ARLINGTON, Texas - With the Blue Jays winners of four-in-a-row and eight of 11, TSN.ca sat down with veteran Mark DeRosa to discuss the state of the club, its chances of emerging from the basement of the American League East and the leadership of manager John Gibbons. Heres the transcript of the discussion: TSN.ca: The team is starting to come together here, I guess winning does that, but have you seen a process thats led the results of late? DeROSA: Well, obviously, were getting really good starting pitching performances. I mean, Mark Buehrle, hes had three or four just really, really good starts in a row. Getting (Josh Johnson) back, hopefully we get Brandon (Morrow) back, Chien-Ming Wang came in and gave us almost eight innings the other night. R.A. (Dickey) always takes the ball every five days. I think its just a situation where were getting a little bit more consistent, the lineups getting more consistent, seems to be the same guys against the same matchups. Guys are kind of knowing where they fit in and what their roles are. Weve had guys like Adam Lind just take off and really, really solidify that four-hole and give Edwin (Encarnacion) some serious protection. Its just about getting healthy. We all knew the talent was here, it was just a matter of how long could it go this bad without changing. I think were all excited that were playing better. I think we realize there are reinforcements coming in the likes of Jose Reyes, Brett Lawrie and Brandon Morrow. Those are three key pieces that certainly are going to help us. TSN.ca: The expectations, all the new faces, you guys coming together, does a team with all these new faces, in a city thats starved for a winner, need some time just to gel and relax? Were guys trying to do too much early? DeROSA: Well I think so. I mean I cant speak for everybody. I know thats what it certainly appeared to be. I think I told you this in spring training, I was in a similar situation in 07 in Chicago with a lot of new faces and a new manager and just a lot of expectations thrust on a team that spent a lot of money. We got off to a very similar start, maybe not as bad as the start we got off to here pretty similar and found ourselves constantly trying to claw our way back to .500 to give ourselves a chance in the second half. We were able to do it and end up winning the division so by no means has anyone lost confidence in here. If anything its only kind of slowing growing. I look forward to us playing good for the rest of the year. TSN.ca: In your experience back then was there a turning point with that Cubs team? DeROSA: I think we were about six games back at the time. We were playing Milwaukee, a day game in Wrigley and Aramis Ramirez, we were pretty much out of the game, Aramis Ramirez hit either a three-run homer or a grand slam in the bottom of the 8th to send us to the W. I mean, you go from eight games potentially back to five, it was almost like a three-game swing for us and it kind of just, the fans lit up, everyone went crazy and it was a springboard for us getting hot. Obviously Lou (Piniella,) hes a fiery guy, I think a lot of the early season struggles was getting to know his style, him getting to know us, maybe trying to do too much like we were doing here. I think a lot of factors pointed to it but at the end of the day we never lost confidence in the fact that we were really good and really talented, it was just a matter of it coming out. TSN.ca: Well probably need hindsight for this but is the type of home run that Jose (Bautista) hit in Chicago, with two strikes and two outs in the ninth to tie the game and you win in extras, could that be a turning point? DeROSA: And then I also think a situation like today. You come into todays game, its a situation where weve won three games in a row off a good team, we seem to match up well. I mean, if were able to pull off a four-game sweep in Texas against a team thats gone to two of the last three World Series can only boost your confidence going forward. Theyre a great team over there, a lot of respect for them, so to come in here and continue to play well. But yeah, there are moments when youve got to get lucky. It seemed like early in the season everything we did kind of blew up in our faces. Every error cost us a run, every missed pitch execution-wise was a homer, it was just one of those situations. Maybe we can get it going, trending in the other direction. TSN.ca: We dont know when Bretts going to be back but what does he need to do when he returns? DeROSA: Relax. I think thats the one word, relax. We need him to be Brett. We dont need him to try and carry us, we dont need him to try and be the man, we just need him to play his game. I think him relaxing and his infusion of energy into the clubhouse is something that makes any clubhouse better, I really believe that. Hes a fiery guy, he keeps everyone on their toes, and the energys infectious, it really can be at times when youre playing a game in Texas in 100-degree heat. I think thats the thing, weve got a nice flow to the lineup right now, like I said Gibbys been consistent with the lineups hes thrown out there. Our bullpens been phenomenal, I hate to not mention that, theyve been phenomenal. I kind of give them, I dont want to say a pass, but a situation where I expect it kind of out of them now. That goes without saying but our starting rotation, hopefully with Brandon coming back, can get comfortable. Josh throwing the ball the way hes capable of and a consistent lineup, whether it be against righties or lefties, whatever Gibbys doing that day, just lets us relax and have fun and play. TSN.ca: The manager, earlier on, came under some criticism. As a player youve played for a lot of different guys, we just talked about Lou, how has John Gibbons performed under the circumstances? DeROSA: Unreal, unreal. You know, you probably couldnt say it in the press and I know guys would bite their tongues, you know sometimes maybe the manager, guys dont see eye to eye with him and you can understand maybe some things getting written. But with John, no, it couldnt be further from the truth. Not at all. Hes a mans man, he treats us like men, he expects us to show up and perform and be accountable and be an adult. For me hes been absolutely everything I thought hed be from the guys I talked to coming in. Hes been awesome and to watch him go through that early-season criticism was really, really difficult because it had absolutely nothing to do with him or anyone on the coaching