Blue Jays 10, Diamondbacks 4: Considerably More Like It

 

ganbatte, Okamoto-san

Single, double, single, single, single, single, double, walk, strike out, double, pop out, strike out: that's an eight-run inning! An eight-run first inning! The Blue Jays' trouble throughout their woeful four-game losing streak was a lack of runs, certainly, but not so much a lack of hits (consider, if you will, the twelve hits with which they somehow only managed two runs on Saturday night); it has been a question of sequencing. How pleasant, then, to have sorted that out entirely, and to step boldly forth into an era in which we knock starters out of the game having pitched but a third of a single inning. Vladdy's three hits were as pleasant as ever; Okamoto doubled and happily homered; and Nathan Lukes, who has been suffering significantly from vertigo (a pernicious and only somewhat treatable matter, unfortunately), was good for three solid hits from the leadoff spot. All great stuff! And how strange for it to have occurred on a day Kevin Gausman started, as our longstanding approach has been to scrape out scarcely any runs at all when he is on the mound. But maybe that's all sorted now to! Later this same night, I will note, in the idyllic realms of ソフトボール天国 / Sofutobōru Tengoku / Softball Heaven (the superior, critter-heavy Japanese original of Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball), I defeated the Amazons team (no mean feat: for me, this is taller NES task than defeating Mike Tyson in the Punch-Out!! that bears his name) by the nearly identical score of 10-5, which is the best I have ever done in that context. Just a tremendous sporting Sunday all around. 

KS