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| Vladdy: got another one |
No sooner had I settled into the bleachers near the tennis court that would serve on this fine October afternoon as the site of a roller skating lesson for a leading member of the U11 set (roller skating is high-level cross-training for baseball; I invite all you U11 coaches to look into it for your young charges), and opened my phone to the MLB application through which I enjoy not just play-by-play data (which is free!) but also radio broadcasts (a gift beyond price, almost free), than I realized I had already missed it: Vladimir Guerrero's forty-seventh home run of the year, a towering shot that made it nearly to Tony Fernandez, both to where his name is written on the Level of Excellence just above the second deck, and also to heaven, itself a Level of Excellence ("R.I.P. Tony Fernandez, My Dad and I loved you," as it said once on Joey Votto's hat). Happily, there was much more: Téo hit his thirty-second home run later that same inning; George Springer, who it seems has barely even been in the lineup this year, somehow hit his twentieth in the second; Bo Bichette got his twenty-ninth a little later (I mean, why not); and Danny Jansen got another one, a two-run shot in the fifth. Ten runs on fourteen hits, when it was all said and done, and unsurprisingly another great start from young Alek Manoah, who struck out ten and allowed only a hit and a walk for just one run through seven. Such was the depth and profundity of the trouncing (poor Baltimore; poor Cedric Mullins, especially [he seems neat, and should not be made to suffer]) that the only reliever the Blue Jays sent out there at all was Ross Stripling, who took it the rest of the way. This means all-hands on deck for the season finale, and we might well need them, as Hyun-Jin Ryu, love him though we do, has had command issues of late, and it is not at all hard to imagine a scenario where we need to get him out both quickly and in a hurry and also at once. Would I be a little freaked out to see Jordan Romano pitching, say, the fourth? Certainly, and yet it might be very much the thing to do. One hopes, of course, for an easy win like yesterday, but it is seems like too much to ask.
With the Yankees thumped by the Rays and booed tremendously in Yankee Stadium yesterday, and both Boston and Seattle winning squeakers late last night, we need a Blue Jays win and a loss from either the Yankees or Red Sox for this afternoon's game to be anything other than the last of the Blue Jays season. The weirdnesses set to unfold should there be a three-or-even-four-way tie are pretty great, but one that is particularly notable, I think, is that in a four-way tie, the Yankees would be given the choice (indeed they have already been given it) as to whether they would prefer to play the Red Sox in Fenway of the Blue Jays in the SkyDome, and they have chosen Boston; which is interesting; which is interesting.
But for anything at all like that to happen, these Blue Jays need one last win, their ninety-first of this strange and wonderful season, a season I have loved as much as any other. I sure hope they get it!
KS
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