12:53 AM Eastern

It was a great win tonight as the Blue Jays ran roughshod over the Rays in a 10-run sixth inning, a frame that featured back-to-back-to-back RBI doubles and two home runs, for those who dig the sluggage, and a bunt single and two stolen bases for those who prefer the small ballitude.

Aaron Hill atoned for his mess-up in the bottom of the 5th with a two-run shot – he let a ball that got through Ricky Romero go right through his legs as he tumbled and fell, originally ruled an error and later changed to a hit – and Jose Bautista belted his 43rd long ball, a three-run shot that got him to 102 RBIs on the season, a level I’m guessing nobody on the planet ever thought he’d be able to reach a scant five months ago.  Good for him, the magical season continues.

John McDonald closed out a phenomenal month of August by going 2-for-4 with a walk and scoring three runs.  One of the hits was his career-high 5th home run of the season.  For the month, McDonald hit .382/.417/.743.  That’s right, true believers – an OPS of 1.160, which is better than major-league OPS leader Joey Votto has recorded in any single month this season.  Of course, tiny sample size alert, Johnny Mac only had 36 plate appearances this month.  Still, there has only been one season (not including this one) in McDonald’s entire 12-year career in which he’s hit more home runs than he did this month!  Good for him, as well.

OK, enough about the game.  The main reason for this post (and there will be a reminder in every blog post throughout the month of September) is to get you all motivated to go over to Facebook and vote for Tom Cheek in the contest to set the ballot for the Ford C. Frick Award for Broadcasting Excellence.

You have done a terrific job in voting for Tom in the past, and I hope it continues this year.  We have to make our voices heard, and heard loudly, in order for the committee to seriously consider Tom for the award that he so richly deserves.

For almost 30 years, Tom Cheek was the voice of baseball – the voice of summer – all across Canada.  He made a fledgling franchise real to millions of people on a nightly basis and was with them right through the ultimate success and talking to players from days gone by, they really felt as though he was part of the team.

Tom was a wonderful broadcaster, most of us can still hear that booming baritone.  The famous calls are plenty, the biggest of which we can all recite by heart:  “Touch ‘em all, Joe, you’ll never hit a bigger home run in your life.”

Tom said that call wasn’t planned, he never had an idea of what he might say if such a thing happened (and how could you think it would?), but that he said “Touch ‘em all” because he saw how Carter was bounding around the bases in the euphoria of the moment, and was honestly concerned that he would miss one of them.

Carter didn’t miss any bases in his World Series-winning trip around them in 1993, but we have missed Tom Cheek dearly since he left the broadcast following the 2004 season, returning for a visit on Opening Day in Tampa the next year.  He sat in as Jerry Howarth and Warren Sawkiw did their first game together, and asked to do one last half-inning of play-by-play – it was the top of the 4th in a game the Rays led 1-0.  Tom got behind the microphone and the Jays responded with a Frank Catalanotto double and back-to-back home runs by Orlando Hudson and Vernon Wells.  It was the last inning Tom ever did – he passed away that October, losing a valiant battle with brain cancer.

One of the things I remember best about Tom was his great sense of humour, and it came out that day.  With Warren being a little overwhelmed in the presence of Tom and Jerry (and I totally understand how he felt) in his first day on the job, he didn’t say anything in the third, when Jerry brought Tom on the broadcast.  A few minutes into it, Tom looked over at Warren and said “do you talk?”

Cheek has the resume of a Hall of Famer – he was a national treasure – and he won the fan balloting last year with 5,930 votes.  This year, with this blog running full steam, with the additions of the pre-game show and the live blog, I’m betting we can at least double that.

Voting opens Wednesday at 10:00 AM Eastern and runs until 5:00 pm Eastern on September 30th.  I think you’re allowed to vote once a day, and please do.  You have to have a facebook account in order to vote, and I’ll be setting one up tomorrow in order to do that.  I’ll get that info out to you tomorrow so that we can be friends and I can send you a daily nudge to get your vote in.