staff. We were just playing bad, bad baseball so Im glad that weve gotten on this little streak. I hope we can keep it going for the remainder of the season because hes been a great manager. Nike Flyknit Shoes Outlet .ca! Kerry, Two nights after the Scott-Eriksson incident in Buffalo, the Bruins returned home to play San Jose. In that game, Zdeno Chara put a check on Tommy Wingels that clearly targeted his head. Nike Flyknit Wholesale . Scott won the Australian PGA last week in his first event in Australia since winning the U.S. Masters in April. American Matt Kuchar, ahead by two strokes with four to play and even with Scott with one to go, double-bogeyed the 18th after taking two shots to get out of a bunker. http://www.nikeflyknitclearance.com/ . "Jeff is a hard worker who was an important special-teams contributor for us last season," said Stamps GM John Hufnagel. Nike Flyknit Shoes On Sale . -- Devin Hester is done returning kicks in Chicago. Nike Flyknit Shoes Clearance . Andrew Luck lost his favourite target and the Indianapolis locker room lost one of its most revered leaders when Reggie Wayne was diagnosed Monday with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee that will cost him the rest of the season. For all the ways in which the image of a young Muslim woman proudly playing the national sport offers a modern, hopeful interpretation of liberté, égalité, fraternité and the future of France, there is also something ancient and familiar about Jessica Houra-dHommeauxs passion for soccer.Growing up in Angers, not quite 200 miles southwest of Paris, Houra-dHommeaux played for the same reasons as generations of French children, albeit most of them boys for many of those years. She watched her father play and coach. She watched an older brother play. She played because it was what she knew.So even if the larger culture in which she grew up was, at best, indifferent (and, at worst, openly resistant) to a young womans passion for a sport long dominated by men, her connection to the field not only endured but grew stronger. It remains the bond with her father even after his death. That he never saw her play for the national team doesnt matter.I want that he was proud of me, Houra-dHommeaux said in her second language. So its for that, I think, I still play football. Because I know that he was proud of me when I was [playing for a youth] national team. I do everything knowing hes proud of me now. Its my force, its my inspiration.In dozens of forms, each person with her own story, that explains how a generation of French players convinced a country to accept and embrace the womens game. It became impossible to ignore their passion because it was so familiar. It burrows down into a person and becomes part of them.They gave France the team people wanted to believe in. They made themselves matter to people. And now because they do, they need to give France a champion. That is part of the bargain.Which womens team has the most at stake in the Olympics? The obvious answer is host Brazil, and at least symbolically, its inarguable. To win gold in Rio de Janeiros Maracana, especially in light of missteps by the iconic mens national team in recent years, would be a powerful statement. But it would likely be of more symbolic utility than practical. The infrastructure to consistently develop and support the womens game isnt going to spring up overnight in Brazil.A gold medal, not an impossibility based on Australias World Cup showing, would change the paradigm in the country. Another win would only add to the power wielded for change by American players.But three years ahead of the 2019 FIFA Womens World Cup, France has an opportunity unique to the field. To win gold would in some ways be a small step for a team that played for bronze four years ago and is ranked third in the world at the moment. That small step could ensure the giant changes.Entering the 2011 World Cup, France had qualified just once previously for either that event or the Olympics. The French didnt advance out of the group stage in a European Championship until 2009, and even then, they were outscored in the tournament. The invisible line that ran through Western Europe, separating a successful sport in Germany and the Nordic countries from the soccer chauvinism of the rest of the continent, traced the northern border of France. It was why several French players posed nude before that 2011 tournament, their answer clear in asking what it would take for their country to pay attention.A lot can change in five years.According to UEFA statistics, France is now one of seven European nations with more than 60,000 registered female players (73,484 in 2014-15), the only such country south of that invisible line of cultural separation. With more than 1.8 million total registered players in France, the divide between genders remains a chasm, but the 2014-15 figure represented roughly a 25 percent increase on even two years prior. That mirrors the anecdotal experiences of those involved.When I begin, womens football is not so popular, Houra-dHommeaux recalled of the 1990s. The people when I told them I play football, they say What? You play football? Its weird. So it was not so easy at the beginning.Houra-dHommeaux is only 28, but she already spans multiple eras of womens soccer in France. When she began to play for the Paris Saint-Germain womens team and the French national team less than a decade ago, soccer was not her sole occupation. It could not be. She still worked more than 30 hours a week in a clerical job in the medical field, practicing and playing games around that schedule. But Qatar Sports Investment bought PSG in 2011 and, in addition to pouring millions into the mens team, invested the resources to make the womens team fully professional and one of Europes elite. Only then did Houra give up her job outside of soccer. (After seven seasons with PSG, Houra-dHommeaux moved to Lyon, Frances other giant of womens soccer.)Again, change happens slowly. Only a handful of clubs in the top division of French womens football are truly professional. There are perhaps dozens of female players who are able to make soccer a full-time career. Many of those stars are brought in from abroad to bolster the ranks of PSG or Lyon (given the salaries available in the National Womens Soccer League, that is not necessarily different than in this country). But the opportunity does exist, an evolution that happened in real time for a generation of players.It was hard for my life