JOSE! JOSE! JOSE! JOSE!
A CONTROVERSIAL CALL IN AN EPIC 7TH INNING SPARKED SCARY SCENES — AND THEN BAUTISTA CAME UP TO THE PLATE
A COMEBACK FOR THE AGES
It was a bizarre game, and a wild ride. But years from now, we’ll all sit down and laugh about this.
You will remember the seventh inning, above all. You will laugh about it with your friends over beers, order another round, what the hell. You will still find it hard to believe, and will have to reassure yourself. You will remember the waves of emotions, the anger and the despair, and then that feeling. You know, the big one. That sound. The crack.
“When he started his swing I was real hopeful, because I knew he was going to hit it hard,” said pitcher R.A. Dickey. “And I was halfway on the carpet before the ball ever left the field.” Yes, you will remember this. Until that moment, it felt biblical. Game 5 of Toronto’s first playoff series in 22 years, against the Texas Rangers, was tied 2-2, a tense game, a nerves game. With a man on third Jays catcher Russell Martin went to throw the ball back to the pitcher. Rangers right fielder Shin Soo-Choo was stretching out his left arm and adjusting his elbow pad. The throw hit the bat. The man on third, Rougned Odor, came home.
It stood as the winning run. You couldn’t decide a series on that play, could you? Imagine that. It was the right call. But oh, Lord.
Chaos. Beers came cartwheeling out of the stands onto the field, or into the crowds. One reportedly hit a baby, and another one whizzed by John Gibbons. A lot of Toronto fans should have been embarrassed, ejected, and arrested. The boos thundered, and it was a maelstrom, mayhem, a meltdown, a mess. Some of us should have done better.
In the Jays dugout, Mark Buehrle was ejected. After an 18-minute delay it was still the seventh inning, and when the Jays got out of it that exhausted cheerful old theme song played, “OK Blue Jays,” that completed the descent into dystopian anarchical farce. And then. And then . . . “Like a novel that you don’t want to put down, you know?” said Dickey.
I mean, really. What do you say? Martin came to the plate, and he was desperate.
“I’m thinking, I better do something,” Martin said. “I need to get on base here. I better do something. I mean, I knew what I did.”
He hit a dribbler, and ran. “I haven’t been down the line that hard (this year). I (thought), I’ve got to do something.”
The Rangers booted it. Then the next one. And the next. When Josh Donaldson blooped a ball that barely cleared Odor’s glove, brushing it, suddenly the game was tied.
“I was pretty pissed at what I just did,” Donaldson said. “Bases loaded, one out, and I get sawed off like that.”
And with men at the corners and two outs and a 1-1 count and the building on its feet, Jose Bautista smashed a 97 m.p.h. fastball 442 feet to left, a rocket, gone.
He stood there, 34 years old, and he watched it go and looked at the pitcher and flipped his bat aside like a king, majestic. They may erect a statue of that bat flip. It was the biggest home run in this building in 22 years, and you will tell your friends about it, and you will laugh in disbelief, years from now. Holy bleep, you’ll say. The sound was a crack, whole and pure, and then the end of the world.
“I’ve never seen a stadium so alive,” said Martin. “Ever. I can’t describe it. I can definitely remember it. I can still see it. One of the greatest moments of my life.”
“I can’t really remember what was going though my mind, to be quite honest with you,” said Bautista. “After I made contact, I just, you know — I didn’t plan anything I did. And so I still don’t know how I did it.”
“The game of baseball, if you try to figure it out, you’ll drive yourself crazy,” said Donaldson, soaked in champagne, his blue eyes a little spacey. “I mean, you look at what happened, there are a lot of crazy people out there.” Of Bautista, he said. “The guy’s amazing. He’s my hero . . . I want to hug him forever.”
All the runs were unearned, unless you were speaking cosmiscally.
There was more, but the seventh inning is what you will remember. When it ended, general manager Alex Anthopoulos and his men sprayed water bottles everywhere, and then he sped out and got to the hallway, and his wife Cristina appeared in the doorway and she screamed, just screamed, and they collided in an embrace, and his two toddling children pulled their father down as their mother screamed again. In the clubhouse, the Jays sprayed the champagne again, and lit the cigars again, and will live to play another day.
You will remember this. They will, too.