Well, the plane lands in Atlanta – on time and thanks, Delta – and you turn on the phone because it’s time to reconnected with loved ones and the world and you see that David Price is a Red Sox.

Yikes! The tweeter machine was humming and it was interesting to it unfold, to see blame assigned and sadness and anger and all those other emotions that such news generates.

What do I think? With apologies to the far more learned Griff and Brendan and Zorro, I’ve got a few thoughts.

Since about August, I think everyone connected with the Jays and those who followed the team closely knew that it was going to take seven years and somewhere in the neighbourhood of $210 million to get Price, that’s just a simple and undeniable fact.

Of course no one is “worth” that kind of money in any reasonable person’s mind but that’s what it cost to play in the upper echelon of baseball, pure and simple.

If you want someone to blame for this situation, if there has to be blame so everyone feels good about themselves, I think you can put it squarely on management and ownership.

Unless we hear Price say something akin to “Toronto made about the same offer but Boston was a better fit and where I wanted to go” I think it’s safe to assume the Rogers beancounters wouldn’t pay the freight and new GM Mark Shapiro wouldn’t go to the wall to keep one of the most dominant pitchers of the last few years.

And that’s their call, entirely.

They knew what the price was going to be in dollars and years and it certainly appears at first blush that they simply didn’t want to pay it.

It won’t sit well with fans, I don’t think, who saw the coffers swell unimaginably during the second half of last season and into the post-season.

But Rogers is in business to make money rather than run a baseball team and they – along with a newly-minted president who either didn’t want to or didn’t try to convince his bosses to make a splash, wouldn’t pay market value.

That’s their call -- I personally think it’s the wrong one – and I think that’s where any anger should be directed. Now, I don’t know if the Blue Jays had gone to Price and said “we’ll do seven years at $210 million and give us chance to think about matching a better offer if you get it” whether he would have come back but that doesn’t matter now.

Ownership and management made their decision – I don’t expect they will ever truthfully explain it -- and they now have to live with it. They wanted JA Happ and got him, it doesn’t seem like they wanted David Price for whatever reason and that stuns me.

Fans will be and are mainly pissed, I’m sure they feel betrayed for all the money they spent and the emotion they invested in the team for a magical three months.

I presume that bitterness will last until the first 10-game winning streak or Donaldson’s first two-homer game or Bautista’s first electrifying stretch of hitting.

Or maybe this is the one that lingers, that this time with all they gave ownership they were paid back like this and it turns them off.

I do know this: In late 2015, the Jays were a team everyone could love; now because of a management/ownership decision, I don’t think they are any more.

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Kinda works today, no?

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Why didn’t someone tell me they’re doing stuff to actually make Terminal 3 at Pearson workable?

Sure, it’s a horrid construction site now down at the U.S. departures but opening up space with those additional Customs and Immigration machines is a long, long overdue improvement.

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Pearson’s still basically a bad airport with too much wasted space but it’s nice that they’re doing something to ease what was a brutal clearance area.

The $26 burger, fries, Diet Coke lunch was a bit excessive, though.

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Mail?

Gotta get some and since I booked fights that’ll have me in the air at noon Thursday we’re not going to be able to do the weekly chat so the only way to say hello is through the weekend mail at askdoug@thestar.ca.

Get your typing fingers working and fill the in-box, please.

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It will be interesting later tonight to see how DeMarre Carroll handles his return to Atlanta where he made his bones, his reputation and, well, and $60 million.

I don’t see him as a guy who’ll try to do too much to show the folks in his former town what he’s got, he seems entirely tired of whole story anyway – at least that’s what came across from the stuff I read from Chris and others last night – and I do believe he just wants the night over and will be his usual stuff.

What I am truly interested in seeing his how the crowd reacts to him, if it does at all.

Philips Arena is a far, far, far cry from a rocking joint for mundane regular season games, I cannot imagine it being anywhere close to a sellout and I expect no reaction whatsoever.

I bet that would suit Carroll just fine as well.

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Oh yeah, late-ish start and some deadline pressure, so I don’t think I can do an IGBT tonight. This early in the season, I’m in save-myself mode to be able to finish strong and needless stress is needless stress.

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