SEPTEMBER FIFTEENTH, JAYS 7, ANGELS 2:
GOOD VIBRATIONS IN LA-LA LAND
One of the odder things about being a baseball writer “of a certain age”, to use the elegant French phrase, is that sometimes I am brought up short by the realization of exactly how much water has passed under the bridge. My perception of the Los Angeles Angels, the California Angels, or the Los Angeles…
SEPTEMBER 13/14,
RAYS 6,8, JAYS 2,1:
BIG PRE-THANKSGIVING SALE!
TWO TURKEYS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE!
They have to do something! Incantations? Ritual sacrifice? Voodoo? Sprinkle pixie dust on the bat rack? Have the pitching coaches and the batting coaches swap jobs? Lock the manager in the john before the game? Who cares? Just do something, anything to rid this team of its accursed batting slump and get it back on…
SEPTEMBER TWELFTH, JAYS 3, RAYS 2:
E-ZEKE-IFYING WIN!
It's the bottom of the eighth, tied 2-2, your team's still in an incredible hitting slump, you've got your super-utility infielder, right-handed hitting Darwin Barney leading off against righty reliever Brad Boxberger for the Tampa Bay Rays, and you want a left-handed batter off the bench to try to inject a little life in the…
SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH, BOSOX 11, JAYS 8:
SO LONG BIG PAPI!
WE W0N’T MISS YOU AT ALL!
In my report on Friday night's game, I mentioned that early on, before the Red Sox lineup hit the jet stream, it felt like it was going to be another one of those 10-8 Toronto-Boston games. Well, this afternoon's Boston win over the Blue Jays to take the series was “another of those 10-8 Toronto-Boston…
SEPTEMBER TENTH, JAYS 3, RED SOX 2:
HERE COMES THE SUN!
Weather recording stations across Canada recorded a wind surge at about 1:10 p.m. today. Veteran meteorologists were unable to come up with a scientific explanation for the huge gust of wind that swept across the entire country at that moment. Obviously, the meteorologists aren't baseball fans, because the explanation is readily at hand. At approximately…
SEPTEMBER NINTH, RED SOX 13, JAYS 3:
TOTAL TEAM EFFORT:
NOBODY CAME TO PLAY
At the end of my last post, after the Blue Jays were swept in the Big Apple, I posed the question, “Can they regroup?” After tonight's shambolic and embarrassing loss to the surging Boston Red Sox in the TV Dome, the answer is “not any time soon”. All we can hope for after tonight is…
SEPTEMBER SEVENTH, YANKEES 2, JAYS 0:
BUMMED AND BROOMED IN THE BRONX
There are lots of things worse in baseball than losing a thriller like last night's Jays' 7-6 loss to the Yankees, that went down to the very end, and depended on no more than the circumference of the baseball, before the win was recorded for the Yankees. For example, coming out flat as a pancake…
SEPTEMBER SIXTH, YANKEES 7, JAYS 6:
FOR TORONTO FANS
WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE
WHEN THE BALL GAME IS ENUF
(With apologies to Ntozake Shange)
I was going to moan and groan over the crushing loss suffered by the Blue Jays tonight at the hands of the New York Yankees in the second game of the current series in the Bronx: Oh, what a disaster. It's all gone to rat-shit. If we didn't have bad luck we'd have no luck…
LABOUR DAY, YANKEES 5, JAYS 3:
NO LABOUR DAY PARADE TODAY!
For any sensible person, that is to say, someone who does not think that the New Year should be ushered in with a splitting headache while frantically deleting photos that shouldn't have been posted and watching faux-students playing faux-amateur football representing big faux-academic institutions, Labour Day is the true beginning of the new year. On…
SEPTEMBER FOURTH, JAYS 5, RAYS 3:
RUSSELL’S MUSCLE REWARDS
BULLPEN HEROES
You could have viewed today's pitching matchup between Tampa's Chris Archer and Toronto's Jay Happ in two different ways. Taking the long view, as in season-long, things looked pretty good for the Jays. Happ has had a surprisingly good, make that surprisingly superb, season for Toronto, while Chris Archer, already established as one of the…