Blue Jays 2, Mets 1: Welcome Back, Bo

 

you're looking well

You're probably not actually as bad as you look when you're getting swept at home by the Rangers, and you're probably not actually as good as you look when you're beating the Mets, as the old saw almost goes. All it took was a fairly ludicrous little-league home run (a triple and an error, in this case) off the bat of George Springer ("I'm so tired; that's so far") and right past the glove of Juan Soto to open the game; a Myles Straw sacrifice fly to score Luis Urías in the fifth; and a very fine nearly-seven-innings from Trey Yesavage, who allowed a solo home run to Francisco Lindor, and nothing else beyond that. Fluharty, Rogers, and (who else?) Louis Varland tied up the loose ends. 

But this one was all about the return of Bo Bichette (uncharacteristically emotional pregame press scrum here; warm standing ovation with Vladdy encouraging him to tip his cap here), our best shortstop since Tony Fernandez (words one does not utter lightly), an essential, integral part of the whole wonderful era of Blue Jays baseball that began with the weird, abbreviated 2020 season in which these preposterously young Blue Jays were already good, somehow, and culminated in last year's run to Game Seven of the World Series in what turned out to be my favourite baseball season ever (hey, one of them's gotta be). Over that lovely and uncommonly companionable six-year stretch, one that seemed from the very beginning to be the Vladdy and Bo era (and extremely turned out to be), the Blue Jays played .543 baseball, good for one AL East title, four trips to the postseason, an AL pennant, and, as you'll no doubt recall, really very close to almost a World Series championship as well. All of this, I got to share with my young family (Vladdy and Bo are friends; watch how they take care of each other). Bo Bichette's three-run home run in the third inning of Game Seven off of Shohei Ohtani was, in my view, the swagmost home run in Blue Jays history, given the overall context (WS G7), the opposing pitcher (the greatest baseball player to ever live), Bo's hobbled status (his knee was still unmistakably wrecked), and, crucially, as regards swagness, the tiny little bat-drop (no monstrous José Bautista flip, this) with a subtle, nearly disdainful flick of the wrist, one that we had seen before, and that always seemed to connote Bo's low-key disbelief that this pitcher—again, in this case Shohei Ohtani, the greatest baseball player to ever live—could have possibly thought that they could get that pitch by him. Had it been enough, as Dan Shulman noted last night, it's a home run that stands alongside Joe Carter's in Blue Jays history. But, as I believe Nick Ashbourne said in the aftermath of last season, if the Blue Jays had won, all of those moments would have become unavoidable, almost compulsory memories; that they lost means that we'll have to remember them ourselves. I'm happy to.

KS