I never lost faith in the idea that the Jays would come back and win the series, despite being down 0-2 and going to Texas, but I had resigned to the fact that the October 9th game would be my only playoff experience for 2015 and I was happy with that.
The Jays then won both games in Texas, like I knew they would.
I came home on Tuesday morning to find a note from my mom saying that her and my dad had gotten seats for the 5th game of the series and that my dad had to work and couldn't go. In terms of surprises, this was pretty far up there. Not only was I going to a playoff game and not only was it in good seats, but I was going to see this series be decided.
By now, most of the world is passably familiar with how the game went. Really what you need is this:
I have been to a lot of Blue Jays games in my life. Probably more than 95% of people. This was the best and craziest, but most importantly, most emotional from a fan standpoint that I've ever been to. You could not ask for more from a baseball game. This game was up and down and up and that final up was just about the highest one you could get. Being a Jays fan, I experienced pretty much everything thing that you able to feel while watching a baseball game during it.
I've said this many times, but my family is a Blue Jays family. My mom found it was a great and affordable way to do things with my brother while she was a single parent. Hearing her describe the first game they went to, in 1983 is heart-warming. While they were at The Ex, the Jays were giving away free tickets to that afternoon's game, the Jays of course still playing at Exhibition Stadium at that time. Upon entering the gate, they found that the team was giving away free hats as well. My mom was supporting herself and my brother on just her salary as a new high school teacher, so to have something so affordable to do with him was absolutely great. From there, she started to buy more tickets, before eventually getting season's tickets in left field behind her favourite player, George Bell.
Before Wednesday's game, to our surprise, George Bell threw out the ceremonial first pitch. My mom immediately jumped up, in her George Bell jersey, and started screaming "GEEE-OOOORR-GGYYYYY!" and it put a smile on my face a mile wide. The two fans in front of us turned around to give us a thumbs up and we struck up a conversation with them. It turned out that they were from Long Island and had grown up with the game's starter Marcus Stroman. They showed a bunch of pictures of them with him and they cheered with us all game, giving high fives and hugs whenever the Jays got a hit or made a play. Given that Stro is my favourite Jay, it was a great and positive section of fans to be in.
As much as baseball is fun to watch, for me it also has a much deeper emotional resonance. It is a physical manifestation of my family's strength and bond. We've joked that main reason my dad, a life-long fan of the sport well before there was an MLB team in Toronto (He traveled to see a World Series game in New York in the 70's! He can remember his teacher putting playoff games on the radio during the 50's!), married my mom was the season tickets. They are truly in love and are a picture of a successful and loving marriage, and while it would be stupid to suggest that they got married because they were both ballfans, it would also be stupid to suggest that the Jays and baseball don't play at least some type of role in our family's relationship.
I always wondered why other kids went on vacations while my family didn't when I was younger. It seemed like every kid in my class got to go somewhere, while I stayed put in Toronto. It was only later that I realized that we got our Jays tickets every year instead. Maybe I was jealous when I was younger, but I'm certainly not now. Going to games for my whole life with my tried and true ballfan parents is how I learned to truly appreciate the game and all its subtleties; realize the importance of a lead-off walk, appreciate the pitcher throwing a 0-2 pitch in the dirt, runners taking an extra base. There's a lot that goes on in the game's quieter moments and when you become aware of this ebb and flow and the minor mindgames that accompany these miniature battles, it's when you become aware of the true beauty of baseball. It's through these that you realize what makes a great player great.
I hate to play the superiority card and talk about how I'm a good or a true baseball and Jays fan and most people at the game aren't, but following the shitshow at yesterday's game I kind of have to. There were two very drunk and very bro fans behind us at the game who were indicative of many of the fans there who clearly have no idea how to act at a baseball game. This has long been a condition that you have to deal with as a Jays fan, because Toronto is not a "baseball" city. Or maybe no city is a "baseball" city and most fans have no idea how to act at sporting events, but I know that when I went to a Mets game in New York, that they sure knew how to act. But Toronto does seem especially bad sometimes. The two bros behind us incessantly yelled "HAAAAMM-ELLLLLS!" all game and yelled that every Rangers batter was "A JOKE". I can understand being a vocal fan and cheering loudly, but if you are here to only heckle the other team and not cheer for your own, then fuck off and give your ticket to someone who actually cares. If you are calling Adrian Beltre, ye of 413 career home runs and 74.9 career WAR, objectively one of the best 3rd basemen of all-time and one of the finest ballplayers of the last 20 years, a joke, then all you are doing is calling attention to how much of a joke you are and how little you know about the game.
