Blue Jays 7, Indians 4 (F/16): Blue Jays Open Their 2012 Championship Season with the Longest Opening Day Game in Major League History

maybe baseball is impossibly beautiful, big deal

It began as all epic journeys begin: with dudes like, quick, Poseidon isn't around, let's get this shit going before he gets back and is mad. In fact it was nothing like that at all, but it ended up being really great! I will not fault Ricky Romero for being far less than his best on this day, as it was really cold and windy in Cleveland, and I am not at my best under those conditions either. For the longest time, what we were looking at here was a 4-1 game in which Romero had been tagged for a three-run shot, and Blue Jay bats had been stifled except for the unstoppably amazingly great Jose Bautista who is the best and who homered. 


But then a rad top of the ninth pretty much fell out of the sky: Yunel Escobar singled, Kelly Johnson did likewise, and a Bautista shot to centre was knocked down by the wind and ended up a sac fly rather than his second round tripper of the day. Adam Lind was up next, and I pretty much lost it (in my brain) when he looked at a fastball for a strike on a 3-1 pitch, like, I was thinking thoughts like "3-1 and a chance to tie it in the ninth you've got to be swinging like a big dog Adam Lind like a big dog" and I don't know what that means exactly but I really felt it. But he walked!  And was sensibly pinch-run for, because say what you will about Rajai Davis, but that guy can run fast. He had occasion to pretty much right away, too, as E5 got a hold of one, doubling off the wall on another one knocked down by the wind (Edwin came out of the box like yep there it is, a dinger but in the end it was not). 


And then it was 4-4 pretty much forever. The coolest thing that happened during all of the scorelessness that followed was definitely when John Farrell turned into Mike Scosia for a minute and brought sure-handed forty-four-year-old Omar Vizquel into the game as a fifth infielder and the Blue Jays turned a double play to get out of a seriously sticky spot in the twelfth. (One time the Angels did that in Toronto! Chone Figgins got a different glove!) My vote for the least cool thing to happen during of all of that scorelesness was when Rajai Davis bunted terribly and then froze in the batter's box instead of running and made me so mad that I don't even know man. 


But then! J. P. Arencibia -- who way, way earlier in the game did a cool thing where he scrambled after a pitch in the dirt and dove to tag out Shin Soo "Big League" Choo at the plate -- hit a three-run home run in the top of the sixteenth after attempting to bunt on the previous pitch. Had he not bunted that first one foul, who can say? Who can know? Also, while we are asking questions: how must it have felt to have sat out in the cold in Cleveland for sixteen innings to watch your side lose like that?


Anyway, what a great way to start the season, if you are either the Toronto Blue Jays or me. I would like to tip my hat (I am not wearing a hat, but I have been enjoying watermelon Big League Chew, which is in my view a greater act of baseball fandom) to the Toronto bullpen, because eleven innings of shut-out baseball is awesome even if it is only Cleveland. Let's hear it, too, at least a little, for Colby Rasmus, who made a terrific diving grab in centre early on (he just straight up missed one for an error later, but let's not dwell). And while J. P. Arencibia is totally the home run hero on the day, let us note, finally, that Jose "@JoeyBatts19" Bautista went 3-4 with a HR, 2 BB, and a sacrifice fly. Because he is the best hitter.


Yours in baseball,


KS

it sure was!