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 at all. I played around with variations on the idea of Game Five Redux: But Not in a Good Way as the theme. I pondered over all of the sins of commission and omission that brought us to the point that it mattered so much that Brett Gardner held on to his ice cream cone at the wall to end the game.
I was also thinking about Kevin Pillar, who in many ways is the heart and soul of this team, and how his legions of devoted fans so frequently resort to Superman references when they make up their signs and banners. It was, from that perspective, a game that was lost even with the intervention of Superman. It was a game in which Superman wasn’t enough.
The idea that Superman wasn’t enough summoned to my mind from I don’t know where the quirky phrasing of the title of a book of 1970s poems written by a proud young African-American woman, Ntozake Shange, a collection that was turned successively into a Broadway play and then a movie. The full title of all three versions of this work is For Colored Girls who Have Considered Suicide, when the Rainbow is Enuf. (Note: anyone reading this who is hypersensitive to covert manifestations of racism is asked to please google Ntozake Shange and verify that this title, with this wording, actually exists. Thank you.)
In thinking about Shange’s title I realized how appropriate its idea was for considering tonight’s game, but how it leads me in a completely different direction. No, I shall not mourn the what-might-have-beens of this wild night. Rather, I shall celebrate the crazy, awful beauty of baseball at its finest, at its ugliest, and in all of its manifest beauty. Why would I consider ending it all when there is always the prospect of another game as wondrous as this?
Mind you, it is not easy to take this approach. It means setting aside all considerations of trends and slumps and hot streaks, all concern over how the other teams did (they won, and so did they), all quibbles and criticisms (well, maybe not all. That is a bit much to ask.) It means setting aside fandom, or at least partisan fandom, and looking through the lens of “what is this thing of beauty”, rather than the lens of “what does it mean to our chances”. For those of you who think that there is no other way of looking at it except in terms of its consequences for the pennant race, well, you just don’t understand existentialism.
The other problem I face in writing about tonight’s game is that if I do my usual close narration of the course of a game that was so unlikely as to border on the fantastical, I would be here all night writing, and you would be all day reading, and we still wouldn’t do it justice. So I’m going to depart from the script tonight. In staying with the mood that a game like this needs to be celebrated, I can think of no better way for it to be celebrated than by singling out the notable characters, regardless of team, who contributed to the sum total of the night’s events. Since baseball is the most individual of team sports, this approach seems eminently suitable.
However, before I do, I should briefly outline the course of the game, in case you don’t know how it turned out, and also to make it clear why I’m not doing a play-by-play narrative.
Despite lacking command and allowing a number of base-runners, both starters, Aaron Sanchez and Luis Cessa, kept this a low-scoring affair into the seventh inning, Cessa with help from reliever Adam Warren in the sixth. An Edwin Encarnacion solo shot in the first was answered by a Brian McCann solo shot in the fourth, and the Jays had taken a 2-1 lead in the fifth on three straight singles, the RBI going to Jose Bautista. Sanchez ran into trouble with two out in the bottom of the seventh, as he gave up a single to rookie Aaron Judge and a two-run homer to the opposite field to rookie Tyler Austin to surrender the lead.
In the top of the eighth Troy Tulowitzki hit a two-out single to centre, and was replaced on the bases by Dalton Pompey. Melvin Upton followed with a tough base on balls while Pompey moved up to second on a passed ball. Kevin Pillar drilled a pitch from reliever Ben Heller into the gale in left that went right over Gardner’s head and hit off the wall. It took some funny caroms off the fencing, but with Pompey and Upton running it hardly mattered. Both scored, but Pillar was stranded at second, and with a 4-3 lead Manager John Gibbons turned to Jason Grilli to pave the way for Roberto Osuna in the ninth, but Grilli didn’t do much paving. He walked Ellsbury leading off, struck out Gary Sanchez, but gave up a triple to Didi Gregorius scoring Ellsbury. Gregorius scored on a sacrifice fly by Starlin Castro for the lead, Grilli walked McCann, and grooved one to Chase Headley who gave the Yankees a 7-4 lead.
