The sky was crystalline blue. The jerseys were vivid red. The sun was warm on upturned faces. A military band rocked out the crowd. And there was poutine in the media dining room!
The crowd was in the mood to celebrate Canada Day, in a stadium bedecked with holiday bunting.
But the Blue Jays just aren’t any good at this. Make that 16-29 for Canada Day games after Monday afternoon’s 3-1 loss to the incoming Houston Astros. An eye-glazer of a game to boot.
Turns out we were covering the wrong sport, gosh darn. All the interesting news was coming out of Maple Leafs Land on Day 1 of free agency. And Joel Quenneville was reinstated by the NHL. If only the Leafs had waited a little longer …
I digress.
Cast your mind back to the beginning of April, when the Jays and Astros first met this season at Minute Maid Park. Toronto was blanked 18-0 through two of three games and only plucked a 2-1 win out of their middle match arses on a two-run blast from Davis Schneider with two out in the ninth.
And that’s when the Astros were bad. Now they’re turnaround good, sizzling with nine wins in their previous 10 games as they arrived for this July 1 engagement, bucking for a wild-card position. In fact, after finally getting over the .500 hump, the Astros are very much what the Jays still aspire to be, if in dwindling likelihood for a sharp volte face, craning up now from 15 games way, way back.
It didn’t help Toronto’s fortunes when twice they loaded the bases and failed to bring anyone home. Of course, until recently the Jays weren’t hitting squat and, in Houston starter Hunter Brown, they were facing a pitcher on a 4-0 June roll, with a major-league best 1.16 ERA across the month. While Toronto has lately rediscovered a bit of its hitting mojo, Monday was a return to hitting barrenness with runners in scoring position. The Jays were held to four hits and just the one run, a parabola over the left field wall by Ernie Clement with two out in the bottom of the ninth.
The Astros, however, could manage no more than four hits either and only two of them off starter Yariel Rodriguez, who was the bright spot from a Toronto perspective.