SPORTS
18 Obiter Dicta
The Inning That Broke Baseball
A partial list of the ridiculous things that happened during the
seventh inning in game five of the ALDS
nadia aboufariss › opinions editor
B
“
ilbo rushed a long the passage, very
angry, and altogether bewildered and
bewuthered - this was the most awkward
Wednesday he ever remembered.”
This throwaway line from The Hobbit has always
been one of my favourites, both because of the
wonderful made-up word bewuthered, and because
I’ve always liked the idea of having a most awkward
Wednesday. At least, I did, until it happened to me.
After a stressful two days of OCIs, I found myself
rushing along an Osgoode hallway, very angry, to
a midterm I felt underprepared for, after having
watched the Texas Rangers score a go-ahead run on
the most bewildering play I’ve ever seen in baseball.
Okay, I fully admit watching a playoff game right
before a midterm was not the greatest idea in the
world, but no one had any idea how crazy this game
would end up being. I look forward to watching reruns
of it on lazy Canada Day afternoons. The Canadian
Heritage memes have already begun. For now, here’s
a brief recap of some of the most memorable moments
from what is already being called on sports blogs the
inning that broke baseball.
The Rule
Anyone who is a die-hard Blue Jays fan will remember
baseball rule 6.03 for the rest of their lives. It states,
in short, that if the ball deflects off of the batter or his
bat during a throw from the catcher to the pitcher, the
ball is in play as long as there was no conscious effort
by the batter to interfere with the ball. When Rougned
Odor, who had been a thorn in the Jays’ side for the
entire series, scored that go-ahead run after Russell
Martin’s throw caught the bat of Shin-Soo Choo, all
sense of normalcy vanished. The umpire was calling
time, Odor was running—no one had any idea what
was going on. Roger Angell, a famed baseball essayist
who has been writing for The New Yorker since 1944,
said that he has been watching baseball since 1930
and has never seen this happen. This moment alone
would make the game one for the record books, and
it was just the beginning of the descent into madness.
The Protest
Baseball games can officially be played “under
protest.” It’s rule 4.07. If you haven’t noticed, baseball
has a rule for everything. This happened after the
Martin-Choo incident (I refuse to call it Choogate), even though Blue Jays manager John Gibbons
almost certainly knew that the protest would be
unsuccessful. It’s pretty rare, and usually happens
due to inclement weather and umps calling games too
early. Probably the most famous under protest game
is known as the “pine tar incident” involving George
Brett in 1983. The protest was successful, and the
game was re-started from the moment the protest was
called, but what I love about this game is the reasoning
for the reversal, which was an incredibly lawyer-like
rationalization of whether the “spirit of the rule” was
violated (apparently baseball also uses the purposive
approach to statutory interpretation). Anyhow, when
a game is officially called under protest, the umpire
draws a giant P in the air with his finger, which makes
me very happy.
The Trash
Not the most glorious moment in the history of
Toronto sports. After the go-ahead run was allowed
and the game officially under protest, fans started
throwing garbage onto the field. This garbage mostly
consisted of empty beer cans, and one of these cans
ended up spraying beer on a baby. The fan who threw
this can was later arrested for mischief according to
Toronto police. Later in the seventh the ruckus lead
to Edwin Encarnacion pleading with the crowd for
some sort of semblance of sanity (would someone
please think of the children!), which of course led the
Rangers to clearing the benches since they thought he
was actually egging the crowd on. Oh, and then two
Blue Jays players who weren’t even on the active roster
got ejected. This inning is just chock full of throwaway
wackiness that would stand out in any normal game
The Errors
Now we get to the bottom of the seventh. Errors
happen in baseball, it’s a part of the game. Three
errors in a row is very unusual. Two of those three
errors being made by a good defensive shortstop is
even weirder. The first of these errors vindicating
the very man whose bizzaro accident created the
go-ahead run in the top of the inning is entering the
realm of make-believe. Being a superstitious folk,
sports fans often refer to the gods of the various sport
they are watching. For example, one time the football
gods decided to make me lose a fantasy season because
I was too arrogant. Watching these errors, I wouldn’t
have batted an eye if Zeus himself started throwing
lightning bolts onto the field. The game felt completely
out of the control of human hands. Sports writer Grant
Brisbee put it best: “The baseball gods are on peyote
and throwing flaming furniture off the roof, and there
isn’t a damned thing we can do about it.”
The Flip
Everything about Jose Bautista’s three-run home
run was perfect. The intense look on his face before
he came up to bat. The swing itself. The stare-down
afterwards. And the flip. I was going to go on about
the controversy that came up afterwards and how
pitcher Sam Dyson said that Bautista should “respect
the game” and Bautista said he wasn’t going to
apologize for having enthusiasm. I was also going
to talk about how the whole “respecting the game”
narrative is pretty common in baseball and when it
gets thrown around it’s almost invariably by white
guys who say it about a player of minority descent
and it never fails to piss me off. But it’s okay, because
Bautista has made the world a better place. I wouldn’t
be surprised if a picture of the flip ended up in the
Baseball Hall of Fame.
The Mini-Bautista
ê Photo credit: Darren Calabrese / CP
Nine-year-old Oscar Wood (not to be confused with
Quidditch heartthrob Oliver Wood) dons eye black
in the shape of a beard for every single Jays game he
attends, including ones out of town. Mini-Bautista,
as he is known, has been a sort of celebrity in the
Blue Jays world before this game, but never more so
when he was caught on film mimicking the Bautista
home-run in real time. If you want to know what
pure unabashed joy looks like, watch the clip. Or tell
a bunch of Osgoode students that there’s free pizza
» see INNING, page 27