 |
| among the nicest ones probably? ballparks I mean? |
The last time the Blue Jays went to Seattle and played three (those are links to previous Baseball Feelings), you may recall that there was actually no guarantee they'd play more than two. The Blue Jays had just dropped the first two games of the American League Championship Series at home in Toronto (the first 3-1 with Kevin Gausman on the mound [run-support issues behind Gausman remain a sad mystery], the second 10-3 with Trey Yesavage getting lightly toasted) before Shane Bieber and Max Scherzer plus like pretty much all of the bats turned things around super hard in Games Three and Four (let us not linger on the Eugenio Suarez grand slam off of poor Brendon Little that sunk Game Five). Andrés Giménez homered a couple times, and eventual-ALCS-MVP Vladimir Guerrero Jr. continued to have pretty much the best October ever, and just like that, we had a series. Negative Nancies will note that the Seattle Mariners (the only active MLB team that has not appeared in a World Series—yet) became baseball's first team to lose a League Championship Series after winning the first two games on the road; Positive Patties, on the other hand, will note that the Toronto Blue Jays became the first team to win a League Championship series after dropping the first two games at home (anything is possible, kids [believe in yourselves]). I have in truth always had a fondness for the Mariners, which is probably fairly common for baseball fans around my age, as our childhood enthusiasm for Ken Griffey Jr. segued fairly seamlessly into the Ichiro era, and I think it would be neat for them to finally win a World Series (in a year in which the Blue Jays do not make the postseason, let's say), but I will note, too, that the most unhinged (the least hinged?) opposing-team internet-baseball-fans I observed (it would not be right to say that I "encountered" them, as none were weird at me specifically) during "The Best Postseason in Baseball History [. . .]," as Steve Rushin had it in The Atlantic (the original title ends in a question mark that I have lightly elided [but, in the spirit of scholarship, I have left a "[ . . .]" as a trace {academic rigour: so important}]). It is entirely possible that this is simply an impression created by the Mariners' fanbase being understandably a good deal smaller than the Yankees' or Dodgers' (or indeed the Blue Jays'), and so a truly unhinged take is going to stand out, in relative terms, and not just get washed out amidst the vast tides of a metaphor I'm not sure how to finish. But I like the Mariners! 1977 expansion cousins should stick together, mostly, I think, probably (there's actually no reason for this).
That said, we could really use these games. And we got the first one, at least! Dylan Cease pitched a real honey, striking out nine, and walking just one as he allowed but three hits across seven scoreless innings. You'd take that any day! Jeff Hoffman—who has been absolutely fantastic ever since FanGraphs published Davy Andrew's completely correct "Jeff Hoffman and the Worst BABIP of All Time" on June 9—turned in a scoreless eighth, and Louis Varland did something pleasingly similar with the ninth. The only runs of the game came in the third, as Giménez knocked in young Sean Keys, and Vladdy knocked in Giménez; that was it! A brisk game with the wholly admirable Luis Castillo on the mound for the M's (I still maintain we should have earnestly endeavoured to pick him up from Cincinnati [I just spelled that right on the first try for the first time in my entire life]) when he was there for the having), and just a really fun night with the huge Blue Jays-fan contingent on the third-base side, as has become the custom in Seattle. How I managed to get this deep into this post without mentioning that Randy Arozarena burned through both of the Mariners' ABS challenges in the same plate appearance in the first inning (nobody even on, or anything, not that that would help much) is a failure on my part that is at least on par with Arozarena's own, and I apologize for it. I will strive to be better going forward.
KS
No comments:
Post a Comment