Today in Blue Jays History

Today In Blue Jays History:

Two Years Ago: Edwin Encarnacion hit a single in the bottom of the 9th to give us a walk-off win over the Yankees. The win completed a 3-game sweep of the Yankees, which helped out, as we were in the Wild Card race at the time, although we were pretty assured of a Wild Card spot but we were battling the Orioles for home field for the game.

We had been up 2-1 going into the 9th, but Roberto Osuna gave up 2 runs, for his 4th blown save of the season. The bottom of the inning went (from the recap):

Melvin Upton worked a walk to start the inning, that was huge. Gibby, asking Pillar to bunt again was......stupid, but Pillar fixed that by getting a 2-strike single. And Upton hustled to third.

Then Ezequiel Carrera put down a beautiful squeeze bunt. It helped that Upton is so fast, but it was perfect.

A Devon Travis strikeout and a Josh Donaldson walk (to set up a double play) brought Edwin Encarnacion up and he played hero, grounding one to the right side just out of the second baseman’s reach.

Three Years Ago: The Jays beat the Rays 5-3, bringing our magic number to 6. R.A. Dickey pitched 7 innings, picking up his 100th career win. Josh Donaldson, Kevin Pillar and Jose Bautista had solo homers. Someone named Pennington (Chad? Corey? Conner? Cevin?) went 3 for 4 with 2 doubles. And former Jay J.P. Arencibia hit a homer run off Mark Lowe.

Four Years Ago: Sportsnet signed Buck and Pat to 5-year contracts (we are 3 years into the 5). I wasn’t exactly thrilled:

We have five years of ‘big and strong’ being the pinnacle of baseball analysis.

Five years of being told the other team ‘plays the game right’.

Five years of ‘he’s a ball player’.

Five years of the mute button being my best friend.

Five years. The longest contract that the Jays would consider offering a player and they give it to Buck and Pat.

Five years. 810 regular season games. Roughly a 55000 mentions of Derek Jeter.

Five years of raspy laughing at each enough.

Five years of Pat repeating what ever Buck just said and pretending it is analysis.

I very much appreciate that Sportsnet has brought in Dan Shulman to do play-by-play in a handful of games on TV and radio. I’d love him to do more, but I can understand if he doesn’t want to do it fulltime.

Ten years ago: Roy Halladay won his 20th game of the season. Doc finished the season 20-11 with a 2.78 ERA in 246 innings (leading the league). He would finished second in Cy Young voting.

Fifteen years ago: Carlos Delgado hit 4 home runs in a game. The first was his 300th home run of his career. The last of the 4 was his 41st home run. The Jays beat the “Devil Rays” 10-8.