Jason Hammel gave up four home runs Wednesday.

Jason Hammel needs to start taking a little bit more responsibility for his performance on the field.

Rather than speaking to his work on the mound after the Baltimore Orioles ace gave up nine hits and four home runs in a 4-1 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays on Wednesday, the 29-year-old accused the Jays of sign stealing.

Hammel who had given up just three home runs all season prior to Wednesday's loss spoke to reporters after the game:

"When you're not locating your fastball, you're going to give up some home runs there," he said. "But the swings they were taking on the breaking stuff, it was pretty amazing to me. I don't think you can take swings like that not knowing they're coming. I don't know. That's all I can say."

It's not the first time the Jays have been accused of sign stealing.

Back in August 2011 "ESPN The Magazine" published a report suggesting the Jays were using a man dressed in white in right field "who seemingly signaled the pitches the visiting pitcher was throwing

J.P. Arencibia and teammate Rajai Davis

Though he went 0-for-6 in his first at bats of the 2012 Toronto Blue Jays season, opening day couldn't have ended better for J.P Arencibia. In the 16th inning, and on his seventh at bat of the game, Arencibia hit a three-run home run helping push the Jays past the Cleveland Indians 7-4.

His ability to hit homeruns is what Arencibia became known for in his first full season with the Jays in 2011 setting a franchise record for home runs by a catcher with 23.

However, his power at the plate seemingly shutdown after his opening-day heroics; he recorded just one hit in his next 25 at bats and his batting average dropped to a measly 0.67 by the middle of April.

If his frustration wasn't showing on the field, it seemed to when he responded to New York based media personality Eric Mirlis who on April 19th tweeted about Arencibia's "scary bad stat-line" to start the season.

Blue Jays Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion (Getty Images)It was a deep drive that took Baltimore Orioles outfielder Xavier Avery back to the warning track. It seemed for a moment that Blue Jays designated hitter Edwin Encarnacion was going to accomplish in 49 games what took him all of last season to do. He already had hit his 16th home run back in the third inning and if this baseball didn't die just shy of the 375-foot fence in left field at Rogers Centre, Encarnacion would have had his 17th —the same number of homers he hit in 134 games last season - in his final at-bat of what turned out to be a 6-2 Jays victory Monday night.

Instead he'll have to wait at least another day. With the Jays and Orioles playing the second of a three-game series Tuesday, it seems there wouldn't be a better night for Encarnacion to hit his 17th home run of the season. It was on this night a year ago — in his 38th game and 141st at-bat — that the 29-year-old hit his first home run of the season in a 13-4 Jays drubbing of the Chicago White Sox.

And in a Jays

Scott Dickens

By JIM MORRIS

VANCOUVER - After being dead in the water at the Athens Olympics the Canadian swim team is riding a wave of confidence and excitement heading into this summer's London Games.

It has taken eight years but Canada's swimmers will take a swagger onto the London pool deck. Simply making the Olympic team isn't enough anymore. Now it's about making finals and bringing home medals.

"We realize the world is not waiting for us and we have to step up our game if we want to win medals,'' Scott Dickens of Burlington, Ont., said while competing at last weekend's Mel Zajac Jr. International Swim Meet at the University of British Columbia. "We believe we can. We may be underdogs but don't count us out. We want it just as bad as anyone else.''

The 2004 Athens Games were a disaster for the swim team. It was the first time Canada failed to win an Olympic swimming medal since 1964 in Tokyo.

National coach Dave Johnson become a lightning rod for criticism. There were demands that Swimming

Simon Whitfield isn't favoured to win this summer, but he could surprise people again.

Monday marks the 60-day countdown until the opening ceremonies of the London Olympic Games (oddly enough, the Olympic competitions actually start two days earlier with preliminary soccer matches), and the interest is building nationwide. Strong recent performances by Canadian athletes on world stages in such sports as cycling, shot put, kayaking and rowing, amongst other sports, have helped to produce some early excitement, and the Canadian Olympic Committee's intensive marketing efforts aren't hurting either. However, much of the attention thus far has been focused on a few of Canada's top medal hopes. While those athletes are the most likely to be atop the podium while "O Canada" is played, the Olympics are often known for their unpredictability, and that could lead to some less-likely faces picking up medals for Canada this summer. Here are five Canadian athletes and teams that aren't considered to be medal locks by most, but could potentially rise to the top this summer.

