Rolling Well

Great game at the Trop or THE GREATEST GAME AT THE TROP?

This place is normally a house of horrors for the Jays, but last night had a little bit of everything good.

Dickey, knuckler dancing, two hitting the Rays over seven innings, followed by Sanchez (a knuckle ball followed by a 98 mph sinking fastball is hilarious) and then Redmond to close it out. A homer with Danny smiles, a homer with Reyes smiles and a pinch hit Navarro homer, cause why the hell not? And millions of hands to high five. And some audible "Let's go, Blue Jays!" among the twelve people who showed up to the game.

I don't know these people that said the homers were a bad thing, but they sound like jerks.

“Timely hitting, couple of home runs,” Dickey said. “We took extra bases, a lot of excitement, we pitched well. Yeah, it reminded me a lot of May when we were rolling well and everybody was contributing, which is a fun environment.”

I got into a Twitter talk re. Dickey last night, and I’ll re-iterate. I pretty much find Dickey fascinating and not much is going to deter me from wanting to have an extended conversation about books with him (you lived the dream, Stacey.) I don't care about his “pitching face” or that he seems crabby on the mound (impatience and eye rolling or whatever) or separate on the bench. People are allowed to be introverts or idiosyncratic or weird. I am those things.

And pitchers are often total jerks on the mound. I’d rather a guy be angry than sulk. But mostly I don't care.  These guys are proud and competitive. I don't think Thole is put upon. Some of my favourite Alan Ashby stories were the ones where Nolan Ryan was hilariously mean to him.

And as Wilner pointed out, Dickey's been pretty great, in his way.

Knuckleballs are capricious animals and I'm going to defend the dude. Especially when he is two hitting the Rays.

Dalton Pompey made his MLB debut last night as a pinch runner.

“When I think back to when I got drafted, I didn’t really know if I was going to make it to the big leagues or not,” said the native of Mississauga, Ont. “Now I’m here and all my friends back home are like, ‘Man, we’re going to see you [at the Rogers Centre] in like a week!’ It’s just unbelievable.”

On Rasmus sitting tonight when he's 4-11 vs Archer. I don’t know what that's about. Is he still sick? Is he on the shit list?  I just don’t know. There are a lot of outfielders running around now, and maybe the Jays are focusing on the future rather than the probable-past.

I love the kid, but I fear his time with us is almost up.