After an off day following Toronto’s rather disappointing four-game split in Minnesota, the Jays came home for a frankly meaningless three-game series with the Kansas City Royals, who are equally on the outside looking in at this point.
From the perspective of yer humble scribe, any series that reaches its high point for the good guys in the middle innings of the first game is not only meaningless but largely devoid of interest.
Marcus Stroman pitched seven solid innings on Tuesday night while his mates finally got to Royals’ starter Ian Kennedy in the sixth inning with a single by Ryan Goins followed by a Darwin Barney home run for a 2-0 lead. After the Royals clawed one back in the top of the seventh on a sacrifice fly, the Jays iced the game with three runs in the bottom of the seventh on an RBI double by Russ Martin and an RBI single by Barney, giving him three for the night. Ryan Tepera gave up a homer to Alex Gordon in the eighth, then retired the side, and Roberto Osuna ran the table in the ninth for his thirty-seventh save.
Of note was the fact that Gordon’s homer in the eighth was later identified as the record-breaking dinger in making 2017 the season with the most home runs hit in major league history—with ten days left in the season.
The next night the Royals picked up a run with a first-out sacrifice fly before Brett Anderson settled down to retire the side. He didn’t remain settled for long, though, because after the Jays went down one, two, three in the bottom of the first, Anderson and Luis Santos gave up nine runs in the top of the second inning.
After the Blue Jays stranded a walk to Kendrys Morales in the bottom of the second, I happily turned the TV over to PBS to watch the third episode of Ken Burns’ monumental documentary on the war in Vietnam. You have to know the baseball’s bad if yer humble scribe would rather watch the scab of Vietnam being pulled off more excruciatingly than ever before. I lived that war, lived it in uniform, but not in country, as they said, and even I never knew how awful it was.
Oh, the final score of Wednesday’s game was 15-5. Teoscar Hernandez doubled home a couple in the bottom of the seventh, Raffie Lopez and Ryan Goins plated two more with sacrifice flies, and Lopez, a muscular little guy, drilled one out to centre with nobody on in the ninth.
On Thursday the Royals scored a run in the third inning on a single by former Blue Jay Melky Cabrera that stood up for a 1-0 Kansas City win in a pitcher’s duel between Jay Happ and Jason Vargas. Toronto only got two hits off Vargas and a selection of Kansas City relievers, and were utterly unable to provide any support behind Happ’s fine six and two thirds.
So the Royals left town with a series win that left them neither here nor there in terms of the wild card “race” that is gradually turning into a walkover for the Minnesota Twins under our old friend Paul Molitor.
Now, the Yankees coming to town: that was a different story, as it always is with the Yankees. But this time was special. It was the Jays’ last home series of the year, and so also, presumably, the last Toronto home series of Level of Excellence candidate Jose Bautista. And the Jays were well positioned to poke a stick in the wheels of the Yankees’ bike as they tried to run down the Red Sox for the American League East championship.
FRIDAY: MARCO AND GO-GO ON SHOW
First up for Toronto on Friday night was Marco Estrada, newly-signed to a healthy one-year contract by . . . you guessed it, the Toronto Blue Jays. And why not? From Estrada’s viewpoint, he’s had two outstanding years here, and a 2017 that ran into a low streak after a good start, before progressing to a great run of starts in the latter half of the year, and most remarkably he’s about to log the most innings he’s pitched as a Blue Jay.
The rotation should return to being a strong point next year; it’s obvious that Toronto’s management has committed to one more year of chasing the magic ring with this particular crowd, and most of all Estrada himself had indicated clearly that he would be very happy to remain in Toronto.
As for the team, all you have to do is look at the string of starts Estrada has put together since July thirty-first, marked by only two substandard outings, to know that from management’s perspective it was a no-brainer. And if they do get close to the crown, who pitched better for them in the post-season in 2015 and 2016 than Marco Estrada?
Estrada’s counterpart on the mound would be the annoying, poky, picky, Masahiro Tanaka, who seems to generate most of his outs by frustrating his opponents to the point where they’ll swing at anything. I’ve spent the last several years dismissing Tanaka’s ability, but most of the time, I’ve noticed, that by the time I’ve finished grousing about what a crappy, over-rated pitcher he is, he’s turned the ball over to the bullpen in the sixth or seventh inning with his team in the lead.
