There’s just enough of a kid in me that as a general rule I really, really hate rainouts. I guess I never was very good at delayed gratification. The only exception is when the game is out west, in a later time zone. In that case, I’ll take a rainout any day over a long delay before starting the game, since if they finally go ahead and play, like they did tonight after two hours and forty minutes, it’s going to run into the wee hours, and beyond.
As I checked in on the visuals from the Beer Barrel ball park, it was pretty clear that tonight was off the books and we’d be looking at playing two tomorrow. There was a flood waste deep in the tunnel between the Rockies’ clubhouse and their dugout . There was so much hail, and it was so chunky, that it looked like drifting snow on the infield tarp. The grounds crew had to shovel the ice pellets into groundskeepers’ carts. No game tonight, for sure.
Then, about 10:30 Toronto time, a banner started to run across the bottom of the cable feed stating that the game was projected to start at 11:20 p.m. I groaned. 11:20, average game time three hours, 2:20 in the morning—not much sleep for the old scribe tonight! Oh well, maybe it would be a nice, crisp, two hours-ten minutes pitchers’ duel. At the Beer Barrell?? As if.
When the game finally started, a minute late even, the stink would have started emanating from the screen immediately, if they’d ever actually invented Smellovision. Up against the raw, unpolished rookie Eddie Butler, the Jays went down meekly in the first, despite Josh Donaldson drawing a two-out walk. Here’s a thing to consider: Donaldson leads the American League in walks. If he’s hitting third and draws a walk in the first inning, how often will that be with two outs? If he’s hitting second and draws a walk, the inning is exponentially (I would think—remember, I don’t do analytics) more promising. On the other hand, the significance of the batting order the first time through may be highly over-rated. What is likely more significant is whom you’re hitting behind, or ahead of. Tonight, as we’ll see, Zeke Carrera and Devon Travis stirred up all kinds of trouble for the Rockies, and whose big bat came to the plate next every time they started something? Sure paid off in the fourth inning.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. I was still recalling the nervous stench of the first inning. After Butler put the Jays down, Jay Happ took the mound, and immediately revived the recent concern about his location and efficiency that have been so good for much of the season. Not that the first inning troubles were really his fault. Charlie Blackmon led off with a lame bloop single to left. Christhian (still not a typo) Adames followed with an even lamer bloop single to right, that floated agonizingly softly over Devon Travis’ glove, hit the turf, and quickly splashed to a stop in the flooded no-man’s land. Two mis-hits, two baserunners. Nolan Arenado was the first to hit the ball hard, really hard, driving Zeke Carrera to the wall in right for the out. Blackmon tagged up and easily took third on the catch. Carlos Gonzalez lined a single to centre for the Rockies’ first run. Trevor Story hit the ball hard to left, over Michael Saunders’ head, but Saunders scrambled back, stretched all of his considerable length up toward the ball, and just snagged it. We were now up to one run, two cheap hits, and three hard-hit balls that produced two outs and the run. Finally, Happ froze Mark Reynolds on a two-two pitch, his 31st of the inning, to limit the damage, but not lift the gloom.
The second inning passed uneventfully. Butler continued to labour, but set the Jays down in order. The Rockies efficiently moved a leadoff double by catcher Nick Hundley to third with a following right-side ground-out, but Happ shut the door this time, fanning the pitcher and getting Blackmon on a grounder to first.
The Blue Jays employed some National League small ball to tie it up in the third, but the sense of the fates conspiring against us continued, as Michael Saunders, with the bases loaded, ended the inning by driving the ball deep to centre field where Charlie Blackmon had to make a very good catch on it, so close it was to a bases-clearing double. Pillar had led off with a single to right, bringing Happ, with considerable National League experience, to the plate. Happ calmly and efficiently bunted Pillar to second, and after Butler walked Zeke Carrera Devon Travis delivered Pillar with a clutch single to right. Josh Donaldson then drove the ball deep to Blackmon in centre, letting Carrera advance to third. A walk to Edwin Encarnacion, one of three he would receive tonight, set the table for Saunders to be disappointed by Blackmon. At least we’d tied it up. For the moment.
