It’s been a long while–1993 actually–since the Toronto Blue Jays have beaten anyone to the punch in a series that really counts.
Since back-to-back World Series victories in 1992 and 1993, the Jays have muddled along, mostly mediocre, sometimes a tad better, content to accept money from their devoted fans while fielding teams that consistently came up a day late and a dollar short.
That all changed this past weekend. The Jays, now staffed by a coven of proven and hardened professionals after a series of trades last week, played the best baseball many observers–including this one–could remember.
The Jays went head-to-head four times against the top team in the American League, the Kansas City Royals. It was baseball at its very best–hard-nosed confrontations with neither team giving a quarter.
The Jays won three of those games, and they won with panache.
One series does not a season make, and time is short, but their play made believers of a lot people, including the perpetually jaded.
And any resemblance between the current Jays and the team that stumbled through the first four months of the season is purely coincidental.
The rebirth began last week when, after years of fiscal frugality, the team’s owners, Rogers Communications, loosened the purse strings, giving general manager Alex Anthopoulos permission to deal.
Anthopoulos traded away a lot of pitching prospects and a fading shortstop, Jose Reyes, to acquire an all-star shortstop, Troy Tulowitzki, an all-star starting pitcher, David Price, a speedy slap-hitting outfielder, Ben Revere, and two relief pitchers with the potential to solidify their bullpen, LaTroy Hawkins and Mark Lowe.
Presto! Toronto had a team of a proven big-league ballplayers and they played like it.
A lot of things can go wrong between now and the end of the season. The pitching could come up short and there could be key injuries, but the results this weekend were intoxicating for any lover or baseball and/or the Blue Jays.
But on on Monday afternoon, the magic continued. Price pitched eight strong innings, allowing one run on three hits and Hawkins pitched a scoreless ninth in a 5-1 victory over Minnesota, another team Toronto trails in the standings.
The victory left the Jays with 55 games to catch the AL East-leading New York Yankees, who they trail by five-and-a-half games games, or to find a way to sneak into baseball’s expanded and diluted playoffs.
Judging from what we saw in the past week, it becomes very distinct possibility that–like Canada’s political parties–the Toronto Blue Jays could be shooting for something meaningful on Oct. 19 when Canadians go to the polls, two weeks into the MLB playoffs.
For some perspective on the totally unexpected turn of events over the past week, RCI spoke by with Toronto Star columnist Richard Griffin at his home in Toronto.
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