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| I would like to thank ginger ale for bringing us not only this moment, but so many others, too |
Well alright! Well okay! A walk-off win against the feisty young Oakland/Sacramento/Las Vegas Athletics on an Opening Day filled with pennant unveilings and nice video packages and all kinds of neat things and familiar faces (Ernie Whitt! George Bell! Pat Hentgen! Vernon Wells! José Bautista! all there! plus Geddy Lee and Eugene Levy in pretty good seats!) is a huge improvement over last year's dreary 12-2 game-one drubbing where I also got super sick, wouldn't you say? Kevin Gausman pitched nearly as well as one can, striking out ten batters (breaking an Opening Day shared by Roy Halladay [sure] and Esteban Loaiza [what on earth]), walking none, and allowing just one hit in his six innings. It is a shame, sure, that that lone hit was a solo dinger by slugging catcher Shea Langeliers (an ethical alternative to Cal Raleigh?). But an Andrés Giménez "miscommunication bloop triple" (sounds weird, but search your memory; I bet you have seen one) that somehow got the best of not just left-fielder Tyler Soderstrom (fair enough, I guess), but dazzling centre-fielder (a Toronto native! a Naylor-cousin!) Denzel Clarke, too, scored new-fan-favourite Kazuma Okamato (who had walked) and old-fan-favourite Ernie Clement (who had not just doubled, but hustle-doubled), and, after solid work out of the pen from both Louis Varland (first guy in, no matter the situation, it seems) and the underhanded (in a non-pejorative sense) Tyler Rogers, the stage was set for a truly remarkable Jeff Hoffman ninth. For the second straight game, though five months or so apart, Hoffman allowed a one-out, ninth-inning, game-tying home run (curse you, Shea Langeliers!) to a team from California, and I bet that however we might feel about that, Jeff Hoffman probably feels a whole lot worse about it. And while a mere blown save (or, as the French literally call it, le sabotage [I did not expect, but was grateful for, the pregame moment of silence for Rodger Brulotte]) is not in itself a particularly notable occurrence, how about a four-strikeout inning of a blown save for only the second time in MLB history? What company to be in, too: the great Tim Wakefield (the Knuckleball documentary that's on Tubi is well worth one's time, by the way—watched it just this past week!) performed the same strange feat in 1999. But to Hoffman's great relief (wordplay), judging from his reaction in the dugout, the Blue Jays strung together an Okamoto single (his second hit of the day, third time on base), another Clement double (it required less hustle, but know that his hustle stood at the ready nonetheless), and a game-winning Andrés Giménez single up the middle, all with two outs, making it all the more precarious and, in the end, merry. If it sounds like this ruled, it is because it did; it is because it did rule. I thought it was just great!
When Okamoto, whose reception ahead of his first plate appearance was the loudest any Blue Jay received all night, was asked after the game about Vladdy—who, after Okamoto's first hit, made a typically devilish little show of asking the A's to toss him the ball to be authenticated, and then, with a big grin, feinted tossing it to the stands (before of course handing it off to the appropriate party)—Okamoto said through his translator, "He's kind. He really cares about me." An Opening Day walk-off win, in which the power of friendship remains verifiably strong? Plus we had hot dogs and root beer floats? Ten-out-of-ten Opening Day, man; no notes. Not a one.
KS
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