Angels 5, Blue Jays 1: Bless you, Vernon Wells.

I've got to think this went even better than he'd hoped.

This is definitely worth watching, if you haven't seen it yet: the Toronto crowd gives Vernon Wells a warm welcome (home, sort of); Vernon steps out of the box and acknowledges the crowd, and proceeds to rip a first pitch slider over the centre field wall that Vernon used to, you, fly into awesomely. I was genuinely pleased to see that the kind of ridiculousness that dogged Vernon during too much of his time in Toronto -- yeah he's a stand-up guy who plays through injuries and puts up big numbers when he's not hurt and is awesome in the community and is the team's union rep and actually nobody has a bad word to say about him in the least but he had the audacity to sign a contract J. P. Ricciardi was fool enough to offer and he himself was not fool enough to decline and so we shall boo this man -- was nowhere to be seen here, and everybody was just like, "Hey, it's Vernon! Boy, he sure played here long time, and is second in pretty much everything in Blue Jays history to Carlos Delgado! Let's all clap a minute!" Because that is the right thing to do.


Vernon did a fun little interview with Aaron Hill that the Fan 590 played before today's game, and in addition to talking about how nice the reception was and how awesome it was to hit that home run, he also mentioned something I was not aware of at all: according to Josh Hamilton (whose memory might be hazy, actually, so take this for what it's worth), Toronto is the roughest left field to play in in the AL; the fans just wear you out. Now, this to me seems absurd. Worse than Boston? Or Chicago? Or New York? Anyway, this is what Josh Hamilton says, Vernon reports, and Vernon also said that he gets it now. He said he heard it pretty good for all innings last night. He also noted that it was "awesome," unsurprising from a guy who, as you no doubt recall, knows from heckling.

"Dear Mr. Dork, Here is your ball! Can you please tell me what gas station you work at, so when you are pumping my gas I can yell at you!!! Now sit down, shut-up and enjoy the game. Your favorite centre fielder, Vernon Wells"

Anyway, good for Vernon, who will be lucky to get another hit all weekend given how terribly his season is going, and good for everybody, really. Except the Blue Jays, I guess, because Brandon Morrow got touched up early and the bats never really got going. 


But Vernon!

KS