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| more like "Dealin'" Cease (further wordplay) |
I will admit to a certain amount of inward oh-man-here-we-go-again-ISM when the Blue Jays' half of the second inning ended as it did early Saturday evening, with George Springer doubled off of second, having lightly misread a dying liner off the broken bat of Yohendrick Piñango that found its way into the able glove of the diving Ceddane Rafaela in very shallow centre field (in Springer's defense, it was a true "heck" of a play). "Oh man!," I thought; "here we go again!" And yet we did not: the Blue Jays scored a thoroughly glorious five runs in the very next inning, all of them coming with two outs after Andrés Gimenez struck out swinging and Brandon Valenzuela grounded to second—a ploy, perhaps, to lull the Red Sox into a false sense of security? Lukes doubled, Vladdy singled (he would go three-for-four with a walk, a run scored, and two RsBI on the day [the march to three-thousand hits continues in earnest]), Okamoto singled, Springer hit a three-run homer over the monster, and though that dinger felt like a culmination, a Daulton Varsho single and Ernie Clement RBI-double followed before the crafty Sonny Gray finally struck out Piñango to end the inning. We'd add one more in the ninth when Vladdy ripped one off pitcher Alec Gamboa's glove, scoring Nathan Lukes from second as the ball dribbled past a diving drawn-in infield after that fortuitous ricochet (that's the best kind of them, easily!).
All of that was great, but we really could have gotten by with a good deal less of it, as it turned out, as Dylan Cease pitched one of the best games in any of the Blue Jays' fifty seasons. How about that! And that's really saying something, because, as you will recall, we totally had Dave Stieb, and Roy Halladay, and arguably the best two-season stretch from arguably the best pitcher in the history of the sport (I speak here of course of Roger Clemens, with whom I am not broadly sympathetic, but whose 1997 and 1998 seasons offer the pitching equivalent of Barry Bonds' 2001 through 2004 as far as demonstrating the on-field merits of transforming one's already-Hall-of-Fame-self [oops! how'd that turn out, guys!] into a juicy, juicy juice-box). And a lot of those guys' games were excellent! But here's Dylan Cease's line from yesterday: nine innings, one hit (a sixth-inning double from Andruw Monasterio on a pitch several inches off the plate inside), three walks, and twelve strikeouts, including the final six outs of the game. There's only so much better anyone can ever be than that, right? The margins get pretty slim! Cease was a characteristic delight in his post-game interview, asking Hazel how many strikeouts he ended up with ("Twelve? Oh my . . . I was at like four through six, or something like that; that's crazy") and speculating on why he pitches so well in Fenway, a notoriously hitter-friendly park: "It is my favourite ballpark, to be honest; I don't know if that has anything to do with it. You know, when I played Nintendo 64, this was the ballpark. I just watched the '99 Home Run Derby here on YouTube." Nintendo 64 baseball? Like, say, All-Star Baseball 2001, which the even-tempered Nate Edwards described as perhaps his least favourite of the seemingly endless number of baseball video games and computer simulations he has played for his indispensable 30-30 Club project? I myself played an inordinate amount of that one in our first Toronto apartment a quarter-century ago, still kind of amazed that the guys who abounded in it were the very same I could (and very often did!) go see at the SkyDome for less than the cost of going to a first-run movie (the Bloor, admittedly, was cheaper), even allowing for the cost of the Spadina streetcar (optional [maybe you'd prefer the walk through Chinatown, if it's nice, and you've got the time?]). We revisited All-Star Baseball 2001 in the basement recently (the n64 I bought in high school still works perfectly, though the banana-yellow controller I prized quite highly has at last given up the ghost), and though I still found it quite compelling, in its way, I have learned that its charms, or at least a significant portion of its charms, are at times less charming to those of us born, say, this century, rather than at some unspecified time in the previous one (contrast this with the 8-bit greats, chiefly プロ野球ファミリースタジアム / Puro Yakyū Famirī Sutajiamu / R.B.I. Baseball and ソフトボール天国 / Softobōru Tengoku / Softball Heaven / Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball, both beloved by children of all ages and eras). And that's fine! That's all fine! But I was pleased to learn Dylan Cease gets it.
KS
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