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I hated the Toronto Blue Jays during their heyday.

When they were winning championships in the early 1990s, I hated them.

I liked Roger Clemens and the Boston Red Sox. They were an underdog team that fell just short in 1991 to the Blue Jays in the AL East race. I was excited when the Blue Jays lost to the Twins in the ALCS that year.

In 1992, while the Jays were on their way to winning their first ever World Series, the Red Sox stumbled to a last-place finish. (Though I always told all the Blue Jays supporters around me, Boston had a better record than any of the last-place squads in the other three divisions.)

In 1993, the Red Sox teased me by winning 10 straight during the summer to actually gain a three-way tie for the AL East lead. On a night when they were gunning for their 11th win, the Blue Jays were idle, and the Red Sox had Clemens going in Milwaukee. Boston took the lead into the ninth inning, and were three outs away from another victory, when ex-Sox Tom Brunansky (batting under .200) hit a two-run, game-winning homer off closer Jeff Russell to knock the Red Sox out of first place. Boston never reached top spot again the rest of that season. How did that 1993 season end? The same way it did a year earlier, with Toronto winning the World Series.

Things changed shortly after.

While I was happy the Blue Jays fell on hard times, it was still excruciating to see the Red Sox lose in the 1995, 1998, and 1999 postseasons. (Actually, I couldn't see the 1995 postseason games because of The Baseball Network's insistence in having all Division Series games shown simultaneously; thus, I caught only the Yankees-Mariners series. Great series, one of the all-time classics, the New York-Seattle one, but I'd rather have seen the Red Sox instead.)

By the 2000s, my 'hatred' for the Blue Jays faded. After all, how could one hate a team that was going nowhere? I normally root for underdogs, so by 2000, I was actually pulling for both Boston and Toronto to unseat the Yankees from the top of the AL East standings. With Delgardo, Batista, Cruz, Fullmer, et al, crushing balls out of the park all year long, the Jays had a shot. The Blue Jays were in first place in mid-July (while the Yankees were having problems and injuries in their pitching rotation). However, Toronto had its own pitching issues, and faded soon after. David Wells and Frank Castillo did the job, but Chris Carpenter and Roy Halladay didn't. I blamed Halladay and his 10.64 ERA. (Ironically, both Carpenter and Halladay would win Cy Youngs a few years later, though the former's came with the Cardinals.)

After seeing the Red Sox win their second World Series in 2007, I was no longer sure if I wanted to root for Boston anymore. They were no longer underdogs; they were spending lots of money too. Not like the Yankees, of course, but nonetheless, they were in the same class. I've often told people, "Well, they (Red Sox) have won two already, and after that first one, it isn't the same anymore. It's not special to see them win anymore." It was kind of like, whether or not Boston wins again, isn't important anymore. The Sox have already won--and broken that so-called curse!

Meanwhile, it was bad to see Toronto buried in the East behind the Yankees and Red Sox. Had the Blue Jays been in the NL West in 2008, they would have had a shot for the postseason.

The 2008 Jays did win me over, with their great pitching. (Sad to see though, that A.J. Burnett is now gone and Dustin McGowan is not going to pitch for a while. Ditto Shaun Marcum, who was awesome in the first half of 2008.) Too bad Litsch, Halladay, Marcum, and company often had to pitch with no run support.