Today in Blue Jays History

Today In Blue Jays History:

Three 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. 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.

Four 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.

Five Years Ago: Sportsnet signed Buck and Pat to 5-year contracts. 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.

Time flies.

I haven’t heard if they are going to be coming back next year or if they are planning on replacing them. You would think there would be some rumors or so comment that this is their last weekend coming up. You would think there would be some mention of the contract coming to an end.

We have been treated to some games with Dan Shulman calling the action. That’s been a nice break. And Buck is pretty good in the second chair. I don’t think Dan wants to do 162 games. I think Ben Wagner (and Mike Wilner) are very good on the radio side, but I doubt they want to move either to the TV side.

Eleven 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. I remember being grumpy that he didn’t win but Cliff Lee had a very good year too, going 23-3.

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 of the year. The Jays beat the “Devil Rays” 10-8.