Thank you so much.  Tom Cheek is as deserving of this honour as anyone who could be brought up, and it remains a great shame that the Hall didn’t see fit to bestow it upon him while he was still around.

Here’s this evening’s edition of The JaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

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And here’s the transcript from tonight’s “Miked Up LIVE!”:

10:57 PM Eastern

The Blue Jays opened up a string of 13 straight games against the top three teams in the American League by making a couple of big mistakes on defense and not really doing anything on offense.

The big mistakes resulted in the Rays scoring four unearned runs, and their margin of victory just happened to be four.

Aaron Hill couldn’t come up with a slow roller off the bat of Carl Crawford with two out and nobody on in the 3rd – it was ruled an error which, given Crawford’s wheels, I thought was kind of tough.  Immediately afterwards, Evan Longoria hit a ground ball to shortstop Mike McCoy’s right.  He slid, but the ball kicked off his glove for a base hit.  Then Carlos Pena hit a three-run homer.

John McDonald was the other culprit.  His quick hands betrayed him as he dropped a Jason Bartlett grounder leading off the 8th, and compounded the problem by then airmailing the ball over a leaping first baseman Adam Lind.  He was assessed two errors on the play, and Bartlett moved to third on a groundout and scored on a sacrifice fly.

Now, Hill and McDonald both contributed offensively as well, scoring the Jays’ only two runs of the evening.  McDonald tripled to lead off the 3rd and scored on a Travis Snider groundout, while Hill belted his 20th home run of the season in the 5th (he also doubled, picking up one-third of the Jays’ hits on the night).  Still, they were a collective -2 on the night in the runs department.

Brett Cecil, who gave up two earned runs on five hits through seven innings, walking one, striking out five and retiring the last 13 men he faced, will tell you that it’s the pitcher’s job to pick up teammates who make errors behind him, and that the Pena home run was his fault, not Hill’s.  That’s admirable, but if either Hill or McCoy make their plays (both tough, I’ll grant you, but both makeable), Pena never comes up in that inning.

Even though the three errors cost them dearly, the Blue Jays actually flashed some sweet leather a few times.  Travis Snider made an outstanding catch on a Pena liner in the first, a full-out dive as he was coming in and to his left.  He also made a great leaping catch on a Kelly Shoppach drive that was over his head and about to hit the wall in the 4th.  McDonald made a sensational grab of a looping liner by Bartlett in the 3rd, diving to his left to snare the ball an inch off the ground, directly in front of McCoy.  And McCoy also made a terrific play to his backhand on a Willy Aybar grounder in the 4th.

Overall, the offense just wasn’t there, but that was mostly because the offense just wasn’t there.  Yunel Escobar and Lyle Overbay continue to be on the shelf, YEscobar with a sore back and Overbay with some sort of illness that’s so bad they wouldn’t let him get on the team plane (he made his way to Tampa on his own this morning).  Vernon Wells had the day off for a much-needed rest, so the Jays were left with a bit of a skeleton crew as far as a line-up was concerned, and no bench outside back-up catcher Jose Molina.  It was probably the poorest-hitting group they’ve put out there this season, but they still got the major-league home run leader up to the plate as the tying run in the 8th inning.

Even with Wade Davis pitching really well and really efficiently, Rays manager Joe Maddon wanted no part of that match-up, so he went to sinkerballer Chad Qualls, who struck Jose Bautista out to end the threat.

The Blue Jays are now one game over .500 for the month of August.  They need a win tomorrow night to secure a winning record for the month, but can’t finish with a losing record.

Quick reminder that online voting for the Ford C. Frick Award for Broadcasting Excellence gets underway on Wednesday.  I’ll keep reminding you and provide a daily link -  I may even start up a facebook page for the sole purpose of voting for Tom Cheek (since you can only vote through facebook).   It’s about time the Hall of Fame sits up and takes notice of Tom, let’s do our best to do right by him and make sure those Frick voters can’t ignore him any longer.

