Clinched

Written By Joanna


I am hanging around, in my 90s Jays sweatshirt, musing about baseball.

Every year at this time, I always get a little wistful. Leaves changing, it gets colder, I have to wear socks. And baseball ends. I have attended several late season games and one final game of the year (2010, Cito retires. Zuber and I went together. It was a social experiment I took part in: taking strange women to baseball games. You can read my dating profile here  and the experience via Zubes here . I can't find my experience. In short, I have fond memories.) Anyway, we ended up staring wistfully at the field until an usher came and kicked us out.

The Jays have a tradition of coming out and waving their hats at the crowd to thank the fans for showing up all season. The last giveaway is usually some winter themed item (like a Jays toque) and people wave it back at the boys, another disappointing end to a once promising season.

They did it this year, too.



But it's not wistful this year.

After 22 years, the Toronto Blue Jays are going to the post-season.

On Saturday, it was originally planned to be a sedate affair, a little bubbly and a toast. Things escalated.






I added that one, because awwwwww.




There was a little talk about whether this was too much. I'm not one to tell people how or when they should celebrate something. Apparently, it was Edwin Encarnacion who initiated some of this. He and Bautista are two of the longest serving MLB players without an appearance in the post season. I say party on. If you don't want to do it, that's ok. If you do, that's ok, too.

Russell Martin was noticeably absent. He apparently stayed for the toast, thought that was it and went home. He talked to Jeff Blair about it. He, unlike Bautista and EE, has been there before.

He also said something that I'm going to disagree with.


Here's my quibble: While the Pirates were terrible for a lot of years, Pittsburgh, much like Toronto, is a major sports city. In those 20 terrible baseball years, the Steelers went to the Super Bowl four times and won twice (2005 and 2008). They were in the playoff conversation for most of the 90s and into the 2000s. The Penguins won the Stanley Cup in 2007-2008 and have been perennially in the playoffs in the 21st century. While the baseball gods haven't always been kind to the Pirates, Pittsburgh sports fans have been compensated. Not as well as Boston, maybe, but still not terribly. They've won the lottery compared to Toronto (or Russell's hometown of Montreal.)


Toronto has won nothing since 1993. The Leafs and Raptors have made it to the playoffs, but not much further. And now that I know what a lot over .500 baseball feels like, .500 baseball sucks. Playing in a tough division sucks.

Winning in a tough division is awesome.

Ben là, ça a pas d’allure son affaire! Pfffft Coltrane. 


The Sunday game was the perfect illustration that 2015 is the Year of Josh. Awesome here. Also, awesome here. Here. And here, too.  And here he's talking. 

He is intense. He is wily and quick. And he's insanely gifted.

(He's also devilishly handsome, but that's neither here nor there.)


This team is amazing. I love that I can sit and think, "You know what'd be great? A walk off." And ten seconds later, it happens. Like I ordered it off a menu. Also, not to be forgotten, Bautista's completely bad ass bat flip after the Donaldson homer. Jose is amazing. He has better bat flips than most other players, even when the homer isn't his.


Ben Revere accidentally dumping the water on himself was perfect.


I'll probably do a post-season roster post at some point, but if there was ever any doubt about the professionalism and general fantasticness (that's a word when used to describe Mark Buehrle) it's this:


Love him so hard.

Also, I don't know what this is, but I'm down with it:



The other big thing that happened yesterday was the whole Papelbon/Harper brouhaha. Grant Brisbee, who is pretty much the best, had my favourite take.



5% wrongness goes to Harper for engaging with Papelbon at all (throw in calling Papelbon an idiot in the press earlier in the week in the 5% as well as for assuming that is what would make Buck Showalter order some rookie to throw at him.) 85% wrongness goes to Papelbon for policing Harper about "playing the game the right way" (Dude's been a beast all season, it's the right way), and following that up by choking a teammate (which is decidedly not playing the game the right way), and then, after being allowed to pitch after the incident (what the hell, Matt Williams? You get 5% blame), giving up the winning runs. He's also suspended for the rest of the season. Washington owes him a pile of money for 2016.

Things got rotten in Washington.

Joanna
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