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| Opening Té(o) |
My youngest daughter was up a half-hour early Friday morning (the first thing she said to us, bursting into our room, was "It's Opening Day!"), and my oldest semi-grumbled off to bed a half-hour late Friday night. Between that beginning and that end, there had been much excitement (Big League Chew after school, hot dogs for supper, a slightly cobbled-together peanuts and cracker jack[esque] situation for dessert) and a good deal of disappointment (the first three-and-a-half innings of opening day actual). But once the Blue Jays bats got it together, and the boys truly began to bop (we heard noise, and that's what it was), José Berríos' baffling and deeply sympathetic third-of-an-inning outing (the shortest of his fine young career, it goes without saying) felt more like something we'd heard about one time than something that had happened like an hour ago. There's no real question that, by the end of it, this was the best Opening Day in Blue Jays history: the biggest Opening Day comeback in Major League Baseball since 1950, and before that 1901, in what was the very first game played by the Detroit Tigers (R.I.P. Neil Bulson). Things felt pretty grim down by seven, for sure, but all it took was a fairly low-key three runs in the fourth (Springer in on Vladdy's single, Bichette on Lourdes Gurriel's groundout, and Vladdy himself tagging up on [Short King] Alejandro Kirk's sac fly to left) for it to feel very much like a baseball game (of the non-crushing variety [the crushing kind also feels like a baseball game, honestly; this was poor phrasing]). The four runs that followed in the fifth were much louder, especially the three that came on Teoscar Hernandez's rocket to right field on a 98MPH fastball just after Vladdy had brought Springer home again on no less a rocket to right but one that lacked Téo's elevation, in this instance. It was quite a moment! Seven runs in two innings to tie it up, and allow Berríos' to have at least a somewhat okay time of it at the end of the dugout. The eighth was weird, in that Bo Bichette, who had been caught stealing just once last season (in twenty-six attempts, and you may recall that he actually should have been called safe that one time at third) got caught leaning the wrong way on a 3-2 count and was picked very much off first base, upon review. No matter, though: the next review, when the time came, confirmed that yes, Téo had indeed raced all the way around from first on a Lourdes Gurriel double to slide in just ahead of the tag at the plate, making for just a lovely night for him all around (a nice running catch in right, too!). Danny Jansen's solo home run in the eighth, though not strictly speaking necessary, was entirely welcome, and made the ninth much more pleasant (also did I mention that he too raced around to score from first on a double earlier? it's not that it's all that uncommon, but when a catcher does it, it seems like a thing to note). Gurriel's sliding ninth-inning grab in the corner was the defensive play of the night, but what about Vladdy's nice little running, over-the-shoulder grabs at first? And the way he smiles after he makes them, as though four-hundred-and-fifty-foot home runs are pretty good, but what we might really enjoy is catching a baseball sometimes? (He's right; it's tremendous.) And Matt Chapman, though he was really the only Blue Jay not to do anything at the plate (the bulked-up Espinal did a good job coming in for Biggio!), still looked like Matt Chapman at third, ranging all over the place, and making life easy for Bo (whose æstethic grows ever more "outrun" by the day). This really could all work!
And for all Berríos had a miserable start, how about the bullpen: Saucedo got dinged for a pair, Thornton allowed a run in two innings of work, even Cimber gave up a home run late (he usually doesn't give up home runs ever, so imagine our surprise), and not a single Blue Jays pitcher recorded a strike out until Romano's pair of them in the ninth (that's really weird), but eight-and-two-thirds is as much as you're ever going to ask of a bullpen (it's mathematically tough to ask for more!) and scoreless innings from Stripling, Merryweather, Garcia, and Jordon Romano (who really could get a lot of saves this year, for anybody out there who is still into saves) are all totally encouraging.
A wild one! And it would be hard for any game to top it the rest of the way, honestly. That could easily end up being the game of the year. But just in case, let's do it all again tomorrow, and then pretty much every other day for sixth months or so, and see where it takes us, maybe?
KS
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