Blue Jays Commentary

Memorializing the 2026 Blue Jays season, or what happened after the clock struck midnight, when the carriages turned back into pumpkins and the mice came back.

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

I'm not having any of this manufactured Messi hatred

He's an absolute legend and always will be

[Blue Jays Commentary @HitchensFan]

@nytimes @TheAthleticFC England lost. Get over it. They lost because Argentina was better. There's a reason everyone hates England.

[Blue Jays Commentary @HitchensFan]

@bnicholsonsmith Time for Champ to champsplain:

https://t.co/SFpq2HKped

[Kacey cocklin @Kaceycocklin]

@HitchensFan @KeeganMatheson It’s the best lineup in baseball casual

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

He told his students to go to the windows.
Get out. Jump if you have to.
Then Liviu Librescu walked to the classroom door and pressed his body against it.
He was 76 years old. He weighed 140 lbs
The gunman was in the hallway.
It was April 16, 2007. A Monday morning. Solid mechanics class at Virginia Tech, Room 204. Twenty-two students, most of them 19 or 20 years old.
At 9:45 AM, gunshots echoed through Norris Hall. Room by room, the shooter was working his way down the corridor.
Liviu heard it. He understood immediately.
He had survived the Holocaust. He had survived a labor camp. He had spent decades living under Communist oppression. He knew exactly what evil sounded like.
He told his students to escape through the windows. Second floor — it was a drop, but they'd survive. Then he walked to the door and held it shut with his body.
The shooter tried to force it open. It wouldn't move.
He fired through the door. Wood splintered. Bullets came through.
Liviu stayed.
Behind him, students were climbing out the windows. Dropping to the ground. Running. One by one, all twenty-two of them got out.
The shooter kept firing through the door.
Liviu held it shut until every student was safe.
Then the bullets killed him.
When police arrived, they found his body at the door.
All 22 of his students survived. Not one was injured.
Liviu Librescu was born on August 18, 1930, in Ploiești, Romania.
He was Jewish. In 1941, when he was eleven years old, Romanian authorities sent him and his family to a labor camp. His father died there. Liviu survived. When the war ended, he was fifteen.
He went back to school. Studied engineering. Earned a doctorate from the University of Bucharest.
But Communist Romania had no interest in allowing a Jewish intellectual to succeed. He was blocked from academic positions. Passed over for jobs he deserved. He applied to emigrate. The government kept refusing.
Finally, in 1978 when Liviu was 48 years old — Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin personally intervened. Romania let him go.
He had spent most of his adult life trapped in a country that didn't want him.
In Israel, he taught at Tel Aviv University. Published over 300 papers. Became an international expert in aeroelasticity — the science of how air flows over aircraft wings.
In 1985, Virginia Tech offered him a position. He moved to Blacksburg, Virginia. He taught there for 22 years. His students loved him — demanding but kind, high standards, genuine care.
He was still teaching full-time at 76. Still publishing research. Still showing up every Monday morning for solid mechanics.
April 16 was the first day of Passover — the Jewish holiday celebrating liberation from slavery and oppression.
Liviu Librescu died on the day his tradition sets aside to celebrate freedom.
He spent his entire life escaping death and oppression by luck, by persistence, by the intervention of others. And on his last morning, he chose to stand at a door so that twenty-two young people could have the future he had fought so hard to reach.
He could have run. He could have hidden. He could have climbed out a window with his students.
He chose to stay.
The Virginia Tech shooting killed 32 people that day — the deadliest school shooting in American history at the time.
Room 204 had zero casualties.
Because a 76-year-old Holocaust survivor held a door with his body until every student behind him was gone.
His funeral was held in Israel. Students from Virginia Tech flew across the ocean to honor him. The Israeli government awarded him the Star of David Medal posthumously. Virginia Tech named a scholarship in his memory.
His son said his father died the way he lived — protecting others.
A man who survived everything evil threw at him for 76 years.
On his last day, he made sure 22 kids survived too.
Professor Liviu Librescu. August 18, 1930 — April 16, 2007.
Holocaust survivor. Labor camp survivor.
302 published papers. 22 years at Virginia Tech.
22 students out the window.
He held the door.

[Blue Jays Commentary @HitchensFan]

@globeandmail Dress better.

[Blue Jays Commentary @HitchensFan]

@SophieShipton_ If only England hadn’t sucked.

[Blue Jays Commentary @HitchensFan]

@FoodProfessor

[John Cleese @JohnCleese]

He's referring to wife-beating, throwing gays off tall buildings and clitorectomies, I assume

[Blue Jays Commentary @HitchensFan]

@KeeganMatheson

[Robyn Urback @RobynUrback]

I'm not sure if I can claim to be Canada's dumbest bitch but it really is nice to be considered

[Jarvis @jarvis_best]

Having a lovely vacation up here in Canada. There’s a lot of fires everywhere but the smoke appears to be blowing south so I think we can take our time putting them out.

[Blue Jays Commentary @HitchensFan]

@cbcwatcher Liberal Party fake judges.

[Blue Jays Commentary @HitchensFan]

@clairlemon You have to admit Claire that Jon Bernthal’s New Jersey accent was funny.

[Tim Sheehy @TimSheehyMT]

As a former waterbomber pilot who used to lead an aerial firefighting fleet, I can tell you “send help” is an extremely dishonest framing by the Canadian government.

The Canadian government routinely blocks U.S. firefighting companies from attacking fires in Canada, while aggressively sending their government-subsidized aircraft to the U.S. to earn commercial rates from the U.S. taxpayer. It’s big business for them and they run it like a Chinese protectionist racket.

[Blue Jays Commentary @HitchensFan]

@3YearLetterman @BradWCAttorney Or in flames.

[Warren Kinsella @kinsellawarren]

Here's Naheed Nenshi, who is a liar, with a bunch of mayors from Israel. We look forward to your servile apology for this one, too, you fucking hypocrite. #ableg #cdnpoli

[Warren Kinsella @kinsellawarren]

Unless the object of the hate is a Jew, that is. In which case, he stands elsewhere.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

I’m often tickled by press articles asserting that I’m furious about things that actually gave me a proper belly laugh. This time, though, knock yourselves out. Amnesty’s attack on Beira’s Place has left me burning with the kind of fury that mounts with every passing hour.

[Jen Gerson @jengerson]

This is pathetic.
It's not strong enough to appease the Gaza folks. It alienates everyone else who has concerns about normalizing anti-semitic standards. It accepts the idea that posing for a picture with a dignitary you disagree with is some kind of expression of "harm." It treats 100 angry supporters on Twitter as legit arbiters of a moral standard.

[Blue Jays Commentary @HitchensFan]

@terrynewman Out of a tent in a sub-Arctic climate-zone.