In the do-or-die Game 5 of the ALDS, the Rangers and Blue Jays played the most bizarre inning of baseball you’ll ever see. The mayhem started when Jays catcher Russell Martin casually threw a pitch back to the mound while Chin Soo Choo was still standing in the batter’s box with his bat in the air. Martin’s throw ricocheted off of Choo’s bat and rolled behind third base. Rougned Odor, who was standing on third base, ran home on the play but the umpire waved it off.
However, the umpires overturned the call after determining that Choo did not purposely come into contact with the ball, so Martin’s throw was a live ball. The fans in Toronto reacted quite poorly. Beer bottles and trash were thrown onto the field, because the call put the Rangers up 3-2.
Getting ugly. Looks like a baby in the front row has been hit by an object thrown from above. Jays players imploring fans not to throw stuff
— Henry Schulman BLUE CHECK MARK (@hankschulman) October 14, 2015
In what may be the single greatest piece of evidence for the euphemism “ball don’t lie,” the Jays responded in the bottom half of the inning. Texas committed three consecutive errors on routine ground balls that could have gotten them out of the inning unscathed. Even after the three errors, the Rangers were in position to get a double play to escape the hole with just one run given up, but Jose Bautista had other ideas.
Bautista launched a 3-run homer into the upper deck, but he launched his bat even further, and his long stare at the homer only raised the tension between the two teams. When Edwin Encarnacion stepped to the plate after the Bautista home run, he tried to calm the Toronto fans, who were still throwing debris onto the field. Rangers reliever Sam Dyson, who just gave up the home run, thought Encarnacion was egging on the crowd and began to yell at the Jays hitter. Both benches spilled onto the field to quell the situation. Emotions in Toronto were running high in the seventh inning, because the benches would clear again at the end of the inning. This time Dyson took exception to something Troy Tulowitzki said on his way to the dugout.
The inning lasted nearly an hour with a litany of crazy scenarios occurring during that time. Toronto is trying to complete an impressive comeback after falling to 0-2 to start the series. This would be an incredible way to accomplish that feat.