Angels 6, Blue Jays 5 (F/14), but at least it took like five hours

The picture is little but my feelings are big.

"A beautiful evening for baseball," Alan Ashby set as he settled in for the tenth inning, "though it is getting a bit on the late side." He had no idea what was to come. None. Neither had I, when, a few hours before that, I said to my internet bros, "I've got to go to bed but this game is bananas and it's only the fourth." Little did I know that the game hadn't even begun to properly banana. Not in the way that it would ultimately banana. Because once it truly began to banana in earnest, it became one of the single most bananas baseball games I have ever known. Bananas.   


When I got up this morning, checked the box score, and saw that the Blue Jays had lost in fourteen, my first thought was, well, it's a good thing I didn't stay up for it, because that would have been miserable. Somewhat inexplicably, though, I decided to relieve that misery by firing up the five-hour long Gameday Audio replay as I went about my Sunday morning (and afternoon). In the end, and despite my frustrations (more on those in a moment), I am glad that I did, because while the box score and play-by-play tell an awful lot about this utterly ridiculous game, you really needed to hear Jerry Howarth and Alan Ashby (or their presumably inferior Los Angeles counterparts) experience it and, duly baffled, relay the details to you the listener in their own unique idiom.


In the early going, both starters got knocked around pretty well, and neither got any deeper than the fifth. Brett Cecil's velocity is still down, people are hitting his slider all over the yard, and from what I am told his hand looks really weird when he throws his changeup, which, if true, is pretty much the worst. There were plays everywhere, runners all over the place, and the game just had this awesome wide-open feel. Then, for a long time, nothing much happened, and we'll just jump ahead to the eleventh, because even though some of us can find time to listen to five hours of yesterday's baseball on the radio, others among us are busy and important people and I get that. 


Bottom of the eleventh, Abreu reaches on another egregious Edwin Encarnacion from E5 (I don't care if it's not funny; I'm not going to stop), and then "Don't Ask" Dotel relieves Frasor and promptly gives up a single to Torii Hunter, which moves Abreu to third in characteristic Mike Sciosia hustle hustle hustle style. That's first and third, nobody out. There is no way the game doesn't end right here, right? But after Hunter takes second (scoring note: DI), Dotel strikes out the hell-of struggling Vernon Wells (miss u), and then puts Callaspo on intentionally. Then on a Hank Conger grounder to second, Aaron Hill fires it home for the force out, and Mathis strikes out to end the inning.  What?


Top of the twelfth: despite three walks in the inning, the Blue Jays couldn't score, even with Jose Bautista at the plate with the bases loaded.  (Bautista, by the way, currently rocks a 1.314 OPS, so take that, haters.)


Bottom of the twelfth: OK, totally unremarkable, never mind.


Top of the thirteenth: alright, this is where the madness really takes hold. Lind is on third, and Yunel Escobar, back from the concussion, is on second. Two away. Encarnacion hits a dribbler to Callaspo's right at third. Callaspo gets to the ball, but awkwardly, and he fires wide to the bag at first. Lind is in, Blue Jays up by one in the thirteenth.  Right?  Wrong, because fucking Bob Davidson yeah Bob Davidson yeah Bob Davidson decides he has seen an egregious, almost unspeakable amount of baserunner interference, so Escobar is out and the inning is over. 


You can watch video of the play here. The Angels announcer gets it exactly right as the play is happening: he notes that Callaspo has to move around Escobar, and yeah, he does, but the announcer is also obviously, legitimately, genuinely surprised that Davidson called baserunner interference on the play. Because there is nothing that happens in that play, as far as Escobar's path by Callaspo goes, that doesn't happen day in and day out in baseball and doesn't get people rung up for interference. Because that would be stupid. 


I am not one to pick on umpires at all, not even when they blow a call that costs a young starter a perfect game, say (what's up, Neil?). On pretty much anything that's a bang-bang play, I don't get bent out of shape about mistakes. When an umpire is in a position where everybody is looking at him, and he needs to make a call, and it's a fifty/fifty thing, he makes his call, and you live with it. Sometimes those calls will be blown, and you mind for a minute, but ultimately, that's fine. That's the game. When Davidson, for example, blew the triple play call in the 1992 World Series, yeah, that's a mistake, but it was like, OK, he missed it. I can see how that could happen. He was right there, he had to make a call, and he missed it. Fair enough.


But shit like this oh man shit like this. It's no secret that Bob Davidson is "Balk-A-Day-Bob," an umpire with a reputation for enjoying the limelight a little too much. Almost twenty years ago, Darren Daulton memorably merked him thusly: "He's one of those impact umpires. In my opinion, the game was on ESPN, and he couldn't wait to suit up and make an impact. He's one of those guys . . . You go into his house, and there's lots of pictures of himself and none of his family." That's an insanely cold thing to say, but the point remains: Davidson has a reputation for inserting himself into situations where his presence is not exactly required. He's a meddler. And this was bullshit.


Is it worth noting that the night before, when Davidson was working behind the plate, both dugouts were giving it to him pretty bad? Sioscia really got going for a minute there after some deeply odd calls against Vernon (again, what it do). The Blue Jays call-in show after the Friday night game was largely about Davidson's awful strike zone. Which is fair, because he is the worst. 


I could keep going on this, but what I am really after here is this: I don't complain about umpires, but that was ridiculous. And if it was anybody but Balk-A-Day-Bob, it woudn't be quite so galling. But it was. So it is.


Anyway, after another crazy first-and-third inning for the Angels in which Hunter got doubled off in the worst way and Callaspo and Abreu combined to get the latter caught stealing home (lol, wtf, etc) to end the thirteenth, Travis Snider fell all over himself trying to get to a totally catchable ball in the bottom of the fourteenth and the game was over before you knew it (in the five-hours-and- three-minutes sense of "before you knew it"). The Jays bullpen, which was awesome again last night, is now almost completely gutted for todays Jo Jo Reyes start -- against Jered Weaver, no big deal -- so Jo Jo is about to get fed to the wolves. There will be no relief. He will be in AAA in like a week.  


Pray for Jo Jo.


KS