Red-hot Blue Jays enjoying gifts of prosperity in playoff drive

Bob Nightengale | USA TODAY Sports

TORONTO — The airport customs official studies the passport, looks directly into your eyes, and asks the reason for your visit to Canada.

You tell him you’re here for Toronto Blue Jays baseball games.

"So who’s going to win the AL East?" he asks sternly.

You hesitate slightly, look at his face and blurt, "The Blue Jays."

"Good answer," he says with a wink. "All clear."

It’s a sentiment heard throughout Toronto, from cab drivers to waitresses to the hundreds of fans who make merely getting to the ballpark a chore — albeit a happy one — for the players.

"It’s crazy around here," new Blue Jays ace David Price told USA TODAY Sports. "The Canadians are so passionate. I went home on my scooter the other day, and people stopped me so much for pictures, it took me almost two hours to get home, and my scooter almost died."

It was the longest 1½-mile drive of Price’s life, but he loved every minute of it.

"I've never seen anything like it," Blue Jays starter Mark Buehrle said. "I started walking here (Sunday), saw all of the people lined up outside and turned around and got my car.

"I live two blocks away, but there was no way I would get to the game on time with all of the people hanging outside the ballpark."

The Blue Jays have captivated a city — and the baseball-loving portion of Canada — these past two weeks, winning 12 of their past 14 games and entering Tuesday one game behind the New York Yankees in the American League East, with a three-game grip on a wild-card spot.

They’re coming across the border for an eight-game, 10-day trip beginning Tuesday against the Philadelphia Phillies. You’ll have no trouble recognizing them. They’ll be the ones driving their scooters to the ballpark