THE CALL THAT STARTED IT ALL
Suddenly that anti-Canadian conspiracy theory doesn’t sound so cockamamie.
Bastard ball. It was filthy, savage, diabolical — and very nearly looted off the Blue Jays by some anonymous suits in New York. Suddenly that anti-Canadian conspiracy theory didn’t sound so cockamamie after all.
Invent a run — just snatch it out of thin air, masquerading as an error hung on catcher Russell Martin — to gift the visitors a 3-2 seventh inning lead and enrage a sold-out crowd to the point of mass civil disturbance.
It was so infuriating to Jays manager John Gibbons that he twice marched out to argue the ump and uber-ump decisions. He still lost his brief.
The Jays could have turtled right there, in righteous indignation and frustration, Blue Jays win series, 3-2 if they were that kind of team. But of course they are not.
They are, instead, winners — of their full-five-pack American League division series, over the catastrophically collapsing Rangers, who couldn’t take the leg up they were handed by Major League Baseball officiating autocrats.
So twitchy perhaps over their ill-gotten gains that they racked up an astonishing trio of errors in the seventh inning, leading directly to Kevin Pillar knotting the score at 3-3.
And then Jose Bautista, who must have dreamt about just such a heroic moment all his live-long baseball days, took a 1-1 fastball on a linedrive cruise over the fence in leftcentre field.
He stood there and stared at it for a full moment, blowing out his cheeks, flaring his nostrils like a junkyard dog, then flung his bat with machismo.
Toronto was up for good at 6-3, which is how this crazy drama ended, in the pandemonium of Rogers Centre.
Reliever Sam Dyson didn’t care for the way Bautista had tossed his wood, or the manner in which the Toronto clubhouse exploded in celebration, led by Toronto starter Marcus Stroman and his — gotta say it — macaroni and cheese hair. Dyson spewed his bile at Edwin Encarnacion, batting behind his hombre, which led to a bench-clearing brawl.
Double-E had already taken his parrot out of its post-season gilded cage with a mammoth sixth-inning jack off Texas ace Cole Hamels, a monster crank that must have ridden an indoors jet-stream, banging above the second deck.
An inning later, with Shin SooChoo at the dish and playoff nemesis Rougned Odor on third, Martin struck the extended arm of the batter whilst throwing the ball back to Aaron Sanchez, who’d come on in relief of best pal Stroman. The ball caromed towards third and home plate umpire Dale Scott had his arms up, signaling the play was dead.
Except it wasn’t, at least not once Scott got a good earful from Texas manager Jeff Banister. So Odor was granted home plate.
“When it first happened, I was waiting for him to say something,” a champagne-soaked Martin told reporters later. “He’d waved it off. I felt a moment of relief. Then the opposing manager comes out, pleads his case. I guess he could have been a lawyer because he said something to make (Scott) change his mind.
“Fortunately, it didn’t matter. Jose Bautista with the big knock. I wanted to hug him forever . . .
“The whole friggin’ stadium erupted. I’ve never seen a stadium so alive, unbelievable.”
Amidst the popping corks, an equally drenched Gibbons admitted he was what-the-shoot — his favourite word, shoot — clueless during the protracted stall over the Odor maybe-maybe-not run scored. “I still don’t know exactly how it was ruled. Our thinking was, you hate for that to be the go-ahead run and possibly the deciding run. But the guys caught fire, we took advantage of a couple of mistakes, and then Bautista did what he’s done all year, the big blow.”
Gibbons’ strategy — calling upon the 24-year-old Stroman over David Price — was also vindicated, though the win would go to Sanchez, with a save to Roberto Osuna.
In the deluge of garbage that cascaded onto the field from a crowd hostile over the Odor run, a tall-boy whizzed right by the manager’s head. “I don’t know if they were pissed off with the situation or just me personally.’’
Totally chuffed, was the skip, with his three young pitchers — 24-yearold Stroman to 22-year-old Sanchez to 20-year-old Osuna. “The three young guns.’’ An emotionally overwhelmed Sanchez afterwards talked about maintaining his cool, on the mound and mid at-bat with Choo, during the seventh inning madness. “A game like that, it’s pretty exhausting, mentally, physically, everything. You invest so much in it. It’s rewarding to be on the right side of the score.
“I had to stay under control. Choo was a big out. You don’t want to keep the inning going, especially after all that commotion — (it) felt like a half hour. Just take deep breaths.”
And then there was Bautista, standing atop a table in the clubhouse afterwards and leading the revelry.
Asked if he had any reaction to the bench-clearing, and Dyson’s apparent contention that Bautista flipping his bat with such gusto was bush — “backyard baseball” — the long-time clubhouse leader was terse. “No.”
He made it sound like a four-letter word, though.