You can’t really talk about Ryan Goins as some kind of hidden treasure any more, now that everyone has noted his amazing penchant for driving in runs, the deeper the hole the better, two outs, two strikes, who cares? His relatively low batting average takes on a whole new light when you realize that his base hits, while few, have been so mighty especially with the sacks loaded.
And of course now that he’s started more games at shortstop this year than any other Blue Jay, it’s no longer possible to forget what a fine defender he is.
Still and all, no one could have predicted what a singular impact Ryan Goins would have on this easy, breezy 8-1 Toronto victory over Masahiro Tanaka and the New York Yankees.
Estrada started the game with one of those innings for which he’s noted: four fly balls, three that went for easy outs, and Aaron Judge’s forty-sixth home run of the year, a ball that he hit awfully hard and that didn’t stop until it hit the facing of the third deck in left field. Since he was only the second batter of the game, you couldn’t help worrying a bit about whether this was going to be one of those nights for Estrada. ‘Course, we didn’t know that the Yanks would never score another run, and they’d only get two more hits.
The Yankees handed Toronto a gift in the bottom of the first, in the form of a botched fielder’s choice that resulted in an error for Starling Castro. Teoscar Hernandez, who’d never faced Tanaka before, lined a 1-2 pitch into left field for a single. Josh Donaldson followed by hitting an easy bouncer to Todd Frazier at third, who went to second for the force on Hernandez. But Castro muffed the catch, the ball bounced away, and Hernandez advanced to third. After Tanaka fanned Justin Smoak, Jose Bautista, receiving the first of an unending string of thunderous ovations that would rain down on him on this special weekend, grounded out to third, scoring Hernandez, and the game was tied on the unearned run.
Both pitchers asserted their mastery in the second inning, Estrada taking eleven pitches to retire the Yankees on three ground balls, strangely enough, and Tanaka back in the dugout before he even got warmed up, needing only eight pitches to set the Jays down.
The Yankees’ third inning deserves a special place in the chronicles of the 2017 Blue Jays. Perhaps never before, and likely never again, had the Toronto fans been treated to the perfect execution of a trick play that should never happen, even to a T-Ball player. The victim was Todd Frazier, the perpetrator Ryan Goins, the benefactor Marco Estrada. The play? The hidden-ball trick.
It started with Frazier, the New York third baseman, rattling Estrada with a leadoff double to right on a 2-2 pitch. The rookie left-fielder Clint Frazier popped up to Goins at short, bringing Jacoby Ellsbury, who came into town on a tear, to the plate. Ellsbury put a jolt in the first pitch he saw from Estrada and hit it deep to right, looking good for a double over Bautista’s head. But Bautista, tracking back and to his right, raced back and reached up while leaping and made a fine running catch. Todd Frazier, who’d correctly played it half-way, waiting to see if the ball would be caught, hustled back into second in time to beat Bautista’s strong throw to Goins.
So there was Frazier, standing on the bag at second, looking off, apparently, toward the left-field corner. He certainly could not have been looking at his third-base coach. Goins, with Frazier’s back to him, made a lame and silly-looking—there’s no other way to describe it—fake throw back to the pitcher, and gloved the ball. Frazier didn’t have a clue that the ball hadn’t gone back to Estrada. Goins stood there, glove at his side, inches from Frazier’s leg, and waited. Then, Frazier decided to change feet on the bag. He lifted a foot off the bag, set it down on the infield dirt, and lifted his other foot to put it on the bag.
Echoing the climactic moment of “Peter and the Wolf”: “Bang! He got him!” Goins slapped the tag on Frazier, looked at the ump, the ump called Frazier out, and Goins scooted exultantly off the field before anyone changed his mind. Frazier stood out there stilled into disbelief, but it was true: he’d been doubled off second by the oldest and lamest trick in the world, the good old hidden ball trick.
In yet another emendation of the “make a great play, lead off the inning” phenomenon, Goins led off against Tanaka in the bottom of the third. Unfortunately, it was not yet time for the fairy tale to come full circle. He hit a come-backer to the mound for the first out.
But following Goins to the plate came Teoscar Hernandez, who is starting to write his very own fairy tale for the Blue Jays. With the two-homer night against Detroit already in the books, he was facing Tanaka for the second time in his life, having singled in the first and come around to score Toronto’s first run.
