednesday's game this early in the season and the team off to a reasonable start. Blue Jay fronts used to spike circulation. No longer.

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  2. Anyways, back to Stan. Another great shot from the Sun's best tennis player. It always amazes me that the Sun's photogs can do their jobs at all with the egregious workloads that they have.

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  3. It is a nice shot but if it wasn't sports it would not see the light of day. We struggle every day and are beat down to the lowest denominator by those who manage us. They refuse to run an award winning photo all they want is cheese and sleaze. Real photojournalism is dead in Sun Media. Oh yeah I am a photog who works for the Sun by the way and hate it.

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