I had the good fortune of covering the Blue Jays’ final home game of the regular season against the Yankees for the radio station FAN590. I’ll admit I spent most of the first half helping FAN reporter, Zack Cooper, figure out the drafting order for his hockey pool. This sort of thing can happen during a meaningless game of baseball, even with Roy Halladay on the bump looking for his 20th win of the season. But at least I wasn’t as bad as Barry Davis from Rogers Sportsnet, playing Scrabble with his wife over Facebook. Though if I think about it, I’m sure if I had a laptop, I would have been on Facebook improving my online pickup lines.

It was probably the fourth inning when I started to pay attention. The Jays struck for three runs to make it a 5-1 game, and I was feeling some excitement for Halladay. While watching Halladay dominate the Yankees is always exciting, this time it felt different, removing some of my disappointment for the Jays’ offense wasting the best pitching staff in the Majors and missing the playoffs for the fifteenth straight year. Fans at the game gave Halladay huge standing ovations after each inning, going crazy after Halladay finished the game, securing his 20th win.

“Did you see who was the first one to congratulate Roy?” Barry Davis asked me. “A.J. Burnett,” he said. Good ol’ Burnett finally had his breakout season just in time to opt out of his contract and ask for more money. But the fans were happy, the players content, and it made the season feel like a success despite how frustratingly inconsistent it had been.

The game left me wondering whose fans were more disappointed with their team this year: the Blue Jays or the Yankees? Spending the entire summer at the FAN, I had read many articles on the Jays’ lack of offense, GM J.P. Ricciardi’s incompetence, and A.J. Burnett’s questionable future in Toronto. I’m sick of the Toronto media continuously bashing the Jays. It seems like they forget that the Jays are in the toughest division in baseball against the two biggest payrolls in baseball, the Yankees and the Red Sox. Now, the Jays also have to deal with the powerful Tampa Bay Rays, who came out of nowhere to win the American League East this year.

If I were a hardcore Yankees fan this year, I’d probably be borderline suicidal. Yankee Stadium closed down this season, and for the first time in 13 years the Bronx Bombers didn’t make the playoffs. What a year to come up lame. There will be no playoff games in Yankee Stadium’s swan song. This disappointment comes amidst the New York Times reporting that the Yankees’ deal with New York City to build their new billion-dollar stadium may have violated tax regulations and state laws. Ticket prices for halfway decent seats in the new stadium have soared to the point where a $500 seat near home plate will be considered a bargain.

But hey, the team’s payroll for 2008 was a mere $209 million. If they want to maintain that exorbitant payroll, they’ll have to hit up the fans for more money despite having a crappy season. God knows the Toronto Maple Leafs have no problem doing that. Let’s do the math: the Yanks’ 89 wins costs around $2.35 million per victory. Compare that to the Jays’ $98 million 2008 payroll and 86 wins, and you’ve got just under $1.14 million per win.

The highlight of my final home reportage was the post-game interviews in the Yankees’ locker room where I saw first-hand just how tough the New York media can be. Yanks’ manager Joe Girardi was getting killed on questions about him allegedly covering up an injury to his all-star closer Mariano Rivera. The media repeatedly insinuated to Girardi that he had caused the injury by using Rivera too much after the pitcher complained about his body being—and I’m not making this up—“cranky.” When the press had finished with Girardi they openly and heatedly discussed him in front of several Yankee players. On the way to the press box, some angrily suggested that Girardi should be fired.

While it was frustrating to watch an entire Jays’ game this season, I think cheering for the Yankees would have been much, much harder.