6ix Baggers — №79: Polanco'd
Down 0-2 and heading on the road to Seattle, not exactly where you want to be. Let's talk about it.
Dear Drink Carters and part-time playoff curious baseball fans
10 years ago today Jose Bautista launched the bat flip around the world.
But that was like we were in the ALDS this year. Nobody predicted this ship happens, man overboard down situation going into game 3.
Scratch that—nobody even imagined this. The Seattle Mariners, a team that’s made an art form out of breaking hearts and defying logic the last few months in equal measure are somehow, inexplicably, impossibly up 2-0 in the series. Worse the Blue Jays “have only one hit from third inning on in the series.”
If you’re rubbing your eyes wondering if you read that correctly, you’re not alone. The Mariners—yes, those Mariners—have won two straight games in Toronto where the Jays went 54-27 during the regular season and now stand on the precipice of going out with a wimper. Much to the delight of Yankee fans.
Are we witnessing a genuine breakthrough, winning a third game in the ALCS, possibly punching their ticket to the World Series for the first time, or is this just setting up Seattle for the most devastating collapse in franchise history?
For the Jays? Sarah Langs notes, “In postseason history, teams taking a 2-0 lead in any best-of-seven series have gone on to take that series 78 of 93 times (83.9%) In series with the current 2-3-2 format, teams winning both Games 1 and 2 on the road have prevailed in the series 24 of 27 times (88.9%).”
Game 1
Gausman threw well enough to win but Toronto forgot how to baseball. That’s all you can say here. Cal Raleigh happened. The same Raleigh who’s been haunting Toronto since a 2022 wild card series showed up again, because apparently that’s just what he does now, carrying around Blue Jays on his trident.
Despite the shortest rest of his career, Bryce Miller carved through the Jays lineup like they’d never seen a baseball before. Rogers Centre spent nine innings waiting for the Jays bat’s wake up, they never did. We might need Jobu to wake the bats up.
To be honest, if we look back, we might be able to trace the offensive drop to the Mayor’s social media clips that like a black hole of cringe that is sucking all hits out of this team.
Game 2
The bats that murdered the Yankees went 0-for-dignity against a bullpen held together with duct tape and prayers. Now suddenly it’s 10-3 and everyone’s wondering if the plane to Seattle has enough fuel to just keep going.
Three home runs. Three different gut punches. The crowd went from believing to leaving in the span of four innings, and now the Jays are heading to Seattle down 0-2 with their season on life support. And Jorge Polanco is an October legend.
As teammate and game 2 triple guy Mitch Garver notes, “His ringtone is ‘Top Gun.’ He has a Porsche 911 and drives the speed limit, He’s happy, always laughing, fun to be around.”
Jorge Polanco, October’s newest hero. For now.
Walkoffs
A few more quick fastballs for you to enjoy until our next edition.
Remembering the last time the Jays were in the ALCS
We started down 2-0 in this one too. And it didn’t get much better. But more shocking is seeing who the Jays put up against the Indians in that series. Let’s just say we don’t miss Darwin Barney, Ryan Goins or Ezequiel Carrera.
Old Games: The Last Game in the Kingdome
I saw quite a few games in the Kingdome back in the day. The Mariners said farewell to the ugly but beautiful Kingdome on June 27, 1999, with a 5-2 victory over the Texas Rangers in their 1,765th and final game at the venue.
Fittingly, Ken Griffey Jr. provided the heroics, hitting the stadium’s final home run and making a trademark home run robbery to help secure the win.After the final out, thousands of fans lit up the stadium with flashbulbs, capturing one last memory of a ballpark that had been home to the Mariners for 22 and a half seasons.
Three weeks later, the team opened Safeco Field, and the Kingdome was imploded on March 26, 2000, nearly 24 years after it first opened.
Goat Yoga
The Mariners have always been good at their ads. This one is particularly great and you can watch over 170 of these from over the years. Like this Jay Buhner haircut classic. I still remember they were doing haircuts outside the stadium one game. Incredible.
And now you know: The Cricket Nerd Who Invented Box Scores
Henry Chadwick was born in England in 1824, grew up obsessed with cricket, moved to Brooklyn, and proceeded to invent the thing you check before your first sip of coffee: the box score.
On October 22, 1859, this Brooklyn sportswriter published what’s considered the first real box score—tracking runs, hits, put-outs, assists and errors for a game between the Brooklyn Excelsiors and Brooklyn Stars. Before that? Newspapers basically just wrote “yeah, they scored some runs” and called it a day.
Chadwick also invented the term “strike-out.” And that “K” you see on the scorecard? Because we all keep score like old timey games? That’s because he wrote “the batter was struck,” and somehow we’re all still using his shorthand 165 years later.
Life Goals: Boggs Tavern
Rich Davis of Plainfield, Illinois, turned his basement into “The Boggs Tavern,” a shrine to Hall of Famer Wade Boggs complete with thousands of cards, hundreds of pieces of memorabilia, and even a pair of the third baseman’s old Red Sox shower shoes.
The collection began on Christmas 1985, when an 11-year-old Davis pulled a Boggs rookie card from a pack of 1983 Donruss and was amazed it was worth $10.
In early August, Davis achieved what might be the ultimate collector’s dream: Boggs himself came to visit, arriving in Davis’ Boggs-themed car nicknamed “The General Boggs.”
I really hope someone on the Jays flight did what Wade Boggs did once.
See you next week for The Drink Cart’s Wednesday and Friday editions and who knows, maybe another baseball one after game 2. That is not a threat. Or is it?