Long Ball Stories

There were more parrots at the ball park this afternoon than you would see at a dozen Jimmy Buffett concerts

.It was Ed-Wing t-shirt day today, and the fans of the Jays’ humble and lovable designated hitter were out in full force, over 46,000 of them, all told. There were parrots everywhere. Parrot hats. Stuffed parrots being waved. Stuffed parrots sewn to shirts at the shoulder. Parrot images reeling across the big scoreboard. (Note for research: is it still called the JumboTron? The name just seems so last century.) Even guys in parrot suits. No, I didn’t see a gal in a parrot suit. Sorry.

And if they had nothing else, fans had their giveaway shirts. At least the first fifteen thousand of them did. For those of you who are wondering why the team distributes such limited numbers of giveaway items, an issue that has been raising increasing concern, the answer is not far to find. Limiting the quantity creates demand, causing fans to line up earlier and earlier before the gates open in hope of scoring a goody. Once in, they have nothing to do while waiting two hours for the game to start but eat and drink, resulting in a concessions bonanza for the bean counters who make the decisions.

The t-shirts were a bit of an oddity, compared to most sports-branded merchandise. Stark white with a crew neck collar, they looked like the kind of GI tee shirt that a young Marine would be made to wear under his or her fatigues in boot camp. On the right front was a rather strange stylized number ten that from a distance oddly recalled the TD Bank logo. Hmmm. But the crowning feature was a spray of brilliant, parrot-coloured feathers printed on the right shoulder of the shirt. In truth, they were a little strange to behold. Though also in truth, my wife and I didn’t get there in time to score shirts, so there’s probably a bit of sour grapes talking here.

Edwin did not disappoint the multitudes on his special day, a brilliantly sunny late afternoon/early evening June affair during which the shadows crept relentlessly across the field as the Blue Jays’ sluggers exacted satisfying revenge on their National League visitors for Arizona’s rather rude takedown of the home team last night. His was one of three homers the Jays hit, three booming, no-doubt drives that represented sixty percent of the Jays’ offence and produced all five of their runs.

Our seats for our first visit to the ball park this year (full disclosure: your scribe follows the Jays via the tube—sorry to disillusion if you all thought I had a press-box pass) were in Section 130, field-level seats just about one section beyond third base. I highly recommend this section if you’re trolling for seats on the ballpark diagram, because the sight lines are great, you’re close to the action if you’re not up too far, and best of all they’re significantly cheaper than the next closest section to the plate. A further tip I would offer based on my experience last September of getting tickets for all three of the crucial Yankee games: if you’re really keen to see a particular game, and you don’t mind going it alone, there are almost always really good single seats to be found, even fairly close to the date of the game.

We were perfectly positioned, as it turns out, for watching home runs by Russell Martin, with two on and two out in the first, and solo shots by Encarnacion and Troy Tulowitzki in the sixth to soar majestically out of the park. Years ago, when I taught creative writing, I found a succinct definition of a poem as a short piece of writing that expresses the “oh!” of a thing. Well, responding to a poem that works well has nothing on the “oh!” of recognition that comes when you realize, about the time the ball leaves the infield, that it’s goin’ out and ain’t coming back! That happened three times today. Not a liner over the fence among them. Not a hold-your-breath-to-see-if-it’s-gonna-make-it among them. Not a twist-your-body-to-try-to-keep-it-fair among them. Just three big, booming, beautiful drives that said to the pitcher, “Groove one to me, will ya?”

Our boys and their loyal fans needed this one today. Since the ruthless dismantling of the Orioles last Friday night, we had lost the last two games in Baltimore, and the first of the two back here against Arizona. We needed to break the short streak and keep the Orioles within hailing distance, and we needed to do it before leaving for Chicago and a weekend series with the White Sox. So it was all good when we broke on top in the first inning, and put up all the runs we would need, courtesy of our home-grown Russell Martin. Incidentally, I was pleased to see in the Arizona dugout the original home-grown Blue Jay, Dave McKay. Anyone who made it to Exhibition Stadium in 1977 will well recall the chant of “Home-grown, Dave McKay” that greeted McKay every time he came to the plate.

After Jays’ starter Jay Happ quickly dispatched the D-Backs in the top of the first, perhaps wisely pitching around Arizona’s imposing slugger Paul Goldschmidt, Devon Travis’ initial at bat in his long-awaited debut as leadoff hitter resulted in an easy popup to Arizona’s talented second baseman Jean Segura (who knew?) However, Josh Donaldson followed with a slashing double into the right field corner that awakened the huge crowd from the torpor it had settled into while gobbling junk for the two hours prior to the game. D-Back left-handed starter Robbie Ray then took a page out of the Happ playbook and walked Enarnacion to set up the double play and move on to the left-handed matchup with Michael Saunders, a wise move at the time, as he fanned the Canadian Saunders, who, unlike Martin, did not have a good day at the office, to ease the pressure.
Things looked even better for Ray when he ran the count to one and two on Martin, but then he lost his nerve a bit, perhaps, and missed badly with his next two, for a full count. Martin fouled off one as the gloomy among us whispered to ourselves “he’s gonna strike out, he’s gonna strike out.” But then came that sweet sound and that soaring thing of beauty, and it was 3-0 for the good guys, and a whole lovely evening of baseball ahead of us.

