DUNEDIN — Days like this are Florida’s dirty little secret.
Come for the sun! Come for the warm breezes! Shorts and T-shirts and a cold beer to pass an idyllic tropical afternoon at the ball park.
Well, not quite.
This was hoodies and overcoats, toques and hot chocolate and a 40-km/h wind that turned the 3,096 (that’s what they announced) brave souls at Dunedin Stadium into human popsicles.
This was the kind of weather the Blue Jays and Detroit Tigers hope to be experiencing this season ... in October. But not in March and not in Florida.
So this season of discovery for the Blue Jays is underway but it felt more like the Iditarod than the Grapefruit League. They are looking for a few good men and Wednesday they began the process of sifting through one of the most interesting collections of young talent that they have ever assembled, to find them.
They had the Blue Brothers out front entertaining the huddled masses as they arrived and they had the traditional anthem-massacre by a well-intentioned young warbler. They even had the world’s largest grill — a 26-wheel tanker truck — pumping out mouth-watering brats.
It could have been a good time had it not felt like downtown Moose Factory.
It is a brave new world for the Jays and they didn’t waste any time showing off their intention to be more aggressive in their pursuit of offence.
In the bottom of the first inning, Jose Bautista led off with a single. Aaron Hill followed with a walk. With Adam Lind at the plate facing a two-strike count, Bautista and Hill were off with the pitch on a successful double-steal. Lind swung and missed but suddenly there were two men in scoring position. Jeremy Bonderman successfully pitched out of the jam but the point was made.
“We’re going to be aggressive in a smart way,” Toronto manager Cito Gaston said. “If the pitcher’s going to give it to us, we’re going to take it. We are going to do some small things to try to win.
“We’re not going to run ourselves out of games. If we do that, then that’s just crazy. We’re going to do some things we haven’t done before, if we’ve got the guys to do it with. (In this case) Jose knows how to get a good jump. And Aaron’s going to be aggressive.”
In the end, the Jays made a big comeback to take the lead with four runs in the eighth inning, overcoming a 5-2 Detroit lead. But a windblown triple scored the tying and go-ahead runs for the Tigers in the top of the ninth and that’s how it ended.
“We gave it back to them,” Gaston said. “We were so close to winning that ball game. Our guys came back and almost tied it again. We battled, so that’s okay.”
There was another moment all too reminiscent of Travis Snider’s struggles of a year ago, after he made the club out of spring training. In the fourth inning, he came to the plate with the bases loaded and nobody out and saw four breaking pitches in a row from lefty Nate Robertson. He flailed wildly at three of them.
“If he’s going to play every day, he’s going to have to hit some left-handers,” Gaston said. “That was a tough situation for him. Unfortunately, every one of the eight guys ahead of him got to hit against the right-hander. He gets the left-hander. He’s a kid and he draws the left-hander.”
Snider’s aggression in that situation has to be tempered with common sense.
“Experienced hitters would probably take those pitches,” Gaston said. “That’s one thing he has got to work on is to get a strike. If he takes those pitches, then now, he gets chance to hit a fastball.”
Later in the game, in the eighth inning with a Detroit runner breaking from third, Toronto first baseman Randy Ruiz missed an opportunity to cut the run off at the plate when he clanked an easy grounder.
He scrambled to get the out at first but the run could have been cut off.
After the play, a few seconds of silence followed and then a guy with a foghorn voice called out: “You’re gonna have a long year, Cito.”
ken.fidlin@sunmedia.ca
