2021 Game One-Twenty-Nine: Blue Jays 2, Tigers 1

 

look at the launch angle Bo gets on Gurriel here

Do you suppose it to be coincidence, mere happenstance, that only a day after the completion of the U11 girls baseball season, that the Blue Jays player favoured by a plurality of those very same U11 girls, Bo Bichette -- whose number is 11, I will remind you -- goes three-for-four with two singles, a walk, and an opposite-field dinger? In a game in which Jose Berrios finds his form and holds the Tigers to but a lone run on six hits, no walks, and 11 strikeouts? You are welcome to believe what you will, I suppose, but I know what I saw. Something else I saw: Saturday night, Detroit Tigers' reliever Michael Fulmer pitched with the thumb lacing on his glove (the big extra thick one, you know the one, the thumb loop one) completely untied -- like not down to a single pass-through, which happens to us all, but totally untied -- and it was absolutely killing me. I mentioned it on the couch, and even via the medium of SMS-text, but none who heard me seemed as distressed as I was. I don't know if this is just an HD revelation, but I don't feel like I'd ever seen someone play with their thumb lacing just totally unattended like that? It was unbelievable! And then today, Jose Berrios pitched the whole game with his glove exactly like this. Where am I? Is this a dream? Later as I walked to the basement to do laundry, I saw my own daughter's glove untied in the same way. "They gonna ask me how I'm doing," the poet writes, "I'm upset." To settle myself, I spent some time with this image of Vladdy playing with some dirt Saturday night, an image snagged by "No Context Blue Jays" and which I have saved to the "Odds and Ends" folder on my desktop as "vladirto.jpg":

So where do we stand after this taking these slightly freaky two-of-three from the Tigers? Sort of to my surprise, back down to 5.5 games back, as Boston truly blew it in Cleveland this afternoon (early evening?): up 4-0 heading into the bottom of the sixth, they lose 7-5. Go Guardians! The Blue Jays have three at home against the Orioles whilst the Red Sox are in Tampa for four -- if this gap is to close, this would be the time of its closing, probably, right? Maybe pick up a couple this week? It's Oakland after that, which sounds bad, but they've hit a rough patch, right? So maybe?

KS