It looked bad for the good guys as Dellin Betances came in to put them away. But a funny thing happened on the way to a save. Betances had finished the two previous games, and there’s no longer a Miller or Chapman to help out. He was wild as a March hare. He walked two, wild-pitched them up, let one score on an infield hit, walked another, let another score on an infield hit, and it was 7-6, bases loaded, one out. Betances had thrown 40 pitches and made his exit. The Yankees had to resort to call-up Blake Parker, who froze Kevin Pillar with a curve ball for the second out, much to Pillar’s fury with himself, and then gave up a deep, opposite-field, that is, into that wind, drive by Justin Smoak that took Brett Gardner back to the wall, up in the air, to make the catch and secure the most precarious snow cone you’ve ever seen, to end the game.
So, let’s look at the players that made this game one for the ages.
If in his first start after the Class A rehab stint, Aaron Sanchez showed that he hadn’t lost anything off his pitches, tonight he showed that he could persevere through whatever adversity he faced, even though his command was less than his best. He gave up a solo home run to veteran Brian McCann in the fourth, and then a two-run shot to rookie Tyler Austin in the seventh. He was in and out of trouble all night, with only one three up, three down inning, the sixth. He did only face three batters in the second but that’s because Starlin Castro, who runs like he swings the bat, i.e., wherever, whenever, decided that the rumours about Jose Bautista’s diminished throwing ability were true, and got himself gunned down at second by about four feet or so when Bautista played the carom of his line shot perfectly off the wall. Tonight Sanchez fell behind hitters, he got in trouble with two outs, but still persevered, and even despite all kept his pitch count down, throwing only 87 in seven full innings. It’s the mark of a pro to throw a quality start when you’re not throwing your best, and Aaron Sanchez is rapidly becoming a pro.
Brian McCann, who counted the first run against Sanchez in the fourth, is a guy who deserves the chance to do something once in a while, despite the changed circumstances in the Bronx. Unlike Alex Rodriguez, who had the good grace to accept his dismissal, and Carlos Beltran, who quietly rode out of town to the Rangers, McCann, a free agent at the end of the year, and his contemporary Mark Texeira, who has already announced his retirement, have had to hang around in significantly diminished roles while the new kids on the block get all, or most, of the playing time. So it was bittersweet to see McCann, relegated from catcher to DH, go deep on Sanchez. He erased the lead Sanchez had been guarding since the first inning, which hurt, but if somebody had to do it, why not him?
Not every individual who contributed to tonight’s proceedings did it in a positive way, and yes, we’ll eventually get to Dellin Betances, but right now I’m referring to Toronto’s dirty little secret, the evident defensive shortcomings of Devon Travis, a subject that no one seems to want to address. Twice tonight, in my opinion, Travis contributed to the accumulation of base-runners Aaron Sanchez faced. In the first inning he ranged quickly behind second to scoop a ground ball up the middle by Yankee rookie catcher Gary Sanchez, and given that it was Sanchez running, he had the time to plant and throw, or do a Troy Tulowitzki ballet move and throw across his body. Instead, he fumbled the ball away from himself toward second. Sanchez was given an infield hit, but dollars to donuts Ryan Goins makes that play. Every time. It’s no knock against Travis that he doesn’t field like Goins, but he’s deteriorated so far from the level of not-quite-Goins that sooner or later somebody should notice.
Then, in the fifth, perfectly positioned in the shift in short right field for Brett Gardner, he had to move just a little to his right, towards second, to pick up a sharply hit ground ball by Gardner. Gardner’s fast, sure, but Travis still had plenty of time to make a good throw for the out. This time he got an error for a throw that was so far toward the pitcher’s mound that Edwin Encarnacion had to come nearly two steps off the bag to flag it down.
With the Jays’ hitters struggling so these days, their pitchers have to play a tight sort of game, and they can hardly afford to have to deal with extra base-runners. I’m getting more than a little frustrated by the fact that no one is talking plainly about this problem of Travis’ defence that is going on right in front of our eyes.
Speaking of Encarnacion, coming to bat against hard-throwing young Luis Cessa, yet another rookie pressed into service by Yankees’ manager Joe Girardi, in the first inning, he might have been intimidated a little by the fact that Cessa had caught Jose Bautista looking, and fanned Josh Donaldson already. Or, maybe not. On a night with gale-force winds blowing in from left field, Edwin got hold of a 2-1 pitch that Cessa I’m sure wishes he had never thrown, and pounded it, “high and deep”, into the second deck in left. It was Edwin’s 37th home run, but more importantly his 112th RBI of the season, a new career high for Edwin.