This time up, on the fifth pitch of the at-bat, a splitter that hung up there like a ripe grapefruit, Hernandez smacked it, and smacked it hard. So hard, in fact, that it was a near carbon-copy of Judge’s first-inning blast, banging off the facade of the third deck right near the name of Tom Cheek on the Level of Excellence—wherever he is now, there’s no doubt that the beloved Cheek was looking down with approval on the exciting rookie. In fact, if Hernandez is the real deal, maybe we can coin a term for when he hits a rocket to the banners: how about “he really Cheeked that one”?
Hernandez’ homer was the go-ahead run, and the Jays were never headed. Estrada wisely walked Judge to open the fourth and then retired the side in order.
In the bottom of the inning, Tanaka likewise walked the leadoff batter, Bautista, but he didn’t get off so easily as Estrada. With one out, Russell Martin lined a rocket into the Jays’ bullpen, putting the lead to 4-1 for Toronto. It was only Martin’s second home run since returning to the lineup at the beginning of August, but it was tattooed, to be sure.
Both pitchers stranded baserunners in the fifth, Estrada giving up two walks after striking out the first two batters before getting Ellsbury to fly out to left. Tanaka gave up a two-out single to Donaldson, but left him there.
In the top of the sixth, Estrada unwisely did not walk Aaron Judge, and the latter smacked one off the left-field wall for a double, the third hit off Estrada, and the third extra-base hit for the Yankees. It just goes that way sometimes.
If the Yankees had any hopes of mounting a charge in this game they peaked with Gary Sanchez following Judge to the plate. He hit an absolute rope over Darwin Barney at second that was destined for the wall in right centre. Except that Barney leapt for it, and came down with a sno-kone in the tip of his glove. Judge retreated safely to second, but Estrada retired Didi Gregorius and Starlin Castro to leave him there.
This brought us to the bottom of the sixth, when Tanaka Ryan Goins re-entered to steal the scene for the second time in the game, and knocked the battered Masahiro Tanaka to the sidelines for good.
It was his own fault, for sure, Tanaka’s demise, but he could have gotten out of with luck. But it ran out when the clutch-hitting, bases-loaded-loving Goins strode to the plate with two outs and the bases crammed.
Tanaka had walked Bautista and given up a single to Kevin Pillar. But then he fanned a brace of catchers, a sight you’d only see with the expanded rosters of September. First Russell Martin went down, and then Miguel Montero, serving as the DH. Manager John Gibbons went to his bench for Kendrys Morales, whose night off was interrupted by having to hit for Barney. Tanaka walked him on four pitches—the semi-intentional walk—to load the bases for Goins.
He then quickly jumped ahead of Goins with a called strike and a foul ball. Poor guy, Tanaka; he must not have read in the Japanese version of Baseball Reference that if anybody is more dangerous in the American League with the bases loaded this year than Ryan Goins, it’s Ryan Goins with the bases loaded, two outs, and two strikes on him.
Tanaka threw Goins a slider on the inner half that diidn’t slide, and there it went: Goins electrified the crowd for the second time that night on a deep drive to right that cleared the Yankee bullpen and disappeared into the first row of ecstatic fans for Goins’ second grand slam of the year, and an 8-1 Toronto lead.
That was all for Tanaka at five and two thirds innings, having given up eight runs and three homers in his most ineffective performance of the season. Tommy Kahnle came in and struck out Hernandez on a foul tip third strike, but it was kind of too late.
So 8-1 it was and 8-1 it stayed. The Jays had one base runner the rest of the way. Jonathan Holder struck out two in the bottom of the seventh while retiring the side in order, and Giovanny Gallegos gave up a two-out single to Montero in the bottom of the eighth before retiring Richard Ureňa on a foul popup to first for the third out.
Like the steady veteran he is, Estrada came back with the big lead and shut the Yankees down on eleven pitches in the top of the seventh to finish off a fine start.
Matt Dermody started the eighth to face the two left-handers, Clint Frazier and Ellsbury, and retired them both. Bautista once again electrified the crowd with a fine sliding catch in the heel of his glove of a ball by Frazier that was slicing away from him. Tom Koehler, who is certainly inserting himself into the equation for next year, came in and induced Sanchez to ground out to third for the third out.
Carlos Ramirez, also auditioning well for a 2018 role, retired the side in order in the ninth, to finish an eight and two-thirds innings total shutdown of the frightening Yankee bats, a result that kept the New Yorkers from gaining any ground on the Red Sox.
