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The bottles were popping and the champagne flowing as mayhem erupted in the Blue Jays’ clubhouse in the aftermath of their beatdown of Boston on Friday night at the Rogers Centre.
The bottles were popping and the champagne flowing as mayhem erupted in the Blue Jays’ clubhouse in the aftermath of their beatdown of Boston on Friday night at the Rogers Centre.
It was the same Red Sox team that helped the Jays officially clinch a post-season berth by beating the Baltimore Orioles on Thursday, an off-day for Toronto.
The Blue Jays promised to throw themselves a bash and they did.
For the record, the Jays showed no mercy in handing the Red Sox a 9-0 loss Friday night, the first of a three-game series that will wrap up their final home stand before the post-season begins.
When the assembled media was allowed access to the jubilant clubhouse, the strains of Lil’ Wayne were being belted out. On the field, the Jays belted three home runs in support of Alek Manoah, who didn’t need much help on this night.
After the initial celebration in the clubhouse, the players gathered on the field for group pictures, to soak in the moment and swill more of the bubbly.
Given the recent history of the team and its itinerant existence during the onslaught of COVID, the scene was expected and justified. The Jays needed to exhale and they left no bottle unopened.
The Jays, however, still have games to be played — two more against the Bosox, then three in Baltimore — which will determine where they begin their wild-card series.
For fans of the team, they may have seen the last of Manoah, for the time being anyway.
What has been made abundantly clear is that the big right-hander must be on the mound when the playoffs begin. However, Manoah is lined up to pitch in the season’s final game — with the operative word being ‘needed.’ If Wednesday’s finale in Baltimore carries any home-field repercussions, turning to Manoah is a no-brainer.
The hope, however, is that home field will already be clinched with Manoah being a tabbed to start baseball’s second season. Heading into Saturday’s action, the Jays lead the Seattle Mariners by a game and a half, and the Tampa Bay Rays by two in the chase for wild-card seeding. The top WC team gets home field for the entire best-of-three series.
Manoah was marvelous Friday night against the Red Sox. He didn’t exactly steal the show, but he did show why he’s the ace of Toronto’s staff.
In the sixth, leadoff hitter Jarren Duran hit a broken-bat single to centre. Manoah then got Rafael Devers to ground into a double play and ended the inning ended with a meekly hit ground out by Xander Bogaerts.
Turns out it was the end of the line for Manoah, who was met with well-deserved congratulatory handshakes in the dugout.
Boston didn’t get its first base-runner in scoring position until in the top half of the fourth inning, when Devers and advanced to second on a wild pitch. But he would be left stranded after J.D. Martinez grounded out to second to end the inning.
With out in the fifth, Manoah induced a grounder behind first base to Abraham Almonte but was slow coming off the mound and wasn’t able to even take the throw. Almonte easily reached base as Boston recorded its first hit off Manoah.
VLAD THE IMPALER
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. belted one of his patented no-doubters in the third inning, a two-run blast that gave the home side a 4-0 lead.
For Vlad, it was his 31st long ball of the season to drive in his 94th and 95th runs of the season.
While he’s nowhere near last year’s 48-homer campaign, a hot-hitting Guerrero heading into the playoffs will go a long way in determining how deep Toronto can make a run.
Friday’s bomb was his first homer since Sept. 21 when the Jays were in Philly.
He ended the month of September with just four homers.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
George Springer didn’t waste much time in getting on base. On the first pitch he saw from Boston starter Nick Pivetta, Toronto’s leadoff hitter hit a shot to centre for a single.
Up stepped Bo Bichette. On the second pitch Bichette saw, he stroked a single to left.
Springer and Bichette both advanced on a passed ball.
Springer would come around to score the game’s first run on a groundout by
Alejandro Kirk, who batted cleanup.
In the eighth inning, Bichette knocked in his 47th run of September to tie Tony Fernandez and Lloyd Moseby for the most in any calendar month in franchise history.
TO CELEBRATE IS GREAT
The Jays took to the field knowing they had already clinched a berth in the post-season when Boston defeated Baltimore on Thursday night.