For the third inning in a row the Rockies’ leadoff hitter reached base. In fact, only in his last inning, the fifth, would Happ retire the leadoff hitter. Not a practice conducive to keeping your pitch count down! This time it was a walk to Adames. For the second time in a row Nolan Arenado hit the ball hard, but for a double, Adames stopping at third. This brought up Carlos Gonzalez, whom Buck and Pat and the other cool guys call “Car-go”. Ugh. What a load. Also ugh that for the second night in a row he pounded a three-run homer to right, and with no one out, and not so much as a howdy-do, Happ and the Jays were down 4-1. With that business off his mind, the suddenly erratic veteran lefty settled down and retired the remaining hitters in order.
Baseball is a pretty strange game, though, and for some reason the baseball gods decided to smile down on the Blue Jays, for almost the first time in a week, and for the first time ever in Denver. Troy Tulowitzki led off, and gave his adoring Denver fans the moment they’d been waiting for, as long as the Rockies held the lead. They were very happy for him as he hit a rope over the left-field fence. No doubt his Toronto teammates were a lot happier, though, at this quick answer to the Gonzalez soul-crusher.
Russell Martin singled to right, which means all’s well with the world, and after Kevin Pillar fanned, we came to one of those National League moments that show how interesting things can happen even if you’re forced to send a weak hitter to the plate. Eager to prove himself useful, Jay Happ laid down a second sacrifice bunt on the day. This one went back to the raw rookie on the mound, and he thought he had a shot at Martin at second, so threw the ball into the outfield, which didn’t work out so well for him. Martin jumped up and scampered to third (I don’t know, what do you think: can I say that Russell Martin scampers?) Meanwhile, Happ was safely ensconced at first, and promptly put in a call to the dugout for his roller blades, which didn’t arrive in time. Ezequiel Carrera delivered Martin with a single to right to cut the lead to one, and it was time for Rockies’ manager Walt Weiss to relieve Mr. Anderson of his burdensome duties.
Unfortunately for him, he called on journeyman lefthander Yohan Flande to take over, but Flande forgot to bring his instruction book on how to get out of trouble. Devon Travis singled to left to load the bases, and Josh Donaldson promptly unloaded them with what should have been a double to right, but comically turned into a triple when it hit something funny in the corner and started rolling quickly down along the wall in foul territory, in the general direction of the infield. Gonzalez chased after the rolling ball, that seemed to be picking up speed. Gonzalez, like an eager retriever playing fetch, kept after it until someone, probably first baseman Mark Reynolds, beat him to the ball and Gonzalez could go back to his post in right, his tail between his legs and his tongue hanging out. Meanwhile, Donaldson fetched up at third.
At this point in a typical Encarnacion surge, no one in the American League, or even the Rockies, is about to pitch to Edwin with one out and a runner on third, so even without his how-to book, Flande knew to give the big guy a free pass. That brought up Michael Saunders, and gave Flande a chance to contribute to a really weird statistic: Saunders bounced one back to the pitcher, who tried for the force at second, and maybe a double play, but threw wildly. Encarnacion was safe, Donaldson scored, and two Rockies’ pitchers had each made throwing errors to second base in the same inning. I told you it was weird. Troy Tulowitzky let Flande off the hook for the extra baserunners by grounding into a double play. All told, this strange sequence of events resulted in six runs for the Jays, which vaulted them into a 7-4 lead that they would never relinquish, though that doesn’t mean that it was a walk in the park for the rest of the night.
In the bottom of the fourth the Rockies cashed a leadoff double by Brandon Barnes to cut the lead to two, and in the top of the fifth the Jays cashed a leadoff walk to Russell Martin with a two-out double to right by Ezequiel Carrera to restore the lead to three, where it remained while Happ stranded a couple of singles in the bottom of the fifth, but also ran his pitch total to 103, so it was his last inning. By the end of the fifth, both starters were out of the game.
Unlike so many of their games this year, the Jays continued to hit and score in the late innings, accumulating a commanding lead over Colorado. In the sixth, Martin, Pillar, and Junior Lake all racked up two-out base hits with runners in scoring position, though Lake’s only produced an outfield assist for the Rockies because Pillar was thrown out at the plate on a strong throw by left fielder Brandon Barnes for the third run. The clutch hitting provided three more add-on runs, and the Jays’ lead was extended to 11-5. Runs in the seventh, on a sacrifice fly by Michael Saunders, the eighth, on an RBI single by Devon Travis, and an unearned run in the ninth combined for 14 runs on 18 hits, the Jays’ highest run and hit outputs of the season.
