JOE, ROBBIE, MEET JOSE
Bautista blast will be remembered as the hit that won a wild playoff game
So, how is everyone enjoying playoff baseball?
In the space of, oh, about a halfhour, the Toronto Blue Jays went from doomed to failure by one of the strangest umpire decisions in recent memory to roaring to victory on the back of a series of Texas blunders — and an absolute rocket from Jose Bautista that instantly becomes one of the great swings in franchise history. Joe, Robbie, meet Jose. In between the two events, a Shakespearean play unfolded, and one of the long ones at that. The Rogers Centre reached near-riot levels, countless drinks were launched on the field, countless others splashed onto spectators, police took to the turf in considerable numbers, the benches emptied, a protest was filed, replay reviews were held, Mark Buehrle was ejected — and the whole thing ended with a Bautista bat flip that flouted baseball’s unwritten rules so flagrantly that it needs its own special category for its dramatic cheekiness. They will write sonnets and sing songs about that bat flip.
No sooner had Toronto sports fans resigned themselves to a crushing loss, the latest in a neverending series, than did fortune finally smile on them. This actually happened.
“It’s a lot of relief,” manager John Gibbons said in the Toronto clubhouse, as champagne corks whistled through the air and alcoholic beverages were sprayed with abandon. “I just felt we were too good a team to bow out in the first round.”
Bautista said that the moments after he made contact off Rangers reliever Sam Dyson are a blur. He said he didn’t plan anything with his reaction, which might be a way to avoid being plunked in every game against Texas for the rest of his life. “After the guys stopped punching me and hitting me (in the dugout) I started to realize what had happened,” Bautista said.
The Toronto outfielder was told that the Rangers had said he shouldn’t have flipped the bat like that, that it was backyard baseball. Did he have any reaction to that? “No,” Bautista said. We begin with the drama. After Edwin Encarnacion had tied the game 2-2 in the sixth inning with a second-deck solo home run that was plenty exciting on its own, but merely a scene-setter for what would unfold later, the Rangers’ Rougned Odor led off the seventh with a single. He would work his way around to third base on a sacrifice bunt and a ground-ball out.
And then, crazy time. With two strikes against Shin-Soo Choo, Toronto catcher Russell Martin threw the ball back to Aaron Sanchez on the mound. Except Choo, standing in the left batter’s box, extended his arm in front of him while adjusting a sleeve, and Martin’s throw ricocheted off Choo’s hand. Odor scooted toward home plate, but as he was still in mid-trot, umpire Dale Scott stood up and motioned for time out. The play, and the ball, was dead.
Let’s pause here for a moment. You know how when umpires, referees, whatever, call time out, there’s a universal acceptance that whatever happens after that point doesn’t count? That you can’t later go back and change things because, at the point of the time out, players stop playing, as one would expect when explicitly told to stop playing? Yeah, well, never you mind.
Texas manager Jeff Banister came out to complain, protesting that baseball’s rule book — admittedly proven to be a surprisingly fluid document in this postseason — states that in the case of a batter struck by the catcher’s throw while in the batter’s box, the ball is live. Fair enough. Point, Banister. But time had still been called. Dead ball, and all that. Except the umpiring crew huddled, and after an extended chat Scott pointed to Odor and pointed at the plate. The run counted. Enter the madness.
Gibbons complained, the crowd when nuts, the beers were lobbed with reckless — and, it must be said, really stupid — abandon, and after it all, one was still left with the baffling conclusion that Scott had effectively, after thinking about it some, withdrew his timeout. That thing where he waved his hands? Didn’t happen. 3-2, Rangers.
With Cole Hamels, the Texas starter, pitching great, the call from Scott sounded a lot like a death knell.
Gibbons would say afterward that he didn’t quite know what to make of the chaos that followed the Rangers being awarded the run. “As I was walking off, a tall boy (can) went right by me,” he said. Gibbons said he wasn’t sure if the thrower was mad at the umpires, or him.
The Blue Jays, too, were displeased. But the Rangers were the team that became fatally rattled. They began the bottom of the seventh with three straight errors in the infield, all of them on eminently makable plays, and Josh Donaldson tied the game on a bases-loaded flare that plopped into shallow right centre field.
Bautista, the fiery slugger who has been criticized in his time here for failing to keep his emotions in check — the next time he agrees with a strikeout call will be the first — then stepped in against Dyson with two out and two on. He obliterated a Dyson pitch, held his pose for a second, and then flipped the bat with cartoonish flare. It was all the years of frustration in a Toronto uniform exorcised in an instant. 6-3, Blue Jays. Ball game.
There were other moments, to be sure. Marcus Stroman scuffled his way through six-plus innings and allowed two runs, but he finished with a flourish, striking out two Rangers with runners on and the Jays already trailing. Encarnacion’s home run gave them life when it looked like Hamels might squeeze it out of them.
The defence, so shaky at the beginning of the series, was amazing in Game 5, included a diving Kevin Pillar catch of a short fly ball that left a long divot in centre field. Sanchez and Roberto Osuna locked the game down after the Jays had seized the lead. Osuna was particularly good, coming in early to mow down five straight Rangers, four by strikeout.
But it was the Bautista bomb that sent the Blue Jays to the American League Championship Series. It was a franchise-defining moment for one that hasn’t had many.
R.A. Dickey said after the Jays went down 0-2 that his team always had to win three games anyway. “The order in which you’ve won those games is insignificant to winning them,” he said.
The way in which you win them doesn’t matter, either. But that was one hell of a way to do it.
“Crazy things happen,” Gibbons said.
Yes, they just did.