Here’s tonight’s edition of The JaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

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And here’s the transcript from tonight’s “Miked Up LIVE!”:

12:45 AM Eastern

So it was my fault.  As I was leaving the Jays’ clubhouse before the game, I noticed Marc Rzepczynski having a conversation with the Chief clubhouse attendant, Darren (a fine and talented young man who will no doubt have this job one day, and maybe soon – I’m watching my back, Chief!).  After their convo broke up, I asked Chief if, since I wasn’t allowed to talk to Zep before the game (he’s the starting pitcher, after all), he could pass along a Happy Birthday on my behalf.  Turns out he didn’t need to, because Rzepczynski heard me and turned and smiled in acknowledgment.

Then he went out and took the loss.  My bad.

Zep really didn’t pitch that badly.  Despite the obvious shortcomings of the “quality start” as a stat, he was only one out away from pitching one, and it’s tough to do that and be  awful.  Still, he was behind in the count most of the day and that’s trouble.

Funny, though, it was still only 2-0 Tigers when Detroit loaded the bases with one out in the 6th and rookie Casper Wells at the plate.  Dave Stieb, the 20th anniversary of whose no-hitter was celebrated today, was on the air with us and had just finished telling Jerry a story about how he lamented that he didn’t lose any of his three two-out-in-the-9th no-hit bids on a fastball.  He said he too often fell in love with his slider and neglected to remember that a well-placed fastball is everybody’s best pitch.  If he had it to do over again, he said, he’d have thrown fastballs instead of two sliders and a curveball and was confident that had he done that, he’d have had four no-no’s.

He went on to say that he had talked to Rzepczynski  and told him that even though he has terrific breaking stuff, when he gets in trouble, he’ll regret it if he gets beaten on anything but the fastball.  When the count got to 3-2 on Wells, Stieb said he needed to throw a fastball.  He did, and Wells blasted it to deep left-centre for a two-run double.  Oops.  Hey, maybe it wasn’t my fault after all!

Zep left the game in the capable hands of Jesse Carlson, who struck out DJ Will Rhymes to end the inning, and two-hitter (!) John McDonald hit his career-high-tying fourth home run of the season in the bottom of the frame to get the Jays back within three, but then the roof fell in.  Carlson gave up two big flies in the 7th, Brian Tallet came on to give up a three-run shot in the 8th and that was that.

Adam Lind’s two-out three-run shot in the bottom of the 9th, keeping his hands back beautifully on a Jose Valverde change-up, only served to make it less of a blowout.

So the Blue Jays wind up 4-3 on the homestand, and they’re 14-11 so far through the “kinda great 38″ (TM), which is still a 91-win pace over a full season.  And hey, if they were only going to win one of the two series in the homestand, wouldn’t you rather it have been the one against the Yankees?

Now they dive right into the fire, though, a weeklong road trip through St. Petersburg and The Bronx.  A fine test.  Last time they played these two teams back-to-back, the Jays went 5-1.

This road trip will feature the final start of the season for one Brandon Morrow.  He’ll throw the opener at Yankee Stadium on Friday afternoon and then get shut down.  The rule of thumb with young pitchers is to avoid increasing their year-to-year workload by more than 30 innings.  Last season, bounced from the bullpen to the rotation, Morrow threw 124 2/3 innings.  He’s up to 143 1/3.  One more start could get him to about 150, and that’s enough.

By the way, Morrow could be getting shut down coming off a pitcher of the month award, if the voters look beyond the basics.  He was 3-0, 2.97 in August, which is nice, but not spectacular.  However, he had a WHIP of 1.022 and struck out an unbelievable 14.5 hitters per nine innings.  Also, he threw one of the greatest games ever pitched.

