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| Vladdy: gets ahold of one |
My favourite moment in the Blue Jays' Friday-night loss, aside from the obvious (Vladimir Guerrero's three-run, 446-foot home run; Matt Chapman hitting one off the facing of the fifth deck; being present near the unfolding mystery of Yusei Kikuchi; etc), definitely came in the bottom of the ninth, when Dusty Baker responded to Héctor Neris'/Martín Maldonado's decision to throw a 2-0 breaking ball with a four-run lead and a runner on first (who had just walked): Dusty took off his cap, looked down, and slowly rubbed his head, a head that contains so much baseball. There are for sure worse things you can do in a baseball game than throw a 2-0 breaking ball with four-run lead and a runner on first (who had just walked), but to throw a 2-0 breaking ball with four-run lead and a runner on first (who had just walked) is not the right thing to do, and Dusty, at seventy-two years old, seemed in that moment to have felt all at once the cumulative weight of every time in his long baseball life that someone chose to throw a 2-0 breaking ball with four-run lead and a runner on first (who had just walked). And it was a lot. That the pitch missed is not the point; nor that Neris battled back from the 3-0 count and struck Zack Collins out and ended the game soon thereafter. Dusty Baker has seen too many things, everybody; please do not make Dusty Baker see any more things, everybody.
KS
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