Athletics 4, Blue Jays 1: So Rich Harden Finally Has A Win Over the Blue Jays

Hideki Matsui, stretching for the amusement of his giant photographer master

We might someday get to the point where we as Canadians aren't like OMG HE IS CANADIAN re: literally every Canadian ballplayer ever, but we're not quite there yet. That Rich Harden is from BC is apparently still a thing that needs to be made much of whenever he pitches in Toronto, apparently, because, you know, Victoria and Toronto, man, they have everything in common so it makes sense. The excitement over Harden's citizenship was lessened somewhat this time around because of the hysteria surrounding Brett Lawrie's, which is not really a step in the right direction. I am not at all looking to do a whole thing about this, but there is a certain kind of Blue Jays fan -- the kind that calls in to Jays Talk, for instance, which I have made the mistake of listening to twice in the last couple of weeks, and really, that's a shame-on-me kind of situation, but you seriously would not believe this stuff (". . . so I was watchin' the game on the toooooob or whatever, right, and I nooooooticed thaaaat . . .") -- to whom Which Guys Are Canadian is seriously a big deal and I can't help but think populist hero/xenophobe Don Cherry is at least partially responsible for this nonsense. You would think it was innocent, but it isn't.


Anyway, last night's game: there was a tidiness to it, I will say that for it. Pretty well pitched on both sides, with pretty much all the runs coming off of home runs: E5's solo shot in the second, Willingham's two run homer in the sixth ("Willingham" is currently my favourite name that contains  "-ham"), and Kurt Suzuki's in the seventh. With only six hits on either side, this one really  hummed along, although I must admit that I did not stick to it through the end. After the Blue Jays put runners on the corners with nobody out in the seventh and couldn't get the ball out of the infield, I decided to pursue other interests for the remainder of the evening, because there is enough suffering in the world already.


KS