A two sentence post on....walkoffs!

Apart from assholes and psychopaths, who doesn't love a good walkoff?

Adam Lind: straight raker.

Celebrate. Good Times.

So Aaron Hill drives in his 100th run of the year to lead the Jays to a walkoff win against the Orioles. More importantly, the Jays' win clinches fourth place in the AL East. No basement dwelling for this Blue Jays team!

The Jays now have two 30-100 guys for the first time in years, and we're just doing backflips and handsprings and hooting and wooting it up.

Sometimes, you've just got to savour the small victories.

Wild walk off madness!

We managed to miss almost all of last night's game because we were caught in a dinner party where we were helping a couple choose songs for their wedding playlist.

(We're not sharing the contents of said playlist, lest we undo any sense of cool that we may have nurtured through a season of Friday Rock Outs. But in our defense, let us say that when Mrs. Tao decides that there should be Pussycat Dolls, there's gonna be Pussycat Dolls. And there's only so much that you can fight it.)

Nevertheless, we managed to tune in for all of the good stuff in the ninth. And what a wild ninth it was. Pinch hit Rodness! Scoots taking second on a fly ball! Walks! Belief in Vernon! Millar, who we still hate, walking the bases full! Randy Ruiz, teed up for the walkoff hit! Wild pitch! Scoots! Ballgame!

It's a good thing that we have the off day to recover from a single inning of offense that was more interesting than much of the month of August.

Some other random thoughts on the bottom of the ninth
A win is a win, so you probably shouldn't be upset that it wasn't choreographed to your heart's particular delights. But having said that, we would have enjoyed seeing a walkoff walk, if only so that there could be shrimp for the masses.

We also would have loved to see Ruiz get a hit and be the hero, but we'll have to content ourselves with the notion that J.P. Howell, even with two strikes, wanted to keep his pitch as far out of the Bronx Basher's wheelhouse as possible.

No love for Millar
We're not sure how we would have felt about "You're such a disease, Kevin" Millar getting the walkoff hit last night. Sure, we want the win, but we don't want to have any kind feelings towards Millar ever again.

One night this week, we fired up our MLB 2K8 and set it up so that we could heave pitches at head of "Kyle Morgan" (Millar's alias in the game because of his scabby activity.) It was cathartic.

Walkoff joy is fleeting
Was it just us, or did the enthusiasm over last night's walkoff win vanish before the cameras were turned away? By the time that the Jays reached the dugout, the faces were nearly as stoic as what you would have expected on the losing team.

Four seasons in one game

Not to over-egg the pudding here, but last night's walkoff 8-7 win over the Rangers was one of the most exciting, frustrating, demoralizing, reenergizing games we've seen the Blue Jays play in a long time. So much happened in the space of last night's game that you know they couldn't fit that shit all into nine innings.

Here's our quick breakdown, broken into its component parts:

The Dopeness
-The Jays winning their third walkoff of the year before they even open the lid on the Dome.

-Rod Barajas cranking out two homers, and having one of the best freakouts on the umpire after taking a called strike three that was three inches below his knees.

-Alex Rios going four for six with two RsBI and looking infinitely better (and as Alan Ashby pointed out, much more quiet) at the plate.

-José Bautista getting four hits and scoring twice. Jo-Bau!

-Jason Frasor, continuing to be awesome with his new changeup. Chalk up two more scoreless innings for the guy who was once the forgotten man in the pen.

-Cito working his seemingly dubious magic and leaving Kevin Millar in against Kason Gabbard Darren O'Day for the winning hit.

The Wackness
-The Beej. Oh, the Beej. Four appearances, two saves, two blown. Maybe it's not time to relax about him.

-Aaron Hill's error to extend the ninth, allowing the Rangers to come back.

-Seeing Travis Snider bunt. Every time Snider squares around to bunt, a little part of us dies inside.

-The empty park, apparently abandoned by fans who had better things to do on a Wednesday night than stick around for a walkoff win.

Don't look know, but it's time to start scoreboard watching
The Jays are still on top of the AL East, but the Red Sox (seven straight wins) and the Yankees (three straight) now sit a game and a half back.

Walkoff madness!

Sometimes, a great game kinda sneaks up on you. aybe it was the lack of alcohol, but we barely realized what a great game we were listening to until the eighth inning.

(Then again, we're still sweating out last night's pints. And here we thought we were being pretty moderate for the opener.)

After having the bats taken out of their hands (yet again) by Edwin Jackson, the Jays finally broke out against former Jay Brandon Lyon, and pulled out a 5-4 walkoff victory.

More tomorrow on Scott Rolen's awesomeness, poor musical choices, and country fastballs.

Oh, and before we forget...
Voodoo Whammy!

This is how I want to remember him

I was pretty hard on Greggg Zaun when he made his "trade me to a contender who wants me" comments as the trade deadline approached. "Fuck you, Zaunie", I said. "Sit down and accept your role as a backup on an also-ran", I thought.

