Blue Jays-Rangers Rematch Is as Captivating a Series as It Gets

With glamorous, old money, big-market clubs like the Boston Red Sox, Dodgers, and Cubs featuring in three of the four MLB playoff series that kick off this week, it's little wonder that the league's fourth series—featuring the Rangers and Blue Jays—has been given the short shrift by schedule-makers. While it's true that those teams play in enormous markets, Dallas-Fort Worth certainly isn't captivated by the Rangers in the way that they are, say, the Cowboys, and viewers in Toronto are irrelevant to the bottom lines of the American networks, TBS and Fox, that essentially dictate the schedule.

According to the Dallas Morning News, Rangers fans are outraged that Game 1 will start at 3:38 PM local time (4:38 PM ET) on Thursday, followed by Game 2 on Friday, which will start just after noon (1:08 PM ET). Ticket prices on the secondary market reportedly took a huge hit following the schedule's release, and yet, to anybody who actually follows the sport, the idea of a rematch between the Blue Jays and Rangers is about as captivating as they come.

The explanation as to why that's the case is as simple as two iconic images —maybe the two most instantly recognizable on-field moments of baseball's last 365 days: Jose Bautista's immortal bat flip after his home run to break open the deciding game of last year's ALDS, and a Rougned Odor punch connecting with Bautista's jaw back in May.

The bad blood between these two teams runs deeper than what those two images can illustrate, though. The 2015 Rangers were the first opponents to experience playoff baseball in front of a Toronto crowd in over 20 years, and caught the full brunt of the raucous atmosphere there, and its undertones of menace, as they took the first two games of that series on the road.

Though Bautista would later become the lightning rod on the Blue Jays' side of the rivalry, it was teammate Josh Donaldson who set the stage for the fireworks that were to come. In Game 2, a day after he took a knee to the head from Odor while trying to break up a double play, Donaldson hit a long foul ball off Keone Kela in the bottom of a tie game in the 13th, then came up jawing back and forth with the Rangers reliever. "He appeared to be upset by a quick pitch, but he declined to provide specifics about the argument," explained Gregor Chisholm and T.R. Sullivan's MLB.com report on the game. The benches cleared. Tensions simmered, but didn't quite boil.

The Rangers, and the pesky Odor, who gave the Jays nightmares all series, were sitting pretty, up 2-0 and heading back home to Arlington. But the Blue Jays would force the series back to Toronto for a deciding Game 5, after a heroic Troy Tulowitzki performance—a home run and four RBI in a 5-1 Game 3 win—and a filleting of Rangers starter Derek Holland in Game 4.

Say "Game 5" to a Blue Jays fan and they know exactly what you're talking about—no need to specify the year or the series. The tensions that had built over the course of the game burst in a wild, 53-minute seventh inning—first because the Rangers scored a run after Jays catcher Russell Martin threw a ball back to the pitcher that hit off Shin-Soo Choo's bat and dribbled into no man's land toward third base. The astute Odor knew this was a live ball and scampered home, even as umpire Dale Scott called it a dead ball. The Blue Jays protested, but it was their fans that went apoplectic, hurling garbage, beer cups, and beer cans onto the field, disgusted at the thought of their season ending on a call they didn't understand—or want to understand—was correct. The Rangers, understandably, didn't like that.

As upset as they may have been with the atmosphere in the top of the inning, the Rangers must have been disgusted with themselves in the bottom half of the frame, as uncharacteristically sloppy defence, particularly from poor Elvis Andrus, allowed the Jays to tie the score as Bautista strode to the plate. We all know what happened next—and we know the Rangers didn't like that either.

Sam Dyson, the one-time Blue Jays prospect who took a long path to big-league success, but who over the course of the season in Texas had established himself as a shutdown reliever, lost his damn mind after serving up a meatball for Bautista to crush. In the aftermath Jays fans started throwing more trash onto the—some kind of a bizarre, celebratory act that could have only made sense in the middle of the frenzied mob—and as Edwin Encarnacion pleaded with them to chill, Dyson stepped in from the mound and, according to theDallas Morning News, relayed a message for Bautista, "Tell him not to ever do that again." The benches emptied. And they emptied again when Tulowitzki took exception to the fact that Dyson, for God only knows what reason, gave him a pat on the ass after retiring him on a pop out to finally end the inning.

To the Blue Jays, that should have been the end of the story. The Rangers were rightly upset at the crowd, dumbly upset at Bautista for admiring a career-defining moment, but had little reason to be upset at anybody but themselves. A playoff series they had come home leading 2-0 had slipped away from them in the ugliest manner, and their lowest point had been punctuated by a moment that transcended baseball. They had been posterized in the worst way.

Which isn't to say that there may not have been things that the Blue Jays had done that they could have taken legitimate umbrage with—angry incidents have a tendency to follow the Blue Jays no matter who they take on—but it certainly felt, from a Toronto perspective, that the Rangers didn't deserve any kind of retaliation. But, of course, when the teams met again this May they took it anyway.

For a team that postured as though it was Bautista's code-defying bat flip that truly upset them, the Rangers certainly didn't feel beholden to follow baseball's asinine unwritten rules when it comes to retribution, waiting until Bautista's last at-bat of the regular season against them before reliever Matt Bush—who wasn't even with the Rangers the previous October—plunked him. Jays manager John Gibbons called the timing of it "gutless,"telling reporters that "the other 29 teams out there, if they have an issue with you, they come at you right away. To wait until the end, that just kind of tells me something."

Bautista obviously didn't like it either, and intentionally slid hard at Odor on Justin Smoak's inevitable double play ball two batters later, nearly taking a throw to the face from the second baseman—which some, likeTorii Hunter, felt was intentional—in the process. The pair began aggressively jawing at one another, and when Odor threw a punch Bautista's way, it certainly didn't miss. (Though Bautista, who remained standing as Adrian Beltre came to break up the ruckus, rightly noted afterwards that "it takes a little bit of a bigger man, I guess, to knock me down.")

Like the Blue Jays did a year ago, the Rangers presumably now want to believe that the matter has been settled. They've sent their message. They've thrown their punch back. But will the Blue Jays feel the same way? Will the pissing match continue?

Perhaps the clubs will be sensible enough not to risk potential injuries, ejections, or suspensions. Blue Jays fans will hope their team has learned a lesson after seeming to go looking for a fight against the Yankees in late September, only to lose key reliever Joaquin Benoit in the ensuing melee. And if so, that's beyond fine. Fans of baseball will see all kinds of reasons to get enthralled by this series without the need for fireworks—the return of Yu Darvish, who was injured last season and didn't face the Blue Jays, and the emergence of Aaron Sanchez as the true ace of the Toronto rotation, will add dimensions to this series that alone will make it worthwhile for neutrals.

But the tensions between these two teams are certainly still there, and running high regardless because of what's at stake.

It may only take one pitch to "slip" and hit a batter to bring it all back to the fore. Just one small mistake to turn an enticing series into a must-watch spectacle for the ages. Get your excuses for skipping work ready!