Luis Cessa started for the Yankees and turned in a performance remarkably similar to that of Sanchez. Both starters tonight were exemplars of the old “bend, but don’t break” adage. It’s to Cessa’s credit that he managed to get the big outs when he needed them.
Kevin Pillar has been the anchor of whatever little offensive success Toronto has had in the midst of this bleak period of overlapping battings slumps. Despite the fact that he took minimal time to return from his thumb injury, and is clearly subpar physically as a result, he has had a number of key base hits since his return from the DL. In fact, despite their mutual tendency to strike out more often than you’d like, Pillar, Melvin Upton, and Devon Travis, to give him his offensive due, have at times put together exciting offensive sequences featuring tough at bats, good situational hitting, speed put to good advantage, and so on. They have been, at these times, a sub-set of small-ball players on a team of big-ball bashers. Whether they are hitting seven-eight-nine or eight-nine-one, they have shown the ability to shake things up when needed.
Tonight Kevin Pillar had a great game and contributed monumentally to his team’s efforts. Even when he failed, his failure was central to the drama of the game. When he came to the plate in the top of the eighth with Pompey and Upton at second and first and two outs, he’d already had two singles and a walk in three plate appearances, and his leadoff single in the fifth inning had started the mini-rally that gave the Jays their 2-1 lead. His shot over Gardner’s head in left and off the wall seemed at the time to be the clutch bomb the Jays had been looking for this entire road trip. For once the strange anatomy of Yankee Stadium gave us a break, as the ball caromed twice in opposite directions off the ledge and then the upright in the wall’s padding. This left Gardner with no hope of holding Upton at third to keep the game tied.
But sometimes the task is just too big, even for Superman (though don’t mention that inconvenient truth around comic-con!) Having vaulted the Jays back into the lead with his clutch blast, it was too much to expect that he coud also run down Gregorius’ shot over his head in the bottom of the eighth that tied the game. And while there was no poetry in it for Blue Jays’ supporters, there was a certain poetic justice when he couldn’t pull the trigger on a curve ball from Yankee newcomer Blake Parker, who spent most of the year in the minors, with the tying run only ninety feet away and one out in the top of the ninth. My kingdom for a fly ball . . .
We’ve completed our tour of the key players in tonight’s drama, all, that is, except for the three who made up the dramatis personae of the final, shocking, stark moment of the game. On the mound was Blake Parker, recent call-up, little-known itinerant bottom-of-the-bullpen kind of guy, with the wierdest herky-jerky, how-can-that-not-be-a-balk windup you’ve ever seen. At the plate was the much-maligned Justin Smoak, who this year, it seems, has never seen a clutch situation where going down on strikes with wild overswings was not the likeliest outcome. And in left field was one of the somewhat-forgotten Yankees, Brett Gardner, a mid-career veteran who’s too old to be part of the youth movement, and too young (and useful) to be shown the door. Decent hitter, good speed on the bases and in the field, and a guy who’s learned how to play the angles and the tricky spots of left field in Yankee Stadium about as well as anyone.
With, remember, two outs and the bases loaded, Smoak doesn’t waste any time at the plate. A mighty cut on the first pitch from Parker makes good contact, and our hearts jump. But we can see off the bat that it’s opposite field, and there’s the power-diminishing slice, and the wind to contend with, and as the scene shifts to Gardner racing for the fence, we know that it is not a no-doubter, and with the game in the balance and our hearts in our throats we watch with fascinated horror as Gardner reaches the fence, gathers himself—all of this taking an eternity—and leaps. And the ball lands in the pocket of his glove. With the impact of his body against the wall, we see the glove open, the ball start to roll up, teetering on the edge of the pocket. Staring intently at the ball as he drops back to the ground, Gardner rolls his glove around and under it; it drops back into the pocket, this time securely, as securely as the game is won for his team.
Nothing more need be said after describing the final act of this game for the ages. Yankees 7, Blue Jays 6.
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