Blue Jays 5, Padres 3: They Got My Letter!

 

way to get down on those, Kaz
(otherwise they will eat you alive, as well you know)

The letter to which I refer, of course, is the one in which I argued forcefully on behalf of Madison Shipman in the <<rôle>> of <<commentatrice couleur>> on the television (or indeed stream-o-vision) broadcast; that they received it is truly a wonder, in that I neglected to properly print out, address, or post it. But there she was! And she was great! Indeed, she was significantly better, I would submit, than anyone else who has taken up that mantle in this, our sadly post-Buck-Martinez era (he continues to thrive, I am assured, but mostly at home now [hey me too]). She spoke alongside not the wizened Dan Shulman of our past and most of our present, but the young Ben Shulman of a little bit of our present and probably our future. And he was was good too. Just as good, or maybe even better: your Toronto Blue Jays! Just as I was making my peace with how Shane Bieber will likely never again be what he once was, he settled right in, and, after allowing a first-inning two-run home run to Xander Bogaerts (remember him?), put in a respectable four-and-two-thirds with a little traffic, sure, but no further runs. The big blow for the Blue Jays came once again off the mighty bat of our pal 岡本 和真 Okamoto Kazuma, whose three-run shot looked just way to high to me off the bat (too high; too high I thought perfectly wrongly). The bullpen was excellent, going Mason Fluharty to Chad "Dad Chalice" Dallas to Jeff Hoffman (who is rolling) to Tyler Rogers to, at last, first-time All-Star Louis Varland, who, though touched up lightly, nevertheless managed to <<livré la marchandise>> (a phrase that, though not entirely new to me, had been long forgotten, and jumped off the page at me earlier this afternoon quite delightfully as I read Marcel Dugas' Jackie Robinson: Un été à Montréal on the breezy summer deck (an A+ experience; highest recommendation; may pursue a similar path tomorrow, honestly). Vladdy, I will mention in closing, was one-for-three with a single (a tiny one, but they all count along our shared journey to three thousand hits), a walk, one run driven in and two scored. Let's go.

KS