A GRAY SATURDAY IN THE SUN FOR THE JAYS
I can only offer a few comments on the Saturday game in the series, thanks to MLB’s annoying propensity for changing game times late in the season to accomodate the U.S. television networks. Originally the game was scheduled for the usual Toronto 1:08 p.m. Saturday start, but it was precipitously changed to 4:00, presumably because Fox or TBS or whoever wanted to broadcast the Yankees’ playoff-spot-clinching celebration.
Saturday is my grand-daughter’s day for her dance class and weekly visit to her grand-parents, and on this particular Saturday we were asked to do double driving, both picking her up and taking her home, a two-hour round-trip in the morning and the afternoon. We were to deliver her around 5:00, thus had to leave at game-time, and didn’t get back until after six.
So I followed as best I could on the radio, though it being the last homestand of the season Jerry and Joe were waxing a bit nostalgiac, and the thread of the play-by-play kind of got lost in the process.
What were the takeaways from the game? (Please pretend I didn’t write that last sentence. I hate asking what were the takeaways, almost as much as I hate asking what was the ask. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, the language is going to hell in a handbasket.)
The astonishingly mediocre and totally unimpressive Sonny Gray kept Toronto off the board for six innings, save for a third-inning dinger by exciting rookie Teoscar Hernandez, the fourth round-tripper of his September audition for Jose Bautista’s job. No doubt by now he’s earned at least a call-back from casting director Ross Atkins.
Joe Biagini turned in another in and out performance, going five innings, giving up only three hits but walking four and seeing the last hit he gave up, by Greg Bird, sail out of the park to right centre after issuing the second and third of his four walks, turning a 1-0 Toronto lead into a 3-1 Yankee lead which stood up for the win. So, a little more support would have been nice, and he could have gone farther, at only 74 pitches, but obviously Manager John Gibbons thought there would be diminishing returns by leaving him in.
Embarrassingly for him, Todd Frazier, the last batter Biagini walked, and the victim of Ryan Goins’ hidden-ball trick Friday night, got himself doubled off first when Brett Gardner lined out to Goins at short and he wandered too far off the bag. TOOBLANed twice in two days!
Chad Green, David Robertson, and Aroldis Chapman didn’t yield a hit to the Jays over the last three, Frazier got a measure of revenge with a home run in the eighth, and the Yanks added another insurance run in the ninth when Gary Sanchez’ leadoff double off Luis Santos came around to score on a Starlin Castro infield hit, making the final tally 5-1 for New York. And, yes, the 46,000-plus Toronto fans who had sold this game out months ago when Toronto was actually a possible contender, got to watch the Yankees celebrate their wild-card berth-clinching.
ROCKIN’ AND ROMPIN’ ON SUNDAY AT THE DOME
With New York still holding a slim but real hope of catching the Red Sox for the division title, the throngs who turned out on another gorgeous late-September Toronto day for the last home game of Jose Bautista and his mates were treated to a matchup of A-list lineups, the Jays being obligated to play their regulars out of respect for the race between New York and Boston that still existed.
For the Yankees, the only regular missing from the lineup was Gary Sanchez behind the plate, and of course he’s only a regular when the Yankees don’t care how many extra bases they give up as balls bounce off, and away from, the hapless rookie, who clearly has a good long career ahead of him, but as a designated hitter, not a catcher. As for Toronto, it was business as usual, with the strongest lineup they could field in the long-term absence of their injured keystone combo of Tulowitzki and Travis.
(And of course I continue to contend that, all things being taken into account, Goins and Barney concede nothing to the injured duo in their value to the team, Goins being arguably a significant upgrade on Tulo’s defence and obviously a more effective run-producer compared to Tulo at this stage of his career, and Barney providing lineup stability that Travis has never been able to muster, not to mention being a more reliable fielder.)
The game, of course, was focussed in every way on the presumed last appearance of Bautista, and every move he made on the field, regardless of its import to the game, was greeted with rapturous applause. Oh, look, Jose’s doing his wierd neck stretch! Yay!
His team-mates devised their own unique way of ceding the stage to him at the very start of the game. At the moment when the players normally emerge from the dugout all together to run and take their places in the field, Bautista, as the right fielder and farthest from the dugout, naturally appeared first and headed out to his position. But the rest of the starters held back and allowed him to trot all the way out to right, the sole focus of all eyes in the stadium, the recipient of a tremendous roar of recognition and tribute. It was clear from Bautista’s reaction that he had no idea this had been planned, and it took him a while to realize that he was not being followed by the rest of the team. It was a lovely, fitting tribute.