Ryder Hesjedal kisses the trophy after claiming the Giro d'Italia Sunday.

Cycling history was made Sunday in Italy as Victoria, B.C. native Ryder Hesjedal became the first Canadian to win one of the three Grand Tour events, coming from behind to claim the Giro d'Italia with a blazing time of 34:15 in the 21st and last stage. Hesjesdal's victory also marked only the second time in the race's 95-year history that the lead changed hands on the final day, and the first since 1984; he trailed pink jersey leader Joaquim Rodriguez by 31 seconds heading into the last stage, but made up that time and more over the 30-kilometre individual time trial course through the streets of Milan, triumphing by 16 seconds in the end.

What's incredible about Hesjedal's victory is that it's so far above what any Canadian has ever done on the biggest cycling stages. Heading into Sunday, it wasn't just that no Canadian had ever claimed the Giro d'Italia or the other two Grand Tour events (the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España); no Canadian had ever even made the podium in any of those events. The previous best was Steve Bauer's fourth-place finish in the 1988 Tour de France, although Hesjedal himself pulled off an impressive seventh in the 2010 Tour de France. Still, coming through in spectacular fashion like this to not just finish on the podium but finish at the top is remarkable; Hesjedal teared up when the Canadian anthem was played for the first time following a Grand Tour event, and it's hard to blame him. Here's video of his podium reaction (Italian commentary):

Here's a quick courseside video of Hesjedal in action Sunday:

Lena Sutherland and Jules Mancuso are taking their "commentary" to CBC.

It's not every day that a CBC programming decision draws strong international condemnation everywhere from sports sites to feminist blogs, but the government-funded broadcaster pulled off that feat with Wednesday's announcement that they'd partnered with While The Men Watch to provide alternate audio commentary during the rest of the Stanley Cup playoffs. For those unfamiliar with While The Men Watch, as many of us were before Wednesday's announcement, it's a site run by Lena Sutherland and Jules Mancuso that features live commentary on sports events (or, more typically, on the physical attractiveness and stylistic decisions of the athletes involved in said events), portrays women as only interested in sports to keep their men happy, and posts such enlightening articles as "Love Me Like Lundqvist: 5 Sex Games for Hockey Season Pt 1" and "Sex on Game Day: Does He Lock it Up or Love You Down?" It's not particularly surprising that such a site exists, but CBC's decision to team up with this duo and prominently feature their commentary during sports events further reinforces problematic gender stereotypes and hurts perceptions of women in sports, whether that's as executives, reporters or viewers. Here are some notable Twitter reactions to Wednesday's news from female journalists and fans:

Torsten Frings and Toronto FC have had a year deserving of facepalms.

Toronto FC has been branded as "the worst team in the world" by one of their own players this week following their historically-awful 0-9-0 start to the season (the worst in MLS history), but the club still has a chance to earn some silverware in Wednesday night's Amway Canadian Championship final (8 p.m. Eastern, Sportsnet One) against the Vancouver Whitecaps. TFC has been awful in league play this year, but they've done well in cup competitions, and they head into the second leg of this final tied 1-1 and ahead on away goals. If TFC can pull off a victory in front of the home crowd at BMO Field and lift their fourth-straight Voyageurs' Cup, it won't completely erase the annus horribilis they're having, but it could be a building block that allows them to start working back towards the right path. A loss would make their bizarre situation even worse, though, and it would likely lead to multiple heads rolling. With so much on the line for the Reds, it will be interesting to see how they respond Wednesday night.

Perhaps the most worrying aspect of what's happened to TFC thus far isn't the dismal 0-9-0 record, but rather how players and management have responded. What's most remarkable about striker Danny Koevermans' "worst team in the world" comment, which was made in the heat of the moment following the Reds' 3-1 loss to D.C. United Saturday, is that he didn't back down from it several days later after cooling off. As Sportsnet's John Molinaro reported Tuesday, Koevermans not only stood by his initial comment, but expanded on it, and that didn't sit well with some of his teammates: