Jays Vs. Cardinals - A Backyard Brouhaha
A Streak Is 3 - Goalies Are Pitchers - What A Bunch Of Bloopers
In one of the more well-read articles in this publication, it was pointed out that a hack middle reliever in the MLB makes as much as Connor McDavid. Read it and weep.
A southern Ontario backyard in June is a free for all of bird land drama queens. The blue jays get a bad name for being the school yard bullies, but the starlings and crows seem to be in constant confrontation. The cardinals go about their business quite nicely.
The Toronto Blue Jays can’t lose these days. Knock on wood, woody woodpecker. Such is baseball that one season lost to the long ball, middle reliever is another season found by hitting long balls of your own, off theirs. Calling someone a hack might seem harsh, especially if you write like one, but you can’t ignore the home run vs. salary ratio and wonder. Perhaps pitching is just that difficult?
The Jays have been winning games by giving up big leads. Last night it was against the St. Louis Cardinals, again. The Jays bats are inspired. Singles, doubles and home runs. The batting line up is now deep. Winning in baseball is easy when the bloop singles start landing in the gaps. Who doesn’t love a bloop single? Who doesn’t like saying bloop single?
The Jays reliever Chad Greene came into the game with a 4 run lead in the top of the 8th, in front of a mostly empty St. Louis ballpark, apparently too far away for Jays fans to visit. Cardinals Nolan Arenado hit a high, first pitch fast ball into the Mississippi.
The Jays tacked on two more runs in the top of the 9th thanks to Andrés Giménez and Alejandro Kirk. Kirk has been doing a lot of base running these days. What was once a bit of joke seeing the short legged, rotund catcher inch up the baseline is now a point of pride.
There is a certain amount of cognitive disconnect admiring the exploits of these latin ball players in the MAGA midwest. You almost expect ICE to show up mid game and empty half the dugout. Do these players not all have family and friends living in some kind of fear? The MLB must be doing a lot of work behind the scenes to keep the league going without their employees family lives being effected by the Auto-Don. Yet in the beauty of the game somehow all is forgotten, much like the birds of a feather who may not flock for long together.
Whatever is saved in taxes south of the border in the U.S. is pennies for the peace-of-mind these athletes and their families now earn living in Canada.
As the bottom of the 9th began the Jays lead is back to 4 runs. Enter the new Jays closer Jeff Hoffman, who as a matter of tradition gives up at least one home run in every appearance. This time it was a 3 run bomb to Willson Contreras. If a 4 run lead is what they need to get the win, these days the Jays are only too happy to comply. 10-9 Jays win.
Principal Skinner Lays An Egg - But Don’t Have A Cow
Stuart Skinner, the Edmonton Oilers on again, off again starting goalie was out of sorts, again, in Florida on Monday night. Skinner reacquired the starting job after back up Calvin Pickard got injured in the midst of a 6 game winning streak. It doesn’t seem like there is a stiff upper lip underneath Skinner’s over sized stash. He got yanked. Like any great artist the Oilers can be emotionally fragile. It doesn’t matter how many hit songs they write, they go into a depression as soon as the notes stop coming.
Usually if they aren’t driving their car into a swimming pool the drummer is the calming voice that brings the band back together. So how does this Oilers bunch shake the pressure and get back to where they once belonged? Likely it’s with the plain and simple rhythms of the solid goaltending played by Calvin Pickard.
In sports a streak is 3 wins in a row and you go on from there. Someone has to win game 3 if the series is tied 1-1. It’s game 4 that matters after that. You can lose 2 in a row in the playoffs, but 3 is one bad album too many.