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| The Heedless Bo Bichette |
Of the several significant pleasures offered by this Opening Day of Blue Jays baseball -- George Springer's five hits; Bo Bichette's four (hey Matt Chapman had three!); nifty baserunning and outfield defence the likes of which had been foretold -- perhaps chief among them was simply the lovely ballpark in St. Louis, all packed and cheerful for a day of clear light and crisp weather if not a crisp day of baseball, exactly. What a wild one! And there was so much of it: given the seemingly flawless new rules regarding pace of play, we probably won't see too many nine-inning games that extend beyond three and a half hours, but this one sure did. So it goes, though, or so it went, in a game that saw nineteen total runs on thirty-four combined hits. That's so many! In fact, with their nineteen (that's so many!), the Blue Jays set their Opening Day record, surpassing a mark set Opening Day 1977 (the Openingmost Day in franchise history, arguably). Alek Manoah, who had a slightly rough spring, had a fairly rough start to his season, too, pitching no further than the third inning. And so it fell to the bullpen, which surrendered a further four runs over the remaining six innings, two of them charged to my absolute guy Yimi Garcia, who picked up both the blown save (en français: le sabotage) and, as the fates had it, also the win (la victoire!). Go, Yimi, go! Jordan Romano looked like a maniac pacing around the bullpen and dousing himself with water, which would maybe have seemed slightly ridiculous had he not come in and struck out two of the three batters he faced for a truly tidy save right after, but he did, so no complaints here. Just a lot of fun! We had hot dogs!
KS
