Storyline: Finally, the Blue Jays are in the ALCS. Jose Bautista made sure of that. The Jays won an incredible series in incredible fashion.
Courtesy: naillonbaseball.wordpress.com
Wow! That’s all that I could say after watching Game 5 of the Jays/Rangers series.
It was one of the most rollercoaster-like, emotional games I’ve ever witnessed. The game included Encarnacion’s game-tying HR; Martin’s throw-back to the mound that went off of Choo’s bat; certain fans giving Canadians a bad name by throwing garbage on to the field; Elvis Andrus forgetting how to catch the ball (thanks, Harold Reynolds, for all of the fun we had with that one); and “the shot heard all over the Great White North” — Jose Bautista clobbering a Dyson two-seamer – with the bat flip to follow.
This might have been the best game I’ve ever watched. Unfortunately, I was not at the game. I was watching at an Irish pub, which ran out of Guinness by the way. It was electric! It’s a rarity to see Canadian sports fans get so emotional about anything except hockey, but this game had enough electricity to power the city.
People slammed their fists on tables, high-fiving everybody after a big hit. It was a pile of noise. We even started the clap in the top of the 9th to help Osuna shut things down.
It felt great! You forget how it feels to cheer with an entire nation.
When something gets taken away for 22 years, you forget how it feels. We’ve grown accustomed to dealing with mediocrity–with teams playing a cruel joke on us, year after year. But this is a different team, and it’s a different year. We have Reyes. We have Clemens. We have Mondesi (yes, that was a thing.) Nothing could soothe our soul other than a playoff birth — actually, let me correct that: meaningful baseball in September would have done the job, as well.
But everything changed in two and a half innings. After watching Russell Martin throw the ball into Shin-Soo Choo’s bat, I thought to myself: “This is exactly how it ends for a Toronto sports team – how fitting.” Well, Elvis Andrus was having none of that. Three straight defensive miscues brought to the plate the most pained of all Blue Jays: Jose Bautista. He has been here through thick and thin, having to carry the team’s offence for years.
You could see it in his eyes that it was going to be all or nothing this time. And it was all, and definitely not nothing: Sam Dyson chose the wrong time to challenge Bautista on the inner part of the plate. It was the bat flip heard around the country. For once we weren’t going to be struck by the karma of the sports Gods. Bautista made sure of that.
The roof almost blew off of the Rogers Centre. Bautista just took every demon in Toronto sports history and infused it into his bat.
The final two innings were like clock-work, watching a 20-year-old, cold-blooded killer in Roberto Osuna work. It was a thing of beauty! He was the perfect ending to what has become one of the best Blue Jays games in history.
You can’t write a better script for this team.
I can’t wait to see what the Jays/Royals series has in store for us.
Jays/Cubs World Series, dare I say?
Right after my wife got Lyme disease I didn’t think anything could scare me every again. But seeing the first two games in KC has me scared!! Come on jays!