Appropriately, the pitching matchup favoured the Jays in Bautista’s last start, the reliable Marcus Stroman going up against lefty Jaime Garcia, yet another of New York’s quixotic acquisitions in the seemingly futile quest to strengthen their rotation for the post-season.
It was all Stroman in the early going, while the Jays chased Garcia in the third, notching five runs on four hits before Joe Girardi pulled the plug; this one was over by the middle innings, especially after Toronto piled on reliever Bryan Mitchell for an additional four runs in the fourth (three in the third and four in the fourth; there’s a nice symmetry for you) to push the lead to 9-1 for Stroman as he returned to the mound for a shutdown fifth inning.
Despite two runs in the sixth and two in the seventh, New York’s hopes for cutting the gap on Boston pretty well ran out of gas; their rally fell far short and the Bosox won to push their lead to five with seven games left on the Yanks’ schedule.
Offfensively, this was the kind of game that Toronto fans had been waiting for all year; pity that it was game 156 of the season, and game 82 of the home schedule. To the delight of the crowd, after Stroman had started smartly with three ground-ball outs on ten pitches in the top of the first, Teoscar Hernandez led off the game for the home team with another booming home run to the 200 level in left centre on a 1-0 pitch from Garcia. Even more delightful to the crowd was Bautista’s two-out line single to right on the first pitch he saw. It mattered little that, though he advanced to second on a wild pitch, he died there when Kendrys Morales, who also hit the ball sharply, lined out to right. Still, three hard-hit balls off Garcia augured well for the Jays.
Bautista brought the crowd to its feet again in the top of the second. With two outs and Jacoby Ellsbury on first after he had forced Starlin Castro who’d notched the Yankees’ first hit, Todd Frazier looped one into short right that bid fare to fall in cleanly, were it not for Bautista racing in like a colt to pick it off after a long run.
In the bottom of the second came that rarest of feats in this year of disappointing moments: the Jays cashed a leadoff double. Kevin Pillar hit one down the line and off the wall in left, and then stole third base, just like he was on some other team, like one that creates chances. After Russell Martin fanned, probably in shock at seeing a runner on third with nobody out, Darwin Barney came through with a solid poke to centre-fielder Ellsbury that was sufficient to bring Pillar home after the catch.
An extra frisson of excitement ran through the crowd when Ryan Goins worked Garcia for a walk, bringing young Hernandez back to the plate, but this time the throngs were disappointed as he tipped a third strike into the big mitt of Austin Romine.
Stroman issued his first walk to Greg Bird in the top of the third, but then threw some more ground-ball magic, getting Romine to ground into a Darwin-Barney-initiated double play, and retiring Brett Gardner on a grounder to Justin Smoak unassisted.
In the bottom of the third, the Jays once again pulled off a rara avis of their 2017 season, the big swing with two outs, to boost the lead to 5-zip for Stroman, which allowed the crowd to sit back and relax for the rest of the way.
With one out Justin Smoak doubled to left-centre, and Garcia completely lost it, issuing walks to Morales and Bautista to load the bases, without ever throwing another strike. That was enough for Joe Girardi, who came out with the big hook and yanked Garcia for Jonathan Holder to pitch to Kevin Pillar, who predictably, if you’ve been watching closely this year, popped out to Frazier in foul ground off third for the second out. But then, unpredictably, Russell Martin hammered one to the gap in right centre that cleared the bases, with Bautista scampering in to score close on the heels of the labouring Morales. Holder fanned Barney to strand Martin, but hardly anyone cared.
Stroman got himself into some trouble in the top of the fourth and gave up a run on a single by Didi Gregorius, after he had walked Chase Headley and Aaron Judge to lead off the inning. However, Starlin Castro forced Gregorius at second for the first out, with a video review overturning the initial call of a double-play out at first, and then the diminutive but combative right-hander settled things himself by freezing Ellsbury on a 3-2 pitch and then fanning Frazier to strand Castro at first.
In the bottom of the fourth another outburst by Toronto yielded four more runs, which made the issue academic, and gave signal to the gathered multitude that the good-bye party, for Bautista, for his team-mates, and for the failed hopes and bitter frustrations of an utterly unsatisfying season, might begin.
