Thanks for the MemoRoys

It's (soon to be) over. Roy Halladay's tenure as a Toronto Blue Jay is nearing a close, following yet another circus of speculation that rivaled the midsummer nights' clusterfuck started by Kenny Ken. Bastian, Olney and Heyman are all chiming in on it over on Twitter the Toronto-Philly-Seattle megadeal is sealed saying Doc has signed a 3 year extension with Philly for $60 Million plus a couple of vesting options. Rumours right now indicate the Jays picking up $6 million of Roy's 2010 salary as well.

To the Jays as of right now consensus points to pitcher Kyle Drabek, LF Michael Taylor and C Travis d'Arnaud coming north...eventually since they're not big league ready. While this is an alright haul from the Phillies' farm system one could have hoped that at least one big league ready player would come over to help ease the burden right away of losing our best player. In my talks with Dan the Man last night he seemed to be holding out hope for J.A. Happ to get thrown into the deal but signs right now point to that not happening.

Enough can be said about how these prospects can help the team, I don't know enough to judge prospects so I'm not going to pretend to be able to, all I've heard about Drabek, Taylor and d'Arnaud is that Drabek and Taylor have the potential to be f'awesome and d'Arnaud isn't too shabby himself so I'll steer clear of any knee-jerk reactionary stuff about this making us amazing or this being the "death of the franchise, fuck the Jays" (which I've already heard plenty of). All I'm gonna say is that I hope that somewhere down the line they can help improve the club and live up to the massive pressure placed on their shoulders as "they guys we got for Roy Halladay".

Since I'm not gonna do any of that bullshit I want to talk about some of my favourite Doc memories, or memoRoys as you might say.

• September 27, 1998: Jays v. Tigers. At the age of 10 I tuned in to the last Blue Jays game of the season on CBC after getting told "some guy on the Blue Jays is a couple innings away from a perfect game and witnessed something spectacular, that was nearly much more spectacular. In his 2nd career start Halladay retired 26 straight Detroit Tigers before giving up a solo home run to Bobby Higginson that scraped the back of the left field fence to break up Halladay's perfect game effort in the 9th. Despite how much his game has changed since 1998, Roy's line for the day reads like something you'd see in the summer of 2009: 9 IP, 8 K, 0 BB.
• I'm not gonna lie, I took a sabbattical from the Jays for a little while in the early 00's. Halladay pulled me back in, hearing how awesome he was during his 2003 Cy Young season got me to watch. Roy Halladay pulled me back into baseball.
• April 4, 2006: Jays v. Twins. Opening Day 2006. My first opening day since the 2001 "If we lose you get a free ticket" deal. The first game in the wake of JP's winter of spending like a teenaged girl with daddy's credit card. Halladay dominated the Twins for 7.2 innings, giving up 5 hits and 2 ER. Bengie Molina smacked a huge home run of the facing of the 500 level in left and BJ Ryan got his first save as a Blue Jays.
• May 31, 2007: Jays v. White Sox. I took my brother to a game as his university grad present with some sweet seats I scored off of Dan, right behind the plate on the 100s. The only time I've got to see Doc work his magic that close. We witnessed a dismantling of the White Sox. 7 shutout innings, 7 strike outs. 2-0 victory. Just how on was Halladay that night? Time of game: 1 hour, 50 minutes.
• August 14, 2007: Jays v. Angels. What started as a mission of Cheesehead and myself to abuse Shea Hillenbrand on his return to Toronto was turned into a mission to get wasted and heckle the Angels in general. After pounding an abundance of cold shots on the train and carrying a lovely coloured sign (complete with sparkles) saying "We came to heckle Shea but even the Angels don't want him" our plans were overshadowed by a Halladay masterpiece. Doc mowed through the Angels tossing a 97 pitch complete game, allowing 5 hits and 1 run, in less than 2 hours. Also we almost got in a fight with a 45 year old woman.
  
• September 27, 2007. Jays @ Tigers. Dan and I roadtripped down to Detroit to witness the replay for a game that got rained out in April. Despite being a walk-off loss we witnessed an incredible game. Johnny Mac's contributions on that day are etched in the side of our blog. Doc's efforts saw him go 8.2 giving up only 3 runs. We worked his way out of trouble all game long, and if the offence hadn't shit the bed maybe the results would've been different. This was a scenario we saw far too often during Halladay's tenure.
• May 13, 2008: George W. Bush tells an interview with Politico that if had to pick one position player and one pitcher to build a baseball team around he would start with Roy Halladay.
  
• June 2, 2009: Jays v. Angels. Doc dominated the Angels. 14 strike outs. Complete game shutout. Arguably his most dominating performance ever.

It's gonna suck not getting to see Halladay pitch every 5th day anymore. But we'll learn to deal with it I'm sure. Let's not be angry about losing Roy, let's just remember how awesome having Doc around was.