Stunning rally gives Jays win at Fenway
BOSTON— It was the best of games, it was the worst of games. For both teams. Ridiculous, really. Silly buggers — if gobsmacking — baseball.
Red Sox up 5-0 in the first inning, just like that. Up 8-1 in the third.
Toronto up 13-8 in the seventh inning. Wait. What?
A nine-run frame with nobody out. Bases loaded and re-loaded. Bases loaded triple. Two-run homer.
The fifth time in club history the Jays have come back from a sevenrun deficit. And it couldn’t happen at a better time or in a better place — same park, Fenway, where Toronto hit its comeback apogee, June 4, 1989, scoring 10 runs en route to a 13-11 win in 11 innings.
“We were able to come back, at-bat by at-bat,” said Russell Martin, whose triple was a crucial part of that seventh-inning Blue Crush, pushing Toronto ahead with what would become — when the smoker cleared — the winning run, en route to the13-10 finale. “Had a big inning and ended up getting the win.”
Nine straight runs without an out — that bears repeating.
“This team is unbelievable,” Martin continued. “It’s relentless from top to bottom. Tough outs. Guys can do damage all the way through the lineup and we feed off each other.”
These Jays, now on a winning tear improbably stretched to nine games, are proving themselves to be quite remarkable, and never ever dull. To wit: Spark of a Boston rally, bottom of the eighth, ninth run across for the Sox, runners at second and third, David Ortiz at the plate, tying run in the on-deck circle.
Brett Cecil, taking over from Roberto Osuna, walks the bases loaded, which brought Mike Napoli to the plate. Cecil gave him trademark strike-out curve and Napoli never took the bat off his shoulder.
It did start out hideous for Toronto, Drew Hutchison cork-screwing himself into the mound, throwing 38 pitches in the opening frame whilst spotting the Red Sox five, featuring back-to-back home runs.
And Chris Colabello making his debut as a major leaguer in his storied hometown ballpark, with a horde of relatives in the stands. Came out early Friday afternoon, ’round 2:30 p.m., to take a few balls off the Green Monster, “figure out some angles.”
Xander Bogaerts hammered a first- inning double in his direction to kick off Boston’s ka-boom barrage — over Colabello’s head, adequately played, and who knew the rout was on? Ortiz plated two, Pablo Sandoval and Mookie Betts went yard, and there was the 5-zip tally which could have been even worse, as Hutchinson drew a fly ball out to halt the horror with the bases loaded.
Couple of innings later, Colabello could only turn his body around and crane his neck w-a-a-a-y up, watching Dustin Pedroia’s home soar over the wall, over the monster bleachers, out of Fenway, three-run jack, Boston 8-1, and good night Drew.
The scariest episode of a whistling by the graveside evening was the vertical face-plant Betts banged off the (fortunately padded) home ’pen sidewall, trying to catch up with a triple sliced by Justin Smoak.
Betts left the game at the bottom of that inning with what was described as a low back sprain.
Jays clawed and scratched their way back into the contest, and Lord knows there was loads of time left because the Sox had done all of their damage so early. Toronto drew to 8-4 in the fifth. As Boston manager John Farrell had noted earlier of the visitors’ offensive heft: “That’s a highpowered quick-strip type of offence. Until you record that 27th out, they’ve shown on this winning streak . . . there’s been late inning comebacks, there’s been walk-off hits, there’s an extremely deep righthanded line-up.’’
Meanwhile, Toronto manager John Gibbons had seen enough of Hutchison with the three-run Pedroia jack, 21⁄ batters into the third: eight runs
3 nine hits, although it must be noted that virtually every ball was falling in against the guy.
Hutchison gave way to Bo Schultz who gave way to Steve Delabar who would go down as the winner, on the extraordinary merits of that Toronto seventh: Kevin Pillar single, Ryan Goins double, Jose Reyes single, Josh Donaldson single – defensive cock-up, everybody safe — Jose Bautista line drive, Edwin Encarnacion single, Colabello RBI on an error that tied it 8-8, Martin triple, Justin Smoak homer. Whew.