The plan, according to interim manager John Schneider, was for the team to celebrate its accomplishment regardless of Friday night’s outcome.
“I think whenever you have a chance to do that you have to embrace it,” said Schneider prior to opening pitch. ”That doesn’t happen all the time and I can’t wait to have a good time with that group.”
For Bichette, who watched the Red Sox defeat the Orioles with teammate Santiago Espinal, the Jays have every right to bask in the glow of a playoff appearance.
“All the hard work paid off,’’ he said. “We put a lot in and we had high expectations of ourselves and we were able to accomplish it.
“There’s still more work to do, obviously, and we expect more but we definitely need to enjoy this.”
SOBERING MOMENT
As part of the team’s recognition and acknowledgments to honour the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a moment of silence was held.
The Survivors’ Flag was featured throughout Rogers Centre to honour survivors and all the lives impacted by the residential school system.
The anthem was performed in Blackfoot, English and French.
CATCH-22
Kirk was behind the plate in the series opener serving as Manoah’s unofficial personal catcher.
In fact, only once hasn’t Kirk been Manoah’s battery-mate this season when the big right-hander was on the mound.
The pitcher-catcher combo seems to be working and there appears to be no discernible reason why the Blue Jays would deviate from this pattern once the post-season begins.
Danny Jansen, Toronto’s other catcher, was also in the lineup in the rare role as DH, batting eighth in the order.
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LOS ANGELES –
Only a week has passed since the Los Angeles Dodgers abruptly fired Ippei Mizuhara, the interpreter and constant companion of their new $700 million slugger, Shohei Ohtani.
But the biggest story of baseball’s spring is still murky — and shocking — as the regular season begins in earnest Thursday.
The scandal encompasses gambling, alleged theft, extensive deceit and the breakup of an enduring partnership between the majors’ biggest star and his right-hand man. Investigations are underway by the IRS and Major League Baseball, and Ohtani publicly laid out a version of events Monday that placed the responsibility entirely on Mizuhara.
Here are the basics as Ohtani and the Dodgers prepare for their home opener against St. Louis on Thursday:
Ohtani claims his close friend repeatedly took money from his accounts to fund his illegal sports gambling habit. Ohtani also says he was completely unaware of the “massive theft,” as his lawyers termed it, until Mizuhara confessed to him and the Dodgers last week in South Korea, where the team opened its regular season against the San Diego Padres.
Mizuhara has given more than one version of his path to this trouble, which was catalyzed by the IRS’ investigation of Mathew Bowyer, an alleged illegal bookmaker. Mizuhara has consistently said he has a gambling addiction, and he abused his close friendship with the Dodgers superstar to feed it.
That’s the biggest question to be answered in Major League Baseball’s investigation, and the two-time AL MVP emphatically says he has never gambled on sports or asked anybody to bet on sports for him.
Further, Ohtani said Monday he has never knowingly paid a bookie to cover somebody else’s bets. Mizuhara also said Ohtani does not bet, and Bowyer’s attorney said the same.
Mizuhara told ESPN on March 19 that Ohtani paid his gambling debts at the interpreter’s request, saying the bets were on international soccer, the NBA, the NFL and college football. If that were true, Ohtani could face trouble even if he didn’t make the bets himself — but ESPN said Mizuhara dramatically changed his story the following day, claiming Ohtani had no knowledge of the gambling debts and had not transferred any money to bookmakers.
MLB rules prohibit players and team employees from wagering — even legally — on baseball. They also ban betting on other sports with illegal or offshore bookmakers.
Ohtani has played in every Dodgers game since the story broke, and he is expected to be their designated hitter in most regular-season games this season while baseball’s investigation continues.
Ohtani says his legal team has alerted authorities to the theft by Mizuhara, although his team has repeatedly declined to say which authorities have been told, according to ESPN.
