AMAZING JAYS A FINE FALL GIFT
THEY DIDN’T EMERGE FROM THE CLEAR BLUE SKY, LIKE IN ’92 AND ’93, BUT THIS TEAM GAVE THE FANS PLENTY TO CHEER FOR
“In the post-season, there’s so much at stake on every pitch, every moment’s so huge.” CHRIS COLABELLO JAYS FIRST BASEMAN
KANSAS CITY— Chris Colabello and Josh Donaldson were talking the other day about the best way to approach baseball, and they settled on a maxim of sorts: Care so much that you don’t care. It’s about focusing so much that you can let go, that you don’t wind yourself into a knot. Donaldson appears to have mastered it; Colabello, for his part, says he has never felt as comfortable in his own skin as he has this year.
That is the point that some Jays have reached in this post-season, and some have not. They won their first four elim- ination games, before a fifth on Friday night. They found a way, with Texas’s butterfingered help, to win the first multi-game playoff series in Toronto, in any pro sport, since 2004.
Before he took the mound in Game 6, starting pitcher David Price talked about it — he said he thought his post-season struggles might have come from wanting it too badly, without being able to let go.
But that is the trick. As Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos was saying the other day, this is not a max effort game, all the time — if you swing your hardest, you’re as likely to screw yourself into the ground as hit it 400 feet. Baseball, at its best, is a sort of Zen. It should be fun.
“In the post-season, there’s so much at stake on every pitch, every moment’s so huge,” said Colabello, who took a long and winding road to the big leagues. “There’s a reason that this team is here, and that team’s on that side. I think they’re the two best teams in the American League. And I think we’ve established that we’re a really good offence, and there’s nobody we fear or back down from in any way, shape or form. We have faith in each other, and I think there’s a heightened sense of focus.
“There’s so much emotion in the games, and when you’re a kid you grow up dreaming about playing in the big leagues and things like that, but when you play in atmospheres like this, where the crowds are loud, and people are so in tune with every pitch, it just takes you to another level as an athlete, and I think sometimes you’re able to do things that you didn’t know you were capable of.
“I know, for me, that’s what I’ve lived for my whole life. That’s what I’ve always wanted. Not to say that my first experience in the big leagues wasn’t as epic as this one, but to be able to play in a post-season, having two teams like this, battling with this group of guys is nothing short of phenomenal.”
Colabello isn’t the only vagabond, underdog, kid who made good. Jose Bautista was a 20th-round pick who rattled quietly through three different organizations, was picked up for a player to be named later and unlocked his magic swing at the age of 29. Edwin Encarnacion was grabbed off waivers. Josh Donaldson was a 48th-round pick who didn’t become a regular until he was 27. Kevin Pillar was a 32nd-round pick.
R.A. Dickey had to become a knuckleballer. Marco Estrada led the majors in home runs allowed last season, and didn’t become a starter until he was 28. And among the can’t-miss kids, this season Marcus Stroman blew his knee, Troy Tulowitzki cracked his scapula, and Price had to figure out how to care so much that he didn’t care.
“You know, trying to be too good, trying to be maybe too fine or whatever it is,” Price said before Game 6. “I know what I’m capable of doing, I think everybody in this room knows what I’m capable of doing. And I think I just kind of want to do it too bad.” Letting go of that looked hard. Throughout these playoffs — after his post-season-opening loss, his strange relief appearance, the bizarre collapse in Game 2 of this series, and before yet another elimination game, Price has repeated the same mantra: I know good things are coming. I know good things are going to come. It’s something that Blue Jays fans tried to tell themselves for more than 20 years, through all the different casts that came and went and never made much of a dent.
Until this team, and this year, and the explosion of everything: the crowds came back, and the TV ratings zoomed, and this group of Jays just made their fans guffaw. It didn’t feel real, or even very familiar: the comparisons to 1992 and 1993 were almost reflexive. Those teams didn’t come swirling out of a clear blue sky like these guys. These Jays have been, in the middle of summer and into the fall, a gift. And if you were lucky, you found Zen.
If you were lucky you cared so much that you appreciate it, either way.