Jays storm back to record series sweep
Colabello’s walk-off single caps zany ninth
TORONTO • In the quiet of the clubhouse after the game, 31 minutes after the Toronto Blue Jays had sprinted from the dugout en masse in explosive celebration, Jose Reyes took his spot in the centre of the room, television lights dancing off a diamond stud in his ear.
“This is baseball, man,” he said. “In baseball, a lot of crazy stuff happens.”
Crazy, incidentally, is perhaps the most technical term available to describe the events of late Sunday afternoon at Rogers Centre. Nobody could remember them unfolding as they did in the bottom of the ninth, when an unlikely spark led to an unusual play and, finally, to a Toronto player running for his life into shallow left field.
It all began when manager John Gibbons, facing a 6-4 deficit against the Houston Astros, called for a pinch-hitter. The hitter was Munenori Kawasaki, whose offensive production this season made the decision feel like a last gamble of the damned. Instead, he slapped a double down the left-field line.
He scored when Reyes, the next batter, singled. Reyes stole second base two batters later, which set the stage for the “crazy” he would later reference. He was drifting off that base when Jose Bautista lifted a high pop fly into the infield. Bautista, who had already hit two home runs in the game, began a dejected trot to first base, awaiting the easy catch, which would have left the Toronto rally clinging to its final out of the game.
Instead, the ball drifted back toward second base. Reyes ran back, too, standing on the base and ducking for cover as the ball descended. Houston second baseman Jose Altuve backed away as shortstop Jonathan Villar tracked the ball. With Reyes crouched down and Villar looking skyward, Villar stumbled into the Toronto player, and the ball safely glanced off his glove.
Houston manager A.J. Hinch protested, alleging that Reyes should have done more to get out of the way.
“He can’t just hold his position or hold where his feet were,” Hinch told reporters.
“I have to stay on the base,” Reyes said. “So it’s not my fault.”
“If I’m on the other side, I definitely see what they’re saying,” Gibbons said.
He paused a beat: “But I’m not on that side.”
“I’ve never seen that before,” said Blue Jays starter R.A. Dickey. “When that happened, we were all looking at each other like, ‘It’s probably destiny that we’re going to pull this one off.’ ”
Bautista was ruled safe at first. Reyes then stole third, with Bautista following him to second. Chris Colabello was up, and he suspected having runners at second and third would limit the pitches available to Houston closer Luke Gregerson. Colabello made contact, a single up the middle that extended his hitting streak to 17 games. Reyes scored, Bautista beat the throw to home for the winning run. The dugout exploded, chasing Colabello into the outfield as fans roared for the 7-6 final, securing a series sweep as well as the team’s fifth straight win.
“I think that was the moment I blacked out,” Colabello said. “As I got around first, I stopped. I didn’t even keep going. So if Jose got thrown out at the plate instead of scoring the winning run, we might have had a nice little pickle between first and second.”
Until that point, though, the Blue Jays had been in a familiar pickle.
Dickey was leading 3-2 when he was pulled in the sixth inning. The ball was handed off to the team’s sometimes flammable bullpen.
After Aaron Loup got Dickey out of trouble in the sixth, Gibbons sent Triple-A call-up Bo Schultz to the mound for the seventh. He hit the first batter he faced, and then gave up a single to right. Third baseman Josh Donaldson fielded a hopper that he tried to throw while falling, sending the ball into the outfield.
The Astros scored one on the error. Designated hitter Evan Gattis scored two more with a double to left-centre, and he scored two batters later. Houston held a 6-3 lead. It seemed like the bullpen was going to wear another dispiriting loss. Instead, things got crazy. “When you start playing good baseball, when you get on some nice little rolls, things start going your way,” Gibbons said. “The worm starts to turn a little bit.”