After Happ’s premature departure, the results from the Toronto relievers were generally good, as they maintained the lead, with Joe Biagini having a good sixth, Jason Grilli coming in to wrap up the eighth, and Roberto Osuna pitching a clean ninth just because he needed the work. What’s that, you say? I left out the Colorado seventh? Well, that was a special case, you see.
With his good sixth inning under his belt, Biagini, working on a fair bit of rest, coughed up four to the Rockies in the seventh, but an unusual catching error by Edwin Encarnation not only kept the inning alive, but rendered three of the four runs off Biagini unearned. Nelson Arenado led off with a double, and his partner in crime Carlos Gonzalez doubled him home for the only legit run off Biagini, to make the score 12-6. Biagini quickly got two ground ball outs, while Gonzalez moved around to third, whence he scored when Nick Hundley reached as a catchable throw from Troy Tulowitzki at short ticked off Encarnacion’s glove at first. Gonzalez scored the second run of the inning, unearned because the play should have ended it. For those of you keeping score at home, as Ernie Harwell used to say, this also made any subsequent runs unearned, such as the two that followed on single-walk-single before Biagini struck out catcher Tony Wolters to end the inning at last.
Regardless of the injustice of it all, the lead was now 12-9, with two innings to go in the Beer Barrell, where the dry air juices the ball and the fences beckon enticingly. It was not for nothing that the hearts of Jays’ fans were set a-fluttering by that star-crossed seventh, but the pickup runs in the eighth and nine quickly restored calm to all our breasts, and our boys escaped Denver with a two-one series win. Hail Columbia.
On a personal note, if you have read the short biography of yer humble scribbler on the site, you will recall that I noted that one of the reasons that 1968 was the best of years was that it was the year the Tigers finally won it all, and another reason was that it was the year that my lovely and talented wife and I were wed. (I love sounding archaic, especially when waxing sentimental.) I have just finished reporting on today’s Blue Jays’ game of June 28, 2016. Well, today is the forty-eighth (!) anniversary of our wedding day, and I thought I’d fill you in briefly on certain circumstances surrounding our wedding concerning which I have frequently found it necessary to defend myself over the years.
Our candlelight wedding was scheduled to begin at 8:00 on Friday evening, the twenty-eighth of June, 1968. It seems that there was a brief delay just before the ceremony was to start because the prospective groom had not yet appeared at his appointed spot. It turned out that I was ensconced in the chaplain’s office with my best man and my one usher (it was a small affair), ears glued to a transistor radio tuned to the Tigers’ broadcast from Tiger Stadium across the river in Detroit. As the clock clicked closer to eight, I now admit that I was repeating to myself that age-old refrain, “just one more pitch, just one more pitch”.
I freely admit that I was (ever so slightly!) late for my own wedding because I couldn’t tear myself away from the ball game. As I was thinking about concluding this piece, the thought occurred: what was going on in that game that night that was so compelling?
It turns out that some of the stats geeks have put together a wonderfully useful site called Baseball-reference.com, on which you can find more details that you would ever need to know about any game in major league history starting from 1910. It turns out that on my wedding night the Tigers defeated the Chicago White Sox five to four, one of their 103 wins that year. And what was going on as the minutes and seconds ticked down toward what was supposed to be the beginning of my wedding? Well, the game had been scoreless for an inning and a half, with relatively quick innings, but in the bottom of the second, the Tigers’ slugging outfielder Willie Horton cadged a walk off the legendary Chisox knuckleballer Wilbur Wood, and then slugging first baseman Norm Cash, the original “Stormin’ Norman” gave the Jays a two-run lead with a big home run. That must have been the moment when I tore myself away from the radio because I can remember being really happy as I hurried toward the chapel. I know that this was because I was racing toward my wedding and the rest of my life, but I also suspect that it was also because the Tiges had just taken the lead. Despite my wife’s enjoyment at regaling all of our friends and acquaintances with this story of her goofy husband on his wedding night, I have never for a moment felt embarrassed about being torn between my baseball team and the woman I love.
Tomorrow Aaron Sanchez starts for us in the series finale. How will the sterling young righty fare in that hitter’s paradise the Rockies call home?
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