Sometimes you forget these guys are human (except Doc - total cyborg) - with pride, envy, anger, and all the other human emotion bullshit. But the deadline passed with Zaun still a Blue Jay, now relegated to a start or maybe two per week, and I found myself starting to feel a little bad for the guy. Here's an old pro who thought he had earned the right to start for the team he'd spent the past five seasons with, and now he's a dead man walking backup with a suddenly uncertain future.

So for the last month, I've really been pulling for ol' Zaunie to do well and earn himself one more big league contract next season, wherever he may end up. The month of August had a different plan for triple-G Greggg, however, and bitch-slapped him with an 0-fer (19).

Fast forward to late Saturday afternoon, and all is well in the world again.

But enough with the literary prose and melodrama......holy fucking shit! A walk-off granny! Seven in a row! Fuck Joe Maddon!

Did I mention that was Seven in a row?
I think I did, but....seven? When was the last time this club has gone a week+ without losing? And yes, Tampa/Boston/New York fans, I know it's borderline pathetic to be so excited about a fairly modest win streak in the month of September with my team out of it. But you know what? Fuck off. I'm trying to make this a fun little month of baseball here.

Special thanks to BJ for nailing it
What do you mean, BJ Ryan almost blew the game? How boring would a three run victory have been? Way more boring than a grand slam walk-off victory in the 13th inning, that's for damn sure.

But seriously, that's a couple reeeeeaaaaal shaky outings in a row now for BJ. In his defense, Cito has been, let's say, unafraid to go to BJ lately, to the point where he probably could use a breather. I still say Ryan is a monster next season.

Truth be told, I'm a little more worried about Scotty Downs the stretch (lame pun intended). Maybe all this talk of moving him into the rotation is fucking with his head. Thankfully, the Jays are blessed with a bullpen including Nails League and Nails Carlson to hold down the fort while the big two work it out.

Walkoffs, playoffs and brushoffs

Walkoffs
What's not to love about an 11-inning walkoff win? Especially one where your most dreamy hitting prospect ever comes up with a big two-out two-strike bottom-of-the-ninth hit against one of the best two or three closers in the game to tie the game up. Rosy-cheeked Travis Snider might not be hammering tape measure shots into the 500 Level (yet), but he's looked like he can fit in this lineup, in spite of being the youngest position player in the big leagues.

Oh, and don't forget Johnny McDonald driving in the winning run. That's always good for the soul.

Playoffs
We were all excited yesterday when we discovered that the Advanced A Dunedin Blue Jays had made the Florida State League playoffs. Playoffs! Then this morning, we come to find out that the D-Jays have already been sent packing by the Fort Myers Miracle...who just happen to be the affiliate of the Minnesota Twins. So what goes around...

But don't be too discouraged, faithful Blue Jays Single-A affiliate fans! The Lansing Lugnuts of the Midwest League started their playoff drive last night, albeit with a 3-1 loss to the Dayton Dragons, the Reds' affiliate in the circuit.

Brushoffs
We were listening to the game on the radio last night with a head full of NyQuil, so we missed the visuals of Travis Snider's first at bat in Toronto. From the sounds of things (via two outstanding posts from Neate at Out of Left Field and the Drunks), it's just as well that we didn't see it.

Forget it, Jake. It's Hockeytown.

A one-sentence post on...unlikely heroes

In the middle of this middling season of Blue Jays baseball, there's something odd and invigorating and bittersweet about a walkoff win where Kevin Mench drives in Brad Wilkerson.

Hold on Hope

Maybe it's getting a little late for optimism, and maybe we should be a little less enthusiastic about the home side given that Dustin McGowan is out with some unknown shoulder troubles and Vernon Wells is gone for a month or more with (gulp) hamstring troubles.

And yet, just as we're sure that the small flicker of light is being snuffed out, the Jays pull off their second walk off win in three days to sweep the Orioles.

Of course, the hard slap of reality is that even with this week's long overdue heroics, the team still sits nine games back of the Wild Card with six teams ahead of them in the standings as they host the Yankees this weekend. And as much as we might bring up stories of the Rockies' post-All-Star surge last year, or the Astros a few years back, you've got to give yourself a shake and realize that the Jays just don't have the scary offense that those teams did that allowed them to go on a 10 or 12 or 15 game streak. (Do you see anything that Cito could pencil in that would remotely resemble a Hawpe-Holliday-Helton-Tulowitzki(2007)-Atkins lineup ?)

But how can we be so cynical after a dramatic win like last night? It brings to mind the words of the poet laureate of Dayton, Ohio, Robert Ellsworth Pollard Jr.:

Everybody's got a hold on hope
It's the last thing that's holding me

A strange thought on Vernon
You know, as much as we were disappointed to hear that Vernon Wells went down for four to six weeks, the first thing that popped into our head was: "Gee, didn't the Jays go on a wicked winning streak the last time he was out of the lineup?"

It makes you wonder what to think if they manage to go on another run with him on the DL.

One-Sentence Posts On...Walkoffs

Watching the other team win with a walkoff homer really sucks bag, especially when your team hasn't had a walkoff win since Cliff Johnson was in short pants.