Walking into a winning streak
Earl Weaver, who skippered the Orioles for 17 years — unimaginable these days — had one of the best spontaneous quotes in baseball history.
On a mid-70s team studded with born-again Christians, a proselytizing player asked his manager, beseechingly: “Don’t you want to walk with God?”
Weaver snarled: “I’d rather walk with the bases loaded.” Lo and behold. It was John Gibbons and the Blue Jays who savoured a walkoff-walk on Saturday afternoon, with Baltimore the benefactor in extra innings.
Reliever Mychal Givens was on the mound in the 10th, both clubs down to the nub with their bullpens, tied 3-3.
Justin Smoak earned a oneout walk. Kendrys Morales singled through the hole at second. Kevin Pillar flew out for the second out. Then Givens hit Randal Grichuk with a heater and everybody took 90 feet, loading ’em up. Luke Maile at the plate. Ball 1. Ball 2. Ball 3. Ball 4. And just like that Toronto was celebrating a 4-3 victory at the Rogers Centre, a third straight win, albeit all three off the worst ball club in the majors. But it was a nice reversal of fortune after a miserable May that had extended into June.
Baltimore manager Buck Showalter could only grimace and suck up another low point in a woeful season.
“(Givens) worked under a lot of balls. The hit by pitch, then that changeup in, an 0-2 left up to Morales, that hurt him too. He had him set up there if he just gets it somewhere off the plate or down because you know he’s cheating on the fastball.”
If only. A mantra more often heard in the other clubhouse, circa 2018.
Muted heroics for Maile, at the tail end of an 0-fer afternoon. His third career walkoff, all of them this year.
“They’re all happening at once,” marvelled Maile to reporters afterwards. “So anything I’ve walked off, you guys have seen.”
This one was not as gratifying as a hit but it’ll do.
“It’s a win, I know that much. But probably not. It feels good when you really square one up to get a win. But if he doesn’t throw you a strike, there’s nothing you can do.”
“Wild game. Crazy game today,” Gibbons said. “Those two guys, Luke and Smoak, they did something big there at the end.
“Good at-bats. You’re not going to always get hits. A good productive at-bat gets a walk, maybe moves a guy on a hit and run.”
The itty-bitty parts of baseball at which the Jays haven’t been so hot this season — and there were sloppy episodes in this game too: hit batter, poor fielding and madcap overthrow error by Joe Biagini that pulled Smoak off the base at first in the eighth, wild pitch by Tyler Clippard that allowed Jonathan Schoop to scramble home, knotting the score 3-3 after Grichuk had put Toronto ahead with a solo home run, his third jack in the last five games.
There were the ninth and 10th blown saves by the bullpen — first Danny Barnes in relief of starter Aaron Sanchez (a season-high 101 pitches in 61⁄ 3 innings) in the sixth, then Clippard.
But there were some defensive gems as well en route to John Axford notching his first win as a Jay: Teoscar Hernan- dez’s superb running catch at the track in left in the first, a retreating Smoak fighting the sun and just opening his glove to stab a high fly off the bat of Manny Machado in the third, Pillar releasing his Superman persona, leaving his feet and going horizontal on a looping line drive by Mark Trumbo in the seventh.
Pity the Jays have only 13 more games versus Baltimore. They are now 141⁄ 2 games behind the AL East front-running Yankees but, hey, only a half-game behind Tampa in third, whence they venture next after closing out the Orioles series Sunday.
A teeny bit of a roll for the Jays, which might temporarily quieten the predictable caterwauling aimed at Gibbons, although of course jettisoning the manager — the axe-timestwo for Gibbons in Toronto — would leave upper management exposed. GM Ross Atkins and president Mark Shapiro would have to carry the can on a season that has gone sideways awful fast.
The subject — Gibbons’ perhaps tenuous status — came up during his pre-game confab with print reporters, when the skip was in a better mood than he has been lately. A couple of wins will do that for a guy.
“If I got canned here, would I look for another job?”
The just-turned-56-year-old pondered the rhetorical question for a time.
“Yeah, I’m content with whatever happens, whatever the future will hold. But it’s a good question. I’ve been at it my whole life ... I don’t know how many times my mom has told me, you can only control what you can control. And I try to live by that. I’m at that stage in my career where who knows what’s ahead. But I’m not one of those guys who’s dying for that job or obsessed with things like that. I just kind of let things come to me.
“Things have lined up pretty good for me my whole life, since I got into coaching anyway. Wherever this ends, whatever happens next …”
It churns his guts though, the losing.
“Oh yeah, it still eats at you … You try to stay positive, try to do the best job you can, and just deal with whatever comes your way.”
Intriguingly, Gibbons revealed that he’s recently sold his house in San Antonio. “So now I don’t have a home. I don’t know if I’ll end up there.”
Then, reverting to wry Gibby: “Once they build that wall, why would I want to live there?’’