So must we worry about any of the other starters being shut down?  Alex Anthopoulos mentioned that the Jays might need two spot starters in September, so that means Morrow’s not the only guy they’re thinking about.  At the moment, Ricky Romero has thrown 20 fewer innings than he did last year, so he should be OK. Brett Cecil has thrown three fewer innings than he did last year, so they might have to skip him once down the stretch.  Rzepczynski has thrown 71 fewer innings than he did last year, so he’s good to go.  As for Shaun Marcum, I don’t know what the thinking is on him.  He’s at 157 innings, which is two off his major-league career-high set back in 2007.  In 2008, he threw 168 1/3 (including the minors), but last year he didn’t pitch at all.  So will the “rule of 30″ apply to his ’08 numbers, in which case he’d have 41 left for this year, or is there some other numbers upon which they’ve decided based on the info about Tommy John comebacks?  I don’t know, we’ll keep an eye.

So who will replace Morrow, who may well be the brightest break-out star on this team other than Jose Bautista?  Brad Mills is the first thought, of course, but he’s already at 116 1/3 innings this season after having thrown 92 last year.  The rule of 30 applies to him, too, and he’s just about there.  Robert Ray is a possibility, though the Marcum conundrum applies to him since he spent so much time on the shelf last season.

There’s Scott Richmond, a great choice, but he’s currently pitching for New Hampshire as they get set for a playoff run, so they might want to keep him there.  I would think we’ll see Richmond once the Fisher Cats are done with their post-season.

I think we may very well wind up seeing Luis Perez, a lefty who’s currently struggling in Vegas but who pitched in the Futures Game last year.  He’s got tons of innings left, he’s not on a playoff team, he’s on the 40-man roster – why not take a quick look?

Richmond and Perez would be my guesses for the two spot starters the Jays will need in September (assuming everything else stays the same – a tough assumption), though we may well see Brian Tallet get a spot start or two in there as well.

Oh, and John McDonald hitting second today?  That’s nothing to get upset about, just something to which we must be resigned for another five weeks.  Cito has been building his line-ups like that ever since 1989.  The two-hitter is sitting?  The guy who comes in for him hits in the two-hole so as not to disturb the remainder of the line-up.  To Johnny Mac’s credit, he did go deep today, and with the 2-for-4 is hitting .370/.393/.667 for the month of August.  A tiny little sample size of 28 plate appearances, but there’s nothing wrong with riding the hot bat.

Here’s this afternoon’s edition of The JaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

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And here’s the transcript from this afternoon’s “Miked Up LIVE!”:

5:22 PM Eastern

Except to say that Travis Snider really swung the bat well today – it’s days like this that convince me he’s going to wind up being really, really good.  Edwin Encarnacion has been put on the disabled list with a sprained right wrist, so maybe that will stop the spinning wheel of rotating off-days for at least a couple of weeks.

And come on, Phil Cuzzi.  The time for robot umpires is nigh!

Here’s this afternoon’s edition of The JaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

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And here’s the transcript from today’s “Miked Up LIVE!”:

11:40 PM Eastern

Except to say that in the midst of the worst season of his career, how cool is it that Aaron Hill has either scored or driven in the winning run in each of the Blue Jays’ three walk-off victories this season?

Here’s tonight’s edition of The JaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

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And here’s the transcript of tonight’s “Miked Up LIVE!”:

12:12 AM Eastern

You know the saying – you can’t do it too often without getting burned.   Tonight the Blue Jays got burned awfully badly because they’ve continued to play with fire; fire being the role portrayed by Edwin Encarnacion at third base.

I’ve mentioned a few times the last couple of weeks how Encarnacion has almost gotten Aaron Hill killed with his wild throws to second base – when the throw’s not on, it drifts to the right-field side of the bag, often taking Hill directly into the path of the oncoming runner.

Tonight though, Encarnacion’s wild throw didn’t get Hill pancaked.  It was too far off the bag for Hill to even come up with, and as a result the fourth inning continued.