Ohtani’s new interpreter is Will Ireton, a longtime Dodgers employee and fluent Japanese speaker who has filled several jobs with the team in everything from game preparation and analytics to recruiting free-agent pitches. But Ireton won’t be Ohtani’s constant companion, and manager Dave Roberts said Tuesday he’s optimistic that Ohtani will become closer to his teammates without the “buffer” provided for years by Mizuhara.
MLB’s investigation of Ohtani’s role in the events could last weeks or months, and it’s unlikely to be publicized until it’s complete. No one outside of Ohtani’s inner circle knows what it will find or how serious any repercussions could be, and nobody outside the circle is making informed speculation about the process.
One major question looms: How did Mizuhara have enough access to Ohtani’s bank accounts to get the alleged millions without Ohtani knowing? Is the slugger overly trusting, or is he wildly negligent in managing his vast fortune, which includes years of lavish endorsement deals in addition to his baseball salaries? Why didn’t the team around him, including his agent, do more to prevent the possibility of the theft he claims?
Finally, where is Mizuhara? Anybody who knows isn’t saying. He was fired in South Korea and apparently didn’t travel home with the Dodgers. Japanese media have visited his home in Southern California to look for him. Although he was born in Japan, Mizuhara’s life is in the U.S. — but his life will never be the same.
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They say everyone is entitled to their opinion, but when you’re a member of the media and you share a truly awful take, you’re going to get called out for it.
That’s what happened when NHL analyst/podcast host Andrew Berkshire decided to post a video on X (formerly known as Twitter) mainly attributing Zach Hyman’s success to the fact that he grew up “insanely rich.”
The post came on the heels of the Oilers winger reaching the 50-goal milestone for the season and was rightly ripped apart by several notable colleagues, former players and fans in general.
In the video, which has been viewed more than 5.4 million times as of Wednesday morning, begins by stating that he has been in the sports media industry professionally since 2012 and that the industry “has to do a better job of telling truthful stories,” before discounting Hyman’s accomplishment.
“The story that’s being sold right now … is that, you know, if you work hard, if you stick to it, you can get there too, 31-year-old guy finally hits the 50-goal mark, harder worker, all that,” Berkshire said.
“Yeah, great, except you’re missing the part of the story where Zach Hyman grew up insanely rich.”
Berkshire, who works as an analyst and host with the Steve Dangle Podcast Network, then details how Hyman’s parents bought a league to “guarantee him playing time,” and that he did “exclusive training that only a rich person … could afford.”
“This is a person that has had every single possible advantage to get where they are today,” Berkshire continued, before also bringing up the fact that Hyman has been fortunate enough to play on teams and lines with Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid most of his career.
While Berkshire does state that Hyman is a hard worker and brings grit when he plays, he also discounts it almost immediately.
“Working hard, everybody works hard. You think every NHLer didn’t get there by working hard?” he asks. “Let’s not build this stupid narrative of ‘work hard, you’ll succeed.’ It’s just not true.
“There are people who’ve worked as hard as Zach Hyman their entire lives and never got a sniff of the American Hockey League, let alone the NHL because they didn’t have the advantages he had.”
Former Leafs defenceman turned NHL analyst Carlo Colaiacovo thought the whole take was ridiculous, posting the following: “Let me tell you something Andrew. You can’t buy your way to the NHL. You definitely can’t buy your way to having the career Hyman has had which includes scoring 50. Pretty ridiculous thing to say.”
Retired NHLer Bobby Ryan was one of the first to weigh in, calling the opinion “purely false.”
“As someone who has maybe lived on both ends of the ‘financial edge’ I can say this is just purely false. Who cares, he accomplished a feat not many do and to downplay the way it’s reported is just wrong. You show up, do the work, good things happen,” Ryan posted on X.
Jonathan Goodman, who claims he was Hyman’s personal trainer and tasked with getting the budding pro ready for the combine, had a glowing review of his former pupil’s work ethic.
“Yes, he had advantages. His family was wealthy and father obsessed with his success,” he said. “But the dude worked hard. Harder than anybody I’ve ever seen.”
But, perhaps another former NHLer, Jason Strudwick said it best, replying to the video by asking: “Did Hyman not sign an autograph for you one time?”
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