Of course the biggest embarrassment in the game was when the fans started to throw beer cans onto the field following an odd play. For the record, the umps absolutely made the correct call and double checked with the office in New York to make sure. They did absolutely nothing wrong and went out of their way to make sure that they didn't. The imagined slights that fanbase keeps yelling about are starting to get tiresome. NEVER THROW SOMETHING ONTO THE FIELD. If you do, you deserve to get kicked out and I hope you do. There are few things that say "I don't know shit about baseballs and am knee-jerk reaction garbage" than what happened last night. As soon as the downpour from the 500's started, I said "Embarrassing." and our new friends from New York agreed with me.
Your own players were telling you to stop. Fuck all of you.
But this does not detract from what followed that inning. Elvis Andrus forgetting how to field, a bases-loaded RBI by Josh and then, of course, Joseeeee, Jose, Jose, Jose.
I commonly tell a story, mostly about how you should never give up hope on your team, in which my Dad ceded going to game 6 of the 1993 World Series in favour of a possible game 7. This meant that my mom got to see Joe Carter's walk-off home run to win the World Series in person. In terms of Jays moments, you can't get better than that. That is her personal "Jays Moment".
It has been different for me, because I have watched mostly out-of-contention teams throughout my life and each of my favourite moments have been singular player accomplishments. I was at the Halladay-Burnett game, which was a big one, Jose's 2010/11 seasons were also up there, watching Carlos Delgado mash for 12 years, everything that was Roy Halladay, I couldn't say that I had my own moment in Jays history until yesterday.
In my last post I mentioned that the beauty of the playoffs is that you can't expect what comes next and you never know what type of things can go right. Of course this also goes the other way, as for 15 minutes or so many people that the Jays could possibly lose the series on a momentary defensive lapse by Mr. Defense, Russ Martin. To have gone 22 years without playoffs, go down 0-2 and then battle back at the away park to tie the series, only to lose it on a mind-boggling, albeit correctly-called, play would have been the ultimate injustice. To go all-in trading for the biggest names in baseball only to lose in the first round. In my mind, I knew it wouldn't end like that, it couldn't. My mom and I immediately stood up to sing "OK Blue Jays" as loud as we could.
Jose Bautista has gotten a little bit of a rotten deal in Toronto. For some reason, until yesterday, the city has been very hesitant to embrace him as the home run-on-base-arm strength machine that he is. First it was because he was too good, too fast. Then because he yelled at the umpires too much. Maybe all the white Torontonians thought he was too Hispanic, I wouldn't be surprised. Everyone refused to accept that he was "the guy" despite the fact that he could not more obviously be "the guy". He is a generational talent who excels in many aspects of the game and seems to be a strong presence among his teammates. He is the best right fielder of this decade. He magically turned around his career out of nowhere with the Blu Jays, and still Toronto was hesitant to embrace him as our baseball overlord.
It had to be Jose. All along, it had to be Jose. After the high tensions of the seventh inning and the fans going crazy and the high pressure situation he got himself in, it had to be Jose.
This will forever be my Jays moment. I was there and nothing can ever erase that. It really does feel that the last 26 years of my existence as a Jays fan, all the games I went to, crying when my Dad and I left early during a blowout as a child, all the games watched at home bemoaning the lack of getting the runner at third home, re-watching plays from '92 and '93, it was all just a build up to the release of this specific moment. Jose's home run was perfect in every way and even though I was in a building filled with 54,000 people and we were packed into tight seats in section 125, it felt like my mom and I had our own little space there in seats 6 and 7. I could not imagine a more perfect way to celebrate the home run than I did, hugging my mom beside me.
Go Jays.
No comments:
Post a Comment