Ricky Romero was fighting his control all night against the Tigers, but he hadn’t give up a run into the fourth.  The Tigers had runners on the corners with one out and Ryan Raburn at the plate, with Romero looking through his bag of tricks to try to find something that he could throw for a strike and get Raburn to pound into the ground for an inning-ending double play.

He did, and Raburn hit a hard ground ball right to Encarnacion at third.  If he makes a reasonable throw to second, it’s likely a double play and the inning is over with the score 0-0.  He made a horrible throw, no outs were recorded and a run scored.  The next hitter, Jhonny Peralta, went deep – the three-run shot made it 4-0, and three batters later Gerald Laird hit a two-run job.  A six-run inning and that was pretty much the end of that.

Encarnacion had been performing a lot better defensively since his return from Las Vegas, but the one thing he hasn’t been able to do well on a consistent basis is make that DP-starting throw to second.  Too often Hill has bailed him out with some great stretches while still holding onto the bag – risking some pretty heavy collisions with baserunners – but this time there was no bailage to be found.

I will grant you that, of course, Encarnacion didn’t give up either of the home runs hit in the inning, nor did he last just 5 2/3 innings and wind up throwing more balls than strikes.  Part of the “development” area of this season (Travis Snider not included, evidently) is for Romero to face that kind of adversity and learn to keep his focus and fight his way out of it.  Errors will happen, you can’t let it get to you.  For the most part,  Romero hasn’t looked like a guy who has had to battle to maintain his focus at all, and I’m not going to say that the throwing error threw him off his game, but he did give up the homer right after, an then another, and the Tigers scored six runs that they wouldn’t have had Encarnacion made a good throw.

But don’t look for the Jays give Edwin a day off.  It’s much easier just to choose one of Snider or Fred Lewis to sit, and whoever plays can lead off.  Before the game tonight Cito admitted that he hadn’t been doing a good job of employing the rotation of rest for his group of seven (Bautista, Encarnacion, Lewis, Lind, Overbay, Snider, Wells), only six of whom can play on any given night.  Too hard to take Bautista out of the line-up, he prefers Lewis and Snider in left than right (implying that he’d be far less comfortable with Bautista at third).  So he said he’s likely to have Lewis and Snider simply share time, playing a couple of games and then getting a couple of days off.

It really is mind-bottling.  The goal of the remainder of this season should be two-fold:  Get Snider as many at-bats as you can and get Lind as much work at first base as you can.  The third fold is keeping the young pitching healthy.  But we’re not seeing much of Lind at first base because Gaston feels obliged to play Overbay so that he can get a good contract next season, and even after hearing (and writing) the reasoning, I’m still not sure why we’re only going to see Snider half the time.  Sure, it may change, and they may get a lot of work in mid-September once the Jays are through the “Kinda Great 38″ (TM), but what a wasted opportunity this past month has been.

Here’s tonight’s edition of The JaysTalk, with special guest Tony Fernandez:

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And here’s the transcript from tonight’s “Miked Up LIVE!”:

12:30 AM Eastern

The Blue Jays rebounded rather nicely from being thumped last night, and it was all because of Brett Cecil.

Well, it was mostly because of Brett Cecil.  The young lefty (he just turned 24 last month!) had to pull a Houdini act early, as has become his trademark, but he settled down and threw eight very strong innings, allowing only seven hits, one of which was a two-run homer by Marcus Thames – and that was all the damage.

Cecil only walked two, and had thrown just 90 pitches through seven innings of work.  That’s remarkable efficiency against a Yankee team that makes its living by wearing down pitchers and raising their pitch counts.  Instead, it was his opposite number, Phil Hughes, whose pitch count was in triple digits by the 4th inning.

With the win, Cecil improved to 7-1 this season against the A.L. East, with only one of those wins coming against the Baltimore Orioles.  I know pitchers have almost no control over their won-lost record, but that’s still pretty impressive.  Against the Yankees and Rays, the two teams tied for baseball’s best record, Cecil is 5-0, 2.13 with a WHIP of 1.039.  That’s more than pretty impressive.

