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So merry were the forty-two-thousand-or-so in attendance on this night—cheered, as they were, by home runs from Kirk, Belt, and Chapman; a four-for-five night from Bo; and Yusei Kikuchi pitching at, well, not quite at Maximum Kooch, but certainly at Kooch Sufficient—that they greeted youngster Cam Eden's MLB-début at-bat with a standing ovation, and offered him very much the same as he walked back to the third-base dugout having struck out. That was honestly pretty wild! The Rays, in keeping with their surprisingly un-Rays play of a week ago, committed three errors on the night, some of them so ghastly that you felt worse for the player involved (in this case the likeable Manuel Margot) than you felt glad about the few extra bases you'd picked up (Cavan Biggio's little-league home run tests the limits of this phenomenon, obviously). This rollicking triumph meant the Blue Jays needed only a Mariners loss later in the evening to finalize their playoff status (if not position), but it did not come, not even a little: J. P. Crawford, a night after walking the Rangers off, opted this time for a grand slam in a laugher, instead. So it goes! This does set the stage nicely, though, for what will likely be the last start of Hyun-Jin Ryu's career as a Blue Jay, and before that happens, I would like to say once more the thing that I always say about Hyun-Jin Ryu, which is that he is my favourite pitcher to watch in Blue Jays history, more than Steib or Hentgen or Clemens or even Halladay (whose 2003 Cy Young season I saw first-hand, start to finish). An elite, precision junkballer operating in an era of unprecedently high velocity is an inherently charismatic thing, but watching Ryu has been an even greater pleasure than that description would suggest. And let us not forget that Ryu's genuinely surprising decision to sign in Toronto (or was it, to the extent that Ryu moved from the home of one of North America's largest Korean communities to another such place? who can say?) was the first indication that this might be a place to play again. When that four-year deal was signed, the fourth year was really what made it happen: nobody else was offering it to a pitcher Ryu's age, and as a fan, you just accepted that an expensive fourth season that probably wouldn't hold much on-field value was simply part of the price to paid if you wanted to land a front-of-the-rotation free-agent starting pitcher as a team that hadn't won in a while. But here he is, working his way back a year after Tommy John surgery, delivering not just quality innings but quality innings utterly vital to the Blue Jays position in this race down the stretch; it's just a remarkable thing. For me, the lasting image of Hyun-Jin Ryu will be that of the big man walking off the field like nothing at all had happened when what had in fact just happened was that absolutely peak Aaron Judge, of all people, had been put so badly off balance by this craftiest of lefties that he had swung through an 88MPH fastball for strike three. On the specific day I am thinking of, I am absolutely certain that we had a big bowl of Timbits before us (we ate too many [it was mostly me]).
One more win!
KS
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