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| Jésus be praised |
Let us begin by welcoming Jameson Taillon—once a second-overall draft pick, who has since pitched about thirteen-hundred innings of slightly-above-league-average baseball in his ten big-league seasons, which is good enough to fetch you about eighty-million dollars over the course of a career if you do it all in kind of the right order (which he totally did)—as he fully and completely enters his last-legs-innings-eater era (complete with the DFA to prove it!) of his probably quite enjoyable baseball career. I have personally enjoyed him as a member of team(s) Canada at the WBC (may I remind you that we got to the quarterfinals this time! that's as far as Japan got! our official final placing was sixth! that's just one spot behind Japan this time! also the Netflix Japan documentary about the Japanese team this year is outstanding and probably essential!), and though his connections to Canada are obviously not as direct as players who were actually born and/or developed here (or who, in the most extreme cases, had to pause their farming activities in or around Gatineau to join the team [Philippe Aumont nearly missed the previous WBC because of how "[i]n January 2023, just two months before the 2023 World Baseball Classic, Aumont broke his tailbone during a recreational ice hockey game at Carleton University. He was not able to throw a baseball for about three weeks after the injury"—the man is a Canadian WBC legend]), Taillon's aren't half-bad: "My parents met at the University of Toronto, and my grandma lived downtown. I had a lot of great summers visiting and seeing Blue Jays games and going to the island." That's plenty good enough for me! I will in fact settle for much less than that, I think you'll find. Anyway, good stuff, Jameson Taillon, and thank you for your four innings of work against the Astros yesterday, even if three runs occurred within those frames; that's all fine, given where things stand (for you; for us; for our time together). And also! As it turns out! Those three runs were scarcely a problem! On account of a three-run Blue Jays' sixth, in which Okamoto knocked in yet another "Kilometres" Straw double just ahead of a Jésus Sanchez two-run shot to tie it (I must note here too that Sanchez made two entirely credible and creditable plays in left field, despite such feats not coming at all naturally to him [we have all seen some things out there]). Spencer Miles (taking those Hoffman innings and then some), Mason Fluharty, Tyler Rogers, and Louis Varland—helped out plenty by a great throw from Brandon Valenzuala and an even better tag from Luis Urias right atop Cam Smith's head and/or shoulder in the bottom of the eighth like *boop*—kept things square at three through nine, whereupon Ernie Clement opened the tenth inning with a towering two-run homer (Urias had been placed at second as the Manfred Man), giving us a two-run lead that stood up in an improbable and notable fashion: Yordan Alvarez (who we maybe shouldn't even have pitched to given the circumstance? there's a case to be made either way) ripped what should have been a double to the right-field corner to open the Houston half of the tenth, scoring Manfred Man Jeremy Peña with great ease, but ending in an honestly totally shocking out at second, as Andrés Giménez, who is a sneaky guy (he snuck his way on base with one of those HBPs where he literally throws his hand at the pitch earlier, and nobody even really made a big deal about it; such is the quality of his sneakery), stood totally nonchalantly as Nathan Luke's pretty good throw made its way in from right field; so nonchalantly, in fact, that Alvarez came in standing up rather than sliding, and was tagged out on a super close play that not only stood up to the Astros' replay challenge, but was indeed confirmed by it (ah, the subtle epistemologies of the replay centre emerge once more). It was nuts! No less nuts, in a way, that Chase Lee was the pitcher who handled the tenth for the Blue Jays; I will admit to having had no idea he was even up with the club these days. That one got by me.
Nevertheless! A series win! In fact, the Blue Jays' third series win in a row! And would you believe that, with the Guardians' loss (with thanks to our old friend Bo Bichette driving in the go-ahead run for the Mets in extras in that one), the Blue Jays are somehow now just three games out of the last Wild Card spot, the very Wild Card spot I had previously said I was not really going to pay all that much attention to any longer on account of how there's really not much to be done unless you're at .500 anyway, so why not just think about that and forget the rest? Well, that was a foolish thing to say and I am a fool. I am in fact extremely paying attention to that last Wild Card spot, and deriving a good deal of enjoyment from that attention, and so I plan to continue, unless, perhaps, the Blue Jays lose this afternoon in Chicago, in which case I might act as though that last Wild Card spot was not really a concern of mine. A quick look at the (Home Hardware) out-of-town scoreboard shows me that the Mats are again leading over the Guardians today, though, and so a Blue Jays' win could have us within two! Two! Dare to imagine it, a little!
KS
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