It appears as though the Jays have themselves a real winner here, another great building block what is looking to be a really bright future.

Vernon Wells is part of that future, too, and it was nice to see him break out of his slump in a big way tonight.  He hit a rocket to right-centre in his first at-bat for an RBI triple, went deep the next time up and scorched a grounder up the middle in his next at-bat that wound up being an RBI single because Jose Bautista hustled from first and beat Robinson Cano’s flip to second base (forgive me for saying this, but Derek Jeter was a hair late to cover the bag).

With a chance for the Blue Jays’ first-ever legitimate cycle, Wells lined out to the warning track in left in the 6th, and never came to the plate again.

The home run was Vernon’s first since August 3rd (July 25th was the last time he has hit a homer against a team other than the Yankees), and the four RBIs matched what he’d produced in the 17 games previous.  Wells can be a very, very streaky hitter, and if he’s started out on a hot streak it’ll be awfully fun to watch.

It’s funny, and it’s one of the reasons I said on The JaysTalk that we have become a society of six-month olds (I wish I could remember where I stole that from) – one of the commenters on the live blog tonight said that Wells and Bautista were really hitting well lately.  By “lately” for Vernon, he meant tonight and last night.

The six-month old thing is a reference to the fact that a six-month old infant sees what’s in front of it and expects that that’s how things are, and that they’ll never change.  It’s the reason everyone thought Wells was done after last year and why so many people seem to think that Jose Bautista is a legit 40 home run per year guy (someone actually said that on The JaysTalk tonight!).

It was also nice to see how well Aaron Hill reacted to being busted down to the eighth spot in the order, walking in his first two plate appearances and then launching his 19th home run of the season; a hit that snapped an 0-for-20.

The Blue Jays are 12-9 so far in the “kinda great 38″  – a run of games from August 2nd to mid-September in which they face nothing but teams that are no worse than two games under .500 (thanks, Oakland and Detroit, for wrecking the earlier “nothing but winning teams” theme).  12-9 is pretty terrific, especially when you consider how badly the Jays did in a similar run in June.  And while 12-9 may not look all that exciting – do it over the course of a full season, and you’ve got 93 wins.

Here’s tonight’s edition of The JaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

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And here’s the transcript from tonight’s “Miked Up LIVE!”:

11:10 PM Eastern

There’s really not much more to say about this one.  Marc Rzepczynski had a rough night, getting blasted for three homers in the third inning, and Brian Tallet wasn’t much better, allowing a three-run bomb to Curtis Granderson (lefty on lefty!) and a solo shot to Derek Jeter in the 5th inning.  Tallet, in what may well be his swan song season as a Blue Jay, has now allowed 17 home runs in 62 1/3 innings this season.

On the good news front, Vernon Wells drove in a couple of runs – his first RBIs since his bloop ribbie single in the first inning of Brandon Morrow’s tour de force back on August 8th.  Adam Lind had a pair of hits as well, including a two-run double in the 7th, and Travis Snider showed off his wheels yet again with a pair of infield singles.

But in an overall sense – yuck.

Here’s tonight’s edition of The JaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

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And here’s the transcript from tonight’s “Miked Up LIVE!”:

11:30 PM Eastern

As I mentioned in the live blog tonight, if you had suggested to me before this season that Jose Bautista would hit 40 home runs this year I would have been happy to wager not just everything that I have to my name, but also everything I would ever own in the future.

Never mind a bet that would have Bautista at 40 homers before the end of August.  Yeesh.

The power display continued tonight, with his two bombs supplying all the offence in a one-run win over the Yankees, augmenting a brilliant performance by Brandon Morrow, who struck out 12 in six innings of four-hitter.  By the way, it should be noted that Morrow’s career is not over, nor does he have an appointment with Dr. James Andrews to schedule Tommy John surgery, as most commenters suggested was imminent after his last start.

