Orioles 4, Blue Jays 2; Orioles 4, Blue Jays 2 (Doubleheader!): Formally Cooked / De Jure Washed

 

tell me a tale, Sad Vladdy

The blow of the Blue Jays' second 4-2 loss to the Orioles on the day arrived pre-softened by the first, I think it fair to say, the one that mathematically brought our postseason chances to their material end (their spiritual end, for me, came late Saturday night, when, as we have previously discussed, I felt compelled to start a Samsung Note anticipating next season's twenty-six-man roster [I honestly think we'll be better! .500 at least!]). I have less experience of doubleheader baseball than most baseball fans of my age and interest, I would suspect, since the guys of my ongoing choosing have played in a (sky)domed stadium since I was ten, and the other team I very much enjoyed but whomst are alas no more (nos amours) played very much beneath a(n unspeakable, in their case) roof also for a good long stretch (and certainly by the time I visited their doom-cursed stade). Of the several hundred baseball games I have attended in classic reality (this number comfortably exceeds two hundred, but falls well short of three, I believe [I should check my notes]), none have been threatened by rain for more than a few minutes (quick quick close the roof it is raining so hard and the field has no proper drainage oh no), and so no doubleheaders for me. They're neat, though. 

Between games one and two, on this occasion, a good deal of silliness, in my view, began to pop off when a clip from a long interview Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had recently sat in Spanish began to be disseminated and widely derided. Vladdy, rather than answering all questions in the manner the Toronto media demands (oh yah definitely; gotta keep the shifts short; get the puck deep; shots on goal; set the tone; oh yah definitely), spoke honestly and openly about his struggles this season and his feelings about them. I am only capable of catching as much Spanish as anyone who is comfortable in French but with little proper experience of the language, which is to say, it's not nothing, but it isn't any good, and in particular, anything colloquial or idiomatic at all is going to elude me completely, so I am entirely beholden to translation, in this instance credited to Veronica Batista, as I understand it (my apologies if this credit is mistaken). Several reputable Spanish speakers of the baseball internet as I experience it are of the view that this translation is fair, and I for sure take them at their word: "I want people to understand one thing. The money they gave me wasn't for what I'm going to do. It was for what I already did. They didn't pay me because I'm going to hit forty every year. They paid me for what I already accomplished. People are confused about that, but I think the same way they do. Like, sometimes I even say to myself: bro, they gave you all that money and you're out here doing nothing. I try. You know how it is with fans: when you're good, they're with you one-hundred percent. But when you smell like shit, like we like to say here, nobody supports you. The ones who support you are the ones who stay with you. Those are my fans. My family." You can probably guess which parts of this, excerpted infelicitously, have people who have spent the season literally mad (like actually mad) about Vladdy's baseball-playing troubles even madder still. Asked about all of this between games, Vladdy elected to remain a human being with dignity. In response to a question about his season-long back injury, Héctor Gómez reports him saying, "I've been dealing with a back injury all year; it's not a very serious injury—some days I wake up feeling fine, and other days I wake up in pain—but that's no excuse for the bad season I've had. I've felt depression and anxiety. There are times when I've called my dad late at night to open up to him." Keegan Matheson shared another Vladdy utterance: "Every at-bat when I fail, I think about my contract because I know all of these people who go to the games, they pay to see me being successful, to do something good every at-bat. Every time I think about that." Though a clamouring press offered repeated opportunities to reconsider and recant his humanity, Vladdy declined: "No. I don't regret myself. I'm not lying with what I say. I understand some fans, they don't understand the way, what I was trying to say specifically, but what I said is the way I feel."    

Perhaps predictably, I am not upset about any of these several things that Vladdy said about this difficult season (indeed, I am in sympathy with them), and I mind a good deal the way that seemingly many have chosen to be unkind about all this (though the fault here is certainly my own for reading and listening, obviously). I don't even want to get into the specific grievances I have come across other than to say that I find none of them even slightly compelling. One of the ways a good number of people seem to want to engage not just with baseball, but with sport generally, is to be angry about it, and unsparing, and I don't have any interest in being either of those things as part of the fun hobby that I enjoy. To each their own on this, I suppose.   

And with all that, we head into the final homestand of the season, three against the Cincinnati Reds, who we rarely see, and with whom I have no real quarrel. You might be surprised how often I recall the Reds' four-game sweep over the Oakland A's in the 1990 World Series, a feat that seemed inconceivable at time given the existential fact of Rickey Henderson and Oakland's overall propensity to bash. Mind you, that was a number of years go.

Let's all do our best to enjoy this final weekend of baseball, friends! The last games are always more than a little melancholy (melancholic?) but I bet we'll get through it. Maybe there should be hot dogs, and even root beers (root beer floats?); I don't know. 

KS