with my family, Houra-dHommeaux said of balancing two careers. Since I play just football, its easy because Im just focused on football. Im not tired at the end of my work day, and I can have a good time with my family. I think its important to have good time with your family if you want to be good at football because when you are happy outside of football, in your life, I think you are better and better on the pitch.The cause and effect of change in France is muddled, as it often is in reality. Coming on the heels of a disastrous and nationally embarrassing effort by the mens team in the 2010 World Cup, when French players boycotted a training sessionn and then exited in the group stage, the run the womens team made to the semifinals of the 2011 World Cup in nearby Germany catapulted womens football into the spotlight.dddddddddddd The womens team then made it to the semifinals of the 2012 Olympics, while the wounded mens team quietly bowed out of that years Euros.The timing was fortuitous. But when the French womens team seized its moments in 2011 and 2012, it marked the product of more than a decade of preparation, a concerted effort to raise the level of play. Girls were finally allowed to live and train alongside boys at the national training center, commonly known as Clairefontaine, a decade after it opened its doors. Among the early beneficiaries were many of the players on the 2011 or 2012 teams, players like Houra-dHommeaux, Camille Abily and Laura Georges.What happened in 2011 and 2012 -- the arrival of a golden generation that also included Louisa Necib, Wendie Renard, Elodie Thomis and so many more familiar names -- altered the map of womens soccer. It birthed a new power.Players are not afraid anymore to play against Germany, to play against the U.S., said?Georges,?the veteran defender who was forced to withdraw from the team shortly before the Olympics because of injury.?Before there was like a supremacy of the really big teams, and we were kind of scared. We could not even really play together, we were just playing long ball, we were not keeping the ball and playing around. We were kind of scared of the big teams. Now players are more comfortable playing against the big teams. We have more experience, more confidence.When France beat the United States 2-0 in February 2015, it marked the Americans first loss in the history of the series. But far from embarrassing, it served as an important component of the preparation for the Americans World Cup title that followed. Few teams pushed the United States the way France did.Its the trifecta, its mentality, technique and athleticism, U.S. coach Jill Ellis said of what makes a program elite. When I took over [the U.S. program], I said to our team that we have the beauty of having all three. Many countries dont have two out of three. France certainly has the athleticism and technique. People would question their mentality, just in terms of they havent won a big event yet, but I wouldnt knock them there. On any given day in our game, any of these top four teams can beat each other.But they have [technique and athleticism] locked down.What they dont have, as Ellis gently alluded to, is a trophy or medals from a major tournament to show for all the progress. France lost 3-1 to the United States in a 2011 World Cup semifinal and 2-1 to Japan in an Olympic semifinal a year later. France fell victim to a dubious format in the World Cup a year ago -- even as group stage winners, the French were forced into a quarterfinal against Germany. On a day when the French had the better of play but couldnt put away the game, the country nonetheless exited in a penalty shootout.The small sample size notwithstanding, France struggles in big games to finish what it starts.Technically, possession, I think we are pretty good, Abily said of the state of the program. Its our strength, but it needs now to be maybe better -- well, for sure -- in front of the goal. To be more killer, you know.Its great to keep the ball, to play well, but it misses something.That again reared its head this spring, when France, despite some notable absences due to injury, played generally appealing soccer without ever scoring a goal against England, Germany or the United States in the SheBelieves Cup.This problem to score has been the problem for France since the last eight to 10 years, coach Philippe Bergeroo lamented with a perfectly Gallic shrug of the shoulders after that event.At some point, fans will want results. The accessibility and relatability of players will lose its luster. Expectations, in this case, represent their own brand of equality.I think we have to win because [coming close] is almost boring for them, Abily said.That would be a missed opportunity of almost tragic proportions, not because wins and losses really matter that much but because of the potential influence the French team can have.France might be the most diverse team in the womens game, certainly among the handful of elite championship contenders. It is a reflection of a changing society, changing not without tension, not just because of gender but all the labels with which it is too easy to separate each other and isolate ourselves.The daughter of an Algerian immigrant, Houra-dHommeaux was taken aback by the attention she received for a professionally shot photo in which many assumed she wore a hijab -- It was just a capuche, she said, using the French word for hood. But in the same breath, she noted she was proud to represent her faith as a womens soccer player.You see on our national team, there are a lot of black girls or Arabic girls, Houra-dHommeaux said. I think soccer in France, its easier for everybody. ... Its easy to play football in France, and its good for all the people to see that we are white, we are black, we are Muslim, we are Catholic or something like that, but we can play football. Everybody can play football. And I like it for that.Having three years to use the momentum of a gold medal to continue to build the game, at both the youth and professional levels, would set up a potentially remarkable World Cup. To keep this particular team in the spotlight could resonate far beyond the field at a time when others try to divide and terrorize.If we can do it in sport, we can do it in life, Abily said of the diversity. Its important to think like this, especially after the terrorist attacks [in Paris in 2015]. Its very good to be like this now, even more than before. 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