Anyway, back to Bautista.  His first home run was a moonshot into the 200-level in left centre, giving the Jays a one-run lead, and he may well have styled and profiled it a little bit due to the no-doubtedness of the balst, the overall situation, and the fact that he had to answer steroid questions from about half a dozen reporters before the game because of a column on the Toronto Star’s website this weekend.

Rookie Ivan Nova, making his first big-league start for the Yankees, may have taken exception to the styling and/or profiling with the first jack (though it wasn’t that bad).  In Bautista’s next at-bat, Nova threw a fastball almost directly over Bautista’s head, causing Jose to slowly stomp out towards the mound, bat in hand, which of course led to the benches and bullpens emptying in a ridiculous, but necessary dance.  Once Bautista goes out, the Jays’ dugout has to empty to protect their teammate, who is one against nine, and once THAT happens, the Yanks have to come out to protect their guys.

In the minor leagues, you’re ejected once you leave the dugout or the bullpen.  That means that no hitter is ever going to charge the mound, because he’ll get thoroughly pummelled.  Not a bad idea, and it would save a lot of wasted time.

The best revenge, of course, is a big hit (or a line drive right back through the box), and Bautista took one of his furious swings and belted a ball to deep centre, just not deep enough.  The next time up, though – different story.  A shot to left field, breaking the tie.  Not off Nova, but just as sweet.  Number 40 and a big curtain call, and thoroughly well-deserved – he’s had an amazing season.

I interviewed Bautista before the game to get his reaction to that Star column that made the firm insinuation that he’s taking performance-enhancing drugs.  I asked him directly if he was on steroids, and he denied it, and I think I was about the 5th or 6th reporter to ask him that question tonight.  The interview can be found in the audio on demand section of this very website.

It really is too bad that a career season can’t simply be celebrated without the spectre of  the Steroid Era rearing its ugly head, but sadly that’s simply reality now.  I just wish the story had been written by someone who had actually been down to the ballpark or who had spoken to Bautista – or at least someone who was willing to come down and face the music in the clubhouse after having written such a thing.  And maybe even without the comparison to Roger Clemens (as in – see, he denied it, but we know he did it!).

Bautista denied using anything, though there’s no possible scenario in which he would have answered my question in the affirmative, and like everyone in the majors this season with the exception of Ronny Paulino, he hasn’t failed a test.  That may not be enough for some, but it’s all we’ve got.  You can either choose to believe those who have passed tests are clean or you can choose to believe that cheating is still rampant in the game and enjoy the game anyway.  I’m in the latter camp – I believe that cheating is rampant in all major professional sports (including – gulp – hockey), but I have no idea who’s clean and who isn’t.

In hitting his 40th home run of the season, Bautista joined some rare Blue Jays company.  Jesse Barfield and George Bell did it in back-to-back seasons (1986 and 87), Carlos Delgado and Shawn Green did it in the same season (1999), as did Delgado and Tony Batista (2000), and Jose Canseco did it in 1998 (Delgado also hit 42 in 2003, with no company).  Interesting to look at some of those names if you believe there’s some taint on Bautista’s season.  So Bautista becomes the seventh Blue Jay ever to record a 40-homer season, and he sits seven home runs away from Bell’s single-season club record of 47.

We discussed Jose plenty on this evening’s edition of The JaysTalk, which is presented here, for your listening pleasure:

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And here’s the transcript from tonight’s “Miked Up LIVE!”:

11:28 PM Eastern

That was the difference between actual game time and mostly-wasted-time in Boston this afternoon, two minutes.  The Jays’ loss to the Red Sox took two hours and 45 minutes to play, and featured two hours and 43 minutes of rain delay.

Now, I’m not complaining about the long day, don’t get me wrong – The Rain Delay Programme is a lot of fun, and I’m always impressed by the volume of calls that we get (thanks very much for that, by the way).  The problem is that there was so much time spent in delay today when it simply wasn’t raining, and it seems more and more to be that way lately.

The game was scheduled to start at 1:35 PM Eastern, and at that time there was a light drizzle at Fenway Park.  They could have started on time, but the fear of stronger rain on its way made them wait until they thought there would be a window of clear weather long enough to play at least five innings, so as not to waste Clay Buchholz.  It’s the Red Sox in control of things until the first pitch, remember.

While they were playing through a torrent in New York, they waited in drizzle in Boston.  The game finally started, an hour and 44 minutes late, and it started to pour in the top of the third.  They put up with the deluge for three or four minutes, and then the teams were pulled off the field with a 1-1 count on Adam Lind, a runner on first and two out.  About five minutes later, it stopped raining, but they didn’t restart the game for another 54 minutes.

This I don’t get, but I’m not sure there’s a solution.  I mean, you don’t want anyone to get hurt, you don’t want the fans in the stands to have to sit through pouring rain, and you want to get the field covered as quickly as possible so there aren’t any puddles formed anywhere on the field – but can’t you delay putting the tarp out for five or ten minutes after you pull the players off the field, just in case?

Anyway, the game wasn’t much of a show.  Vernon Wells, who was a major topic of conversation throughout both Rain Delay Programmes, managed a couple of hits, but his teammates combined for only four more.

The Jays had the leadoff man on in six of the first seven innings, and only went down in order once the whole afternoon/evening, but they didn’t score.

Shaun Marcum went six phenomenal innings of one-hitter, but also pitched the fifth, in which he allowed a David Ortiz leadoff triple, an Adrian Beltre double to follow and a two-out home run by Bill Hall that left the ballpark up and over the Monster seats.

That was about it, and the Blue Jays wound up 4-5 on their road trip, which isn’t a bad result at all, but they come home having lost ground both in the division and the wild card chase, which should stamp out the faint hope any fans might have left that they’re going to make a run at the post-season (and that’s OK – they’re still entertaining as hell and will wind up far better than almost anyone thought they could be this season).

Back to Vernon for a second.  The rotating wheel of off-days landed on Aaron Hill today (with Edwin Encarnacion still bothered by the sore wrist) and in recent days has landed on Travis Snider or Fred Lewis more often than anyone.  The two men with whom it has yet to cast its lot are Wells and Jose Bautista.  Now, Bautista is doing a pretty swell job, I must say.  He’s having a career year, an MVP-type season – he could well become just the second Blue Jay ever to lead the major leagues in home runs in a single season (Jesse Barfield, 1986), and he shouldn’t be sitting.

Wells, on the other hand………  Even with his 2-for-4 day today, check out these numbers:  Since the Blue Jays left for their 3-6 road trip through Tampa, Denver and San Diego back on June 6th,  Wells has hit an ugly .229/.287/.394.  In 61 games, he’s hit seven home runs and driven in 20 runs – that’s a 162-game pace of 19 and 53.  He hasn’t gone yard since August 3rd, nearly three weeks ago.

I’m certain Wells isn’t right.  I don’t think he’s hiding a devastating injury or anything, but he did dislocate a toe a couple of weeks ago and only missed one game, and we know he has the hamstring issue.  It’s nagging stuff, and though he takes pride in playing through everything without ever complaining, he shouldn’t be exempt from the occasional day off.  It would probably do him a lot more good than harm, even if he’s going to react badly to being sat down.  A day off every week and a half, say, and we might see a revitalized centrefielder.  Unfortunately, I don’t see it happening.

There was no JaysTalk today, but we had a pair of lengthy Rain Delay Programmes, and here they are for your listening pleasure.  First, the pre-game:

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And also, the in-game, or The Rain Delay Programme, version 2.0:

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And finally, the transcript of this afternoon/evening’s “Miked Up LIVE!”  I apologize again for the brutal lag that we’ve had on the chat the last few days.  Now that the Jays are home for a week it won’t be an issue – and hopefully our fine techies can use the time that the Fan590 studio is empty while we’re at the ballpark to fix the problem so that we can once again enjoy timely commentary on the ballgame even when the Jays are on the road.