2022 Game Sixty-Six: Blue Jays 10, Yankees 9

 

Lourdes . . .

. . . and then Téo!

I guess you can't say for sure that this was the game of the season, but it was certainly the most recent game to make you feel like, well, that's probably as good a game as we will see all year, and, if that's the case, that will have meant it was a pretty good year, sometimes. It began auspiciously, with Josh Donaldson acting like a great big fussy baby (he's fussy, cuz he's a baby) after a Yusei Kikuchi fastball hit him in the back, and everybody booing him (and rightly so: dude, Yusei Kikuchi is like the nicest guy, and also he is Yusei Kikuchi, so you guys are probably going to score a half-dozen runs this inning, so just take your base, champ). Bench coach Big John Schneider could be seen laughing about it with an incredulous "can you believe this guy?" look towards his dugout neighbour (no, I can't believe this guy either, Big John Schneider), coupled with a kind of "well then do something about it, Donaldson" vibe or aspect (vibespect/vaspect), too. And do something about he did: with Judge ahead of him at second, Donaldson utterly pointlessly drifted off the base so far on his "secondary lead" that Vladdy snuck in on little cat feet behind him, arriving at the bag (Vladdy, I mean, not Donaldson [not Donaldson at all]) the same instant as Alejandro Kirk's inning-ending kingly toss. Head's-up play, Donaldson, great job. I was a little worried that Josh Donaldson's jerkly ways would ultimately win the day when his two-run homer put the Yankees ahead by a pair (the Blue Jays had scored on Vladimir Guerrero's first-inning laser-canon-deth-(sic)-sentence of a line-drive homer to left), and this worry only deepened as the Yankees lead grew to 8-3. How fortuitous, then, that Lourdes Gurriel Jr. hit a grand slam in the sixth (on father's day! with his dad there!), and then also Téo hit a three-run homer in the seventh, and then Jordan Romano got an absolutely unreal five-out save that involved striking out Aaron Judge with runners on to end the eighth. How. Fortuitous. Then.   

At the risk of saying "then" again, what, then, did we learn, then, from this three-game series, then? I contend that it is this: that the Toronto Blue Jays will not catch the New York Yankees this year, but that the Toronto Blue Jays can beat the Yankees this year. And we have learned also that if they do, it will rule.  

KS