It wasn’t that easy, though, as it turned out. Ray settled in and blanked the Jays through five, allowing only a couple of walks, a hit batsman to Josh Donaldson, and an infield single to Kevin Pillar, who simply outran his slow grounder to short in the fifth and then stole second, but died there. In the meantime, Happ struggled mightily with his control, but managed, barely, to keep the lid on before leaving after five innings and 99 pitches with his team still clinging to a 3-2 lead. He had an easy second but gave up singletons in the third and fourth innings, the former attributable to an egregious error by right fielder Darren Ceciliani, who let a single by third baseman Phil Gosselin roll under his glove and all the way to the wall. This allowed the Walking Man, Segura, whom Happ had walked with two outs, to come all the way around and score Arizona’s first run. Gosselin ended up on third. Happ ratcheted up the tension by walking Goldschmidt, probably a good idea, and then Rickie Weeks Jr., not such a good idea, to load the bases. But catcher Wellington Castillo then obligingly fanned, the first of four strikeouts on the day for him, to end the threat. The two walks would have forced Segura in anyway, so the run stood as earned.

We should pause for a moment to extend sympathy to Ceciliani, who, in his first start for the Blue Jays, not only committed the damaging error but struck out twice against Robbie Ray, and then meekly popped up to second in his last at bat in the seventh against reliever Zach Godley. When I saw Ceciliani’s name in the lineup, my initial thought was that Manager John Gibbons just wanted to give him some playing time against the lefty as he had only pinch hit since being called up from Buffalo. But I had forgotten that Ceciliani also hits left, which means something more meaningful was afoot, and it was: Carrera is day to day with a nagging injury of some sort to his right Achilles tendon, Ceciliani had been inserted out of necessity.

The list of the wounded for the Jays is becoming a bit of a worry, by the way. With Jose Bautista on the DL, and Carrera now day to day, we also had Donaldson removed from the field for the ninth because of a stiff neck, and in the eighth Justin Smoak hobbled himself by fouling a vicious one off his right knee, a ball that came off his knee so sharply that it rolled to third and could have been played on to first for the out, except it was a foul ball.
In the fourth Happ gave up another run to narrow the lead still further. Michael Bourne hit a two-out RBI single to centre to score Yasmany Tomas, who had doubled with one out. But the big lefty went out in style in the fifth, allowing Goldschmidt and Weeks to reach on base hits, and then fanning the side to leave on a high note.

On this day the Jays’ bullpen was letter perfect. Gavin Floyd threw a clean sixth, Drew Storen gave up a one-out double to Goldschmidt in the seventh and then fanned Weeks and Castillo to strand Goldschmidt. Jason Grilli gave up a single to Peter O’Brien in the eighth, induced Tomas to hit into a double play, and fanned shortstop Jake Lamb, pinch-hitting for shortstop Nick Ahmed. Roberto Osuna nailed down his fourteenth save on two ground-outs, the game ending with Russell Martin on his knees to the left of the plate to cradle a little foul pop off the bat of Gosselin.

Actually being at the ballpark, it was clear that conditions prevailing at the time of day had much to do with the fact that neither team produced anything further after Tulo’s homer in the sixth and Goldschmidt’s double in the seventh. The regular evening first pitch time of 7:07 allows for the afternoon shadows to spread and the stadium lights to even things out, erasing the sharp contrasts of light and dark that exist around six in the evening. But with this 4:00 start, literally from one batter to the next, while Arizona was batting, the line of shadow crossed the plate, and the hitter virtually disappeared. It was as if Shoeless Joe and his ghostly teammates were receding into the mist and tall corn whence they had magically appeared in Shoeless Joe and Field of Dreams.

Ray’s departure in the sixth was marked by a bit of overthinking on the part of Arizona manager Chip Hale. He sent his starter out to begin the inning against Edwin on his own day with a pitch count of 93. His thinking, no doubt, was to retire Encarnacion by hook or by crook, and then have Ray finish with the favourable matchup with Michael Saunders. This kind of worked, and kind of didn’t. Ray did indeed strike out Saunders before departing. However, he hadn’t gotten by Encarnacion, who put his own tattoo on the day with the afore-mentioned monster shot to left. Troy Tulowitzki then finished off the scoring for the Jays with a copy-of-a-copy of a shot to left off Zach Godley. Godley and then Randall DelGado finished up for Arizona without allowing any further damage, and we all drove home slowly through the traffic, satisfied with a 5-2 win, and gratified at the sight of balls hit by Blue Jays soaring out of the park.

It’s an off day tomorrow, and Aaron Sanchez opens up for the Jays on Friday night against lefty Carlos Rodon, whose ERA of 4.16 is decidedly better than his 2-6 record would suggest.