Last night’s heartbreaking Blue Jays game, in GIFs
Last night’s Jays game—the third in a seven-game series that will determine whether Toronto goes to the World Series—started with Cleveland’s pitcher leaking his lifeblood all over the Rogers Centre’s Astroturf, and it was pretty much all downhill from there. For those who didn’t have the heart to watch the Jays lose for three and a half hours, here’s the entire thing in a few convenient GIFs.
The bloody hand
Things got a little Macbeth-y in the first inning, when Cleveland’s starting pitcher, Trevor Bauer, started bleeding all over his pitching hand, the mound and the baseball. Bauer had injured his pinky in a drone accident three days prior, and was pitching with ten stitches. MLB rules prohibit foreign substances on the baseball (including human blood, apparently), so Bauer had no choice but to leave the game.
The solo shot
Michael Saunders answered Cleveland’s first-inning run with a homer in the second, but the elation was short-lived. Cleveland’s Mike Napoli hit a home run of his own two innings later, putting his team back in the lead.
The equalizer
Ezequiel Carrera sent a ball careening into the blinding LEDs on a display screen on the Rogers Centre outfield fence. The bright lights and the odd bounce seem to have disoriented the Cleveland outfielders, allowing Carrera to reach third, then score on a Ryan Goins groundout, tying the game. This would turn out to be the last good news of the night.
The tie-breaker
Jason Kipnis smacked a home run in the seventh inning, putting Cleveland in the lead once again. Marcus Stroman was saying what everyone in the stands was thinking.
The deathblow
The Jays’ last chance came in the seventh inning. Josh Donaldson’s rip might have tied the game—that is, if Cleveland’s Coco Crisp hadn’t scooped up the ball with an impressive diving catch. At least this time the game-deciding ball was caught by an actual baseball player, and not some idiot kid in the stands.
The last hope
In the ninth inning, with two outs, the Jays had a runner on base. If Darwin Barney were able to hit a home run, the game would have been tied. The crowd was starting to look a little stressed out.
But of course, it was not to be:
