You might have been forgiven for never having heard of J.P. Arencibia before today, but regardless of what kind of Baseball fan you are, if you are in anyway inclinded to the Toronto Blue Jays you will know of him tonight and probably won’t forget him either. Arencibia, at 24 years of age, was playing in his first major league game; In the first ball of his first at-bat he launched the ball for a home run. Pretty impressive start to your career, right? Well, he wasn’t done there. He followed it up with a double, a single and yet another home run. It was an unbelievable start and the crowd absolutely loved it. He got a standing ovation from the 24,168 in attendance as the Blue Jays destroyed the Tampa Bay Rays 17-11 in a slug-fest.

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The Honda Indy of 2010 just kind of crept up on me. I heard the commercials for it, months in advance but after deciding months in advance that I was going to go I woke up one day and realised the event was only a few days away. I quickly snapped up a ticket for the race day and on Sunday morning hopped in the car early and headed down to Exhibition Place to watch some top level motor racing.

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I can’t believe it’s been a year already. But here we are, mid-July 2010 and the Indy Cars are back in Toronto again and my ticket is purchased. There is no way such an elite level motorsport could come to within ten kilometers of my door and I not find myself in attendance. I didn’t have the cash to get along for the entire weekend like last year, but I wanted to at least see the race. Looking back at last years event my most vivid memory was how close the racing was and how much overtaking there was in comparison to F1 and I hope for more of the same tomorrow.

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So there you have it; two games at home and two victories … if form like this continues the Toronto faithful can look forward to a season of fifteen wins at home and fifteen defeats on the road. The Seattle Shapeshifters were the latest team to fall flat at fortress BMO as TFC took the win 2-0 in a game that had moments of neat passing football filled out by periods of poor possession football watched by a conspicuously smaller crowd than usual and rounded off with a goal by someone not called Dwayne De Rosario … it only took five games.

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Well tonight was the night that everyone had their eyes on the Leafs/Devils game to see how Brian Burke’s big shakeup of the roster would begin to play out. And if you were to judge on one night only you’d have to score it 10 out of 10 though maybe that is a bad thing for the Leafs because now the fans will truly believe the corner has been turned and this is the start of many big wins. Could it be? Well the Leafs could well improve to a point but this won’t suddenly make them a top team in the NHL over night, there is still work to do and tonight they came up against a very sub par Devils teams. But I shouldn’t be all harsh, the Leafs did all they could and got service from all three new players straight away to shut out the Devils 3-0.

New boy Dion Phaneuf, the one everyone was looking at played a strong game. He had hits, he had shots and he even dropped the gloves in a decent scrap. Playing slightly under his shadow, which is rare when a Stanley Cup winning goalie comes to Toronto was JS Giguere but he was perhaps the best player of all on the ice turning away 29 shots to pick up his first shutout as a Leaf … the last man to pick up a shutout for the Leafs on his debut was Eddie Belfour. And last but not least was Ferdrick Sjostrom who grabbed an assist on the Leafs first goal and featured all night long on their penalty killing unit.

So there you have it, the deal after one game is a success story and everyone is content. How it’ll look in ten games time is anyone’s guess but while I don’t think it’ll make them a brilliant team just yet, it looks like it might be a step in the right direction. If anything Phaneuf looks like he’ll be fun to watch.

I am not Brian Burke’s biggest fan, but you have to admire him for not sitting on a bad thing and admire him for being very aggressive in trying to tackle the problem that is the modern day Toronto Maple Leafs. Burke has threatened changes from the get-go but as time went on the threats to send veterans to the minors and make trades appeared to be looking like idle threats until Sunday when Burke pulled the pin on a grenade and lobbed it into the Leafs dressing room blowing it to pieces.

By the time the dust settled a staggering 30% of the teams line-up had gone and three good players plus a prospect had come back in. Tonight they will take to the line-up for the first time and everyone will anxiously tune in to see what happens.

I don’t expect a miracle, I certainly don’t expect the Leafs to soar up the standings but something had to change and overall, while losing Ian White isn’t easy (he’s having a better year than Phaneuf), the Leafs have improved to a degree. I say degree because they are now left desperately short in the forward position but can now look at young players and see what forward positions they need to address in the off season. Actually, Burke said he isn’t done trading some some of those positions could yet be finished by trading out some defensemen, a position the Leafs can trim down on.

If only Liverpool, my beloved Liverpool Football Club, could address their own problems and lack of talent un-worty of wearing the Red shirt in a similar way to the Leafs. To many times this season I have watched them fall well short of standards and wished Benitez had the guts to ditch 30% of the line-up. Sure we haven’t the money to buy but we could certainly sell and buy in replacements, perhaps even give some younger players a run out who actually want to be there. But then, that’s a rant for another day.

It’s been a long old hockey season for those that like their trades … Until today. I was sitting watching TV this morning when someone pointed out to me the names of some Leafs players on the news ticker and that it looked like there had been a trade. I turned on the net and was indeed informed of the blockbuster deal that had taken place between Toronto and Calgary and later Toronto and Anaheim.

The trades:

Toronto acquire defensemen Dion Phaneuf and Keith Aulie along with forward Fredrik Sjostrom from the Calgary Flames in return for forwards Jason Blake, Niklas Hagman, Jamal Mayers and defenseman Ian White.

Toronto acquire goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere from Anaheim Ducks in return for goalie Vesa Toskala and forward Jason Blake.

Thoughts:

Well the Toronto media have proclaimed their city the winner of this deal before a shot is fired in anger by any of these players at their new teams simply because Phaneuf is the biggest name in the deal. They have a point to a degree, the Leafs gave up some players on big salaries who were not producing as much as they might have liked and with the team sitting at the bottom end of the standings and losing on a nightly basis, it makes sense to make changes going forward. Losing a bunch of forwards frees up space for the Leafs to give young players a shot to prove their worth for the rest of the season and getting back a young star like Phaneuf never hurts.

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