Yankees 1 Blue Jays 8

Now that was more like it. We scored a bunch of runs, got good pitching and didn't make any errors.

J.P. Arencibia, Edwin Encarnacion, Jose Bautista and Kelly Johnson all homered. Nice to see Jose clobber one, it left the park in a hurry. We had 11 hits. 3 each for JP and Edwin. 2 for Kelly. Brett Lawrie, Colby Rasmus and Omar Vizquel had 0 fors.

Kyle Drabek had a much better start than last time out against the Twins. He only allowed 3 hits in 7 innings. Too many walks, 4, but 2 of those were in his last inning of work. He kept the ball on the ground, 13 ground outs, with just 2 fly outs. He did get a gift call in the 7th, with 2 on, Curtis Granderson hit a ball to Omar, who tossed the ball to Johnson. The trouble was that Kelly was a long way from the bag, playing Granderson to pull, and he got there just a little after the base runner. But the umpire still called him out.

Luis Perez pitched a scoreless 8th, getting 2 strikeouts, giving up 2 walks. Francisco Cordero pitched a perfect 9th, as hard as that might be to believe.

Jays of the Day are Kyle (.215 WPA), Edwin (.200) and JP (.189). No suckage Jays, Colby had the low mark at -.036. It would be nice if he would start hitting sometime.

Tomorrow we have game two of the series, Phil Hughes (3-4, 5.50 in 7 starts) gets the ball for the Yankees. Drew Hutchison (2-1, 5.53 in 5 starts), coming off his best start of his young career, goes for the Jays.

No fireworks tonight. We din't see Lawrie talk to Bill Miller, but I imagine an apology was offered by Brett. They did show Brian Butterfield talking to Miller.

Jays up by 7.

Hello from sunny over cast Florida! It's your faithful servant TFSML. I have very limited Wi-Fi down here in our St. Pete Beach condo so I'm reduced to standing on a stool holding my MacBook over my head in hopes I can steal the neighbour's unlocked Wi-Fi. I suppose I could go to a Starbucks to finish writing this but...

Anyway since I have no TV cable access I'm blissfully unaware of how much the Jays are sucking and what Brett Lawrie is facing suspension wise. I have maintained from the get-go that Brett is a major spazz -regardless if he was justified-he has always struck me as the jock in HS we all would have lived in fear of unless we were his teammate. My only chance of survival would have been to become his toady and sic him on all of you, I digress...

Line-ups hopefully after the jump...

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Brett Lawrie has been suspended for 4 games. Really about as good as we could have hoped. It seems fair to me.

I'm imagining we will be told about the appeal any moment now....

Didn't have to wait, he is appealing. Hmmmmmm that doesn't quite sound right. I'm sure he is a handsome guy and all but what I meant is that he has appealed the suspension.

Brett Lawrie is going to get a suspension. We know it. So I thought I'd put up a poll to see how many games you think he will get. Not how many games you think he should get, but how many you think he will get.

I'm of the opinion that Bill Miller should be suspended as well. He wasn't umpiring the game, at that point, he was trying to put a player in his place. The league should make a strong statement that this isn't allowed. They won't, I know, but they should.

And, well, the idiot that threw beer at the umpire should be banned from the stadium too. There is no justification for that sort of behavior. First, it should be a sin to spill beer, unless it is Budweiser or some light beer . But, more seriously, no matter how drunk or stupid you are, you shouldn't be throwing things from the stands at anyone on the field. At least Brett's actions came in the heat of the moment, and he didn't intend to hit the umpire, just a bad hop. The guy in the stands (I refuse to call people like that fans) has no excuse beyond extreme drunkenness.

Anyway, the poll:

Jack Morris turns 57 today.

Morris was a very good pitcher, back in the 1980's, with the Tigers. Not quite a Hall of Fame pitcher (though you never can tell what the BBWAA might do) but a guy that won a lot of games (helped along by a very good Tiger offense) and pitched a lot of innings. I'm 1983 he threw 293.2 innings, with 20 complete games.

The Jays signed him before the 1992 season. Morris had just helped the Minnesota Twins to a World Series win over the Atlanta Braves. He won two games in that series, including game 7, one of the greatest pitching performances in the history of the World Series. He pitched a 10 inning shutout, keeping the Braves off the scoreboard long enough for the Twins get the only run of the game in the bottom of the 10th.

The Jays signed him hoping he could get them a World Series win too. He had the reputation of being a winner. And in 1992 he was a winner, going 21-6, with a 4.04 ERA in 34 starts, again helped out by great offense. He was our first 20 game winner. We couldn't get enough runs for him to be a winner in the playoffs. In the ALCS against Oakland, he was 0-1 with a 6.57 ERA and, in the World Series against the Braves, he was 0-2 with a 8.44 ERA.

Jack had a poor 1993 season, going 7-12 (even great offenses can only do so much) with a 6.19 ERA and didn't pitch in the playoffs that year. But he picked up his 4th World Series ring.

Morris won a lot of games in his career, 254. He was a good pitcher, who was helped out by pitching for teams with great offenses. As well as pitching a lot of innings, he gave up a lot of home runs (389 in his career, 15th on the all-time list) and a lot of walks (1390, 19th all-time).

He was never a fan favorite in Toronto, we kind of disliked the Tigers back then and he had been their best pitcher and, well, he never had the warmest of personalities. Since he didn't pitch all that well for us, we really didn't grow to like him.

Happy Birthday Jack. Hope it is a good one.