Jim Turner - July 10, 2005
More like a kick in the shin.
Heading into Texas, the Blue Jays were guaranteed to be no worse than .500 at the All-Star Break, a big improvement for a team that lost 94 games just a year ago. Even better, with both the Red Sox and Yankees playing well below their payrolls, the Jays found themselves in the midst of a pennant race.
Winners of three straight series, and with Roy Halladay set to open in Texas, the Jays could head into the mid-summer classic as one of the pleasant surprise teams of the year, boasting the AL's all-star starter, and a legitimate shot at the postseason. Life was good.
Three innings later, not so much.
Comebackers are part of life, and while Kevin Mench's shot off Halladay's shin wasn't on the Kaz Ishii or Chris carpenter level of gruesome, you could still hear the collective gasp among Blue Jays fandom and the mutters of "Oh, that's not good."
While Halladay was being taken for X-rays, there was still a game to consider, as the bullpen nursed a 6-5 lead through 8 innings. Then someone on defense called for a "close your eyes and throw" inning. Four batters and three egregious throws later, and the game had been squandered.
Games like this one hurt, but they're also inevitable over a 162-game schedule, and really, this was nothing the words "deep bone bruise" and "day-to-day" couldn't fix. Alas, they were replaced by the words "fracture" and "at least four weeks."
Not only does the injury deprive Halladay of the All-star start, it also puts a serious dent in his very strong Cy Young chances. He will still have a shot, but he'll have to maintain his ERA lead and win at least 18 games, with no one else in the league winning 20. That's unlikely, which is a shame, because 2-time Cy Young winner by age 28 is the start of an awfully strong Hall of Fame resume.
In the larger team picture, Halladay's loss is obviously a devastating blow to any Blue Jay playoff hopes.
That said, Halladay can only start every 5th game, and there were still two to play in Arlington, and a chance to gain some ground on Boston before the break. Game two featured Toronto's latest 5th starter Scott Downs against... Kenny Rogers.
Can someone please explain WHY Kenny Rogers is still pitching? This was his second start since his 20-game suspension for camera-whacking was handed down. If Major League Baseball would like to know why its discipline policies are considered a joke, this is one reason.
It's fine to have a process of appeal, but why has it taken so long to hear this one? If the suspension could be handed down within a day, the appeal process should have been equally swift. When an incident is embarassing your game, it must be dealt with immediately. This should have been the phone call at MLB headquarters: "Hey Kenny. Oh you're appealing the suspension? Ok, see you TOMORROW."
It seems that if Rogers was sincere during his crocodile-teared apology, he would have dropped the appeal and taken his 20 games, but that didn't happen, so there he was on the mound Saturday.
For a while it looked as though karma might win out, as the Jays jumped out to a 3-0 lead against Rogers, and Downs looked solid. Then he coughed up a 2-run foul ball to Gary Matthews which was declared a home run, and the roof fell in from there. Down 12-3 in the ninth, the Jays bats came alive, and very nearly pulled off the greatest comeback in franchise history, losing the game 12-10 - or by exactly the margin of Matthews' phantom homer.
This game was instructive about just how useful it is to consider a baseball game a test of character. 2 or 3 more hits and the Jays would have completed an historic comeback, and there would have been no end to the stories about their heart and perseverance in the face of Halladay's injury. But of course, they came up just short, and so the storyline of the game became "too little, too late."
Game three was still a chance to salvage a game and head into the break over .500, but despite overcoming a pair of late deficits, the inability to drive in runners from 3rd with less than two outs left the Jays swept by the agonizing score of 9-8.
With just a little bit of luck, the Jays could have emerged from Texas 47-41 and just two games back of Boston and healthy
A popular refrain in baseball is that over the course of the season "all the breaks even out." This is patently ridiculous. If everything evened out, all teams would wind up 81-81, and the game would be awfully boring. Still after a weekend in which:
There is a silver lining. The team is still at .500 and still just 5 games out of first, but they're chasing a pair of teams in Boston and the Yankees, led by a resurgent Jason Giambi and his new masking agent, with far more resources at their respective disposals. Then there's the renaissance season being enojyed by the Orioles. Catching three teams with your best player on the shelf is no easy task.
Kick in the shin? Maybe slightly higher and more centred...
... the Jays are due for a little evening out. They'll need it to rebound from their Texas nightmare.