If you check back over the record, you might find, I suspect, that the next best thing Ryan Goins does at the plate after shining with the bases loaded is starting rallies when leading off. First-pitch hitting, he stroked a ground ball single to left. Hernandez walked on a 3-2 pitch. Josh Donaldson knocked in Goins with a line single to centre, with Hernandez moving up to second.
Bryan Mitchell, in for Holder who had failed to clean up for Garcia in the third, wild-pitched the runners to second and third. He wisely chose not to give Smoaky anything to hammer on 3-2 to load the bases for the man of the day, Bautista. Once again the crowd was sent into ecstasy as its hero slashed another one to right to score Hernandez and move the others up, the sacks still full for Morales.
Taking his cue from Bautista, Morales hit a drive the other way to left that scored Donaldson and Smoak. Bautista, perhaps overplaying his hand on a ball that ended up being just a single for Morales, tried to score from first on the play. He was called out by plate umpire Mark Carlson, no fan he of sentimental farewells. The Jays challenged the play but the call was upheld, and Bautista, called out, remained out.
Not done messing up yet, Mitchell hit Kevin Pillar with a pitch before taking his leave; Ben Helder came in and threw one pitch to get Russ Martin to ground into a double play.
Back in our salad days, when my wife was regularly protesting my interest in baseball, she used to say, “Balls and strikes and ins and outs and who cares?” I thought this charming enough, but completely disregarded, of course, its characterization of my obsession. Nevertheless (another word she was fond of; she always used it to preface telling me that I was full of . . . stuff), it’s an apt characterization of the rest of this game.
Notable among the various events that took place were the removal of Stroman after five and two-thirds, having given up the early run and two more in the sixth, the first on an Aaron Judge home run, the second when reliever Matt Dermody gave up a two-out double to Greg Bird that scored Ellsbury, a runner Dermody had inherited from Stroman.
Then the Yankees ended the scoring when Ryan Tepera gave up a one-out base hit to Chase Headley, and then Judge’s second homer of the game, his forty-eighth of the season to set some record or other, blah blah and all that. Actually, it brought him within one of Mark McGwire’s 1987 American League rookie home run record, which actually gave Judge the American League rookie home run record for players who did not imbibe PEDs with their baby formula.
Though Toronto threatened from time to time, they never scored again, and after Judge touched up Tepera, Aaron Loup, Tom Koehler, and Roberto Osuna ensured that the Jays’ lead, reduced to four, never got any slimmer.
Which brought us to the top of the ninth, when the Toronto crowd got to cut loose one last time for the much-beloved, often-misunderstood, flawed hero that is Jose Bautista. After Osuna fanned Chase Headley leading off, Zeke Carrera popped out of the dugout and jogged out toward right, manager John Gibbons classily bringing Bautista off in the middle of the inning so that he could leave to the cheers of those who would miss him, for good or for ill, for all the drama that he had brought to the franchise in his ten years of service.
Jose Bautista’s exit was a triumphal show of fraternity among the ball-playing set. First Carrera enveloped him in a hug. Then Pillar, and Hernandez after him, as they converged in short centre field. Then near second it was first Goins, then Barney, folllowed by a brief, manly mutual back-thump with Smoak, the country boy. Finally, a hug from Donaldson, and a wave to Osuna and Martin at the mound, and he was down into the dugout, and a gauntlet of hugs from the rest of the team.
Finishing the game was an after-thought for both sides, as both Headley and Judge looked at called third strikes from Osuna, who thus struck out the side.
So the Yankees left town no closer to, in fact farther behind, the Red Sox, their fate to be determined by hosting a single wild-card game, evidently with the Twins, though nothing as yet was carved in stone.
As for the Toronto Blue Jays, having completed their home schedule, reconciled to their fate, they had to pack up for three in Boston, three in New York, and a long winter of discontent.
Meanwhile, on the fake green grass of the TV Dome, players gone, grounds crew buzzing around, impersonally carrying out their duties, there was no palpable hint left of the immense presence of Jose Bautista, though the memories of his exploits will echo whenever the roar of the crowd again fills the building that he ruled. Just as Tom Cheek’s “touch ’em all, Joe!” will forever warm our hearts, that bat will ever remain suspended in the air for all to see and savour.
Exit rex.
Exeunt omnes.
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