Jays, police, avoid slide-rule chaos
ALDS: Everyone held their breath as league reviewed series-winning play in Toronto
TORONTO — The game and the series were over. The Blue Jays were pummeling each other in one big dog pile at the plate, celebrating Josh Donaldson’s mad dash home from third base with the decisive run to eliminate the Texas Rangers.
Then all those maniacal, smiling faces turned to stone as the umpires huddled over their audio link with New York and the replay umpires reviewing the play.
In the melee, Kevin Pillar remembers somebody screaming “Oh, fu(dge), not another Tampa.” Tampa? We take you now to the third game of the season at Tropicana Field. The Blue Jays had already won the first two games of a four-game set but now, in the top of the ninth inning, they are down 3-2.
Ryan Goins beat out an infield single to start the inning. Pillar hit a fly ball to centre for the first out. Donaldson singled and then Jose Bautista walked to load the bases. Edwin Encarnacion hit a tailor-made double-play ball to shortstop, but second baseman Logan Forsythe’s relay to first base was off line. Two runs scored and Encarnacion was safe at first. But wait. Kevin Cash became the first manager to challenge based on the new Chase Utley slide rule governing the safety of middle infielders around the bag at second. He challenged that Bautista’s slide was not directly into the bag and he won his challenge. The runs came off the board and a double-play was called, ending the game. The Rays won 3-2 and the Jays were properly stunned.
Now, with a 7-6 victory and a possible sweep of the Rangers at stake, the Jays found themselves at that same crossroads.
“You’re like, ‘Oh, gosh, let’s not have a technicality ruin this moment for us right here,” said Russell Martin, who hit the ball to shortstop Elvis Andrus. Andrus threw out Encarnacion as he rumbled into second, but Rougned Odor’s relay was in the dirt. First baseman Mitch Moreland couldn’t dig it out and Martin was safe at first as Donaldson charged home.
Off to the side, largely unnoticed, several of Toronto’s finest, cops assigned to maintain public order on the field in this emotionally-charged atmosphere, huddled, anticipating the utter chaos that could ensue if the ruling didn’t go Toronto’s way.
It would have made last year’s angry, beer-can throwing eruption during at Rogers Centre during Game 5 between these same two teams seem like a Sunday picnic.
“You start going through memories of how it has affected you in the past,” Donaldson said. “I looked at Eddie. I said, ‘Please tell me you had a good slide. If you don’t have a good slide, this is not good. We are not cool right now if you did not have a good slide.’”
A moment later, everybody was cool. New York wisely decided not to interfere. They found no fault with Encarnacion’s slide. The play stood and it’s tough to imagine even the players being happier than those few Toronto police officers.
One last word about the “Utley Rule.” It is so named because of a dirty slide that Chase Utley, a veteran second baseman, used to break Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada’s leg while breaking up a double-play in a 2015 NLDS game. The rule is well-intentioned, but badly flawed and has caused more confusion than anything. The players hate it, even the ones who it was designed to protect. For 130 years players have been expected to do anything within their power to break up a double-play. There are limits, of course, and they existed before this rule was invoked at the start of this season.
“It turned the game into a joke,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said after losing that game last April. “That’s flat embarrassing. That cost us a chance to win a major league game.”
There’s no telling what Gibbons would have said, had this playoff victory been ripped away in the same fashion.
Instead, Gibbons was left to contemplate the unbelievably good fortune this sweep has brought his way. His team, especially his beleaguered bullpen, is running on fumes. The manager is acutely aware of how hard he has pushed young Roberto Osuna. In the nine-day stretch starting on Oct. 1, Osuna pitched in five games and in four of those games he has been extended beyond one inning. In all, he has pitched eight innings in those five games, allowing two hits and one walk.
“These past few weeks I have been leaning hard on some guys,” Gibbons said. “And they’re pretty gassed right now. That’s why I’m glad the game ended when it did. If it keeps going, there’s no telling. Now we get a few days off to catch our breath, which is really, really big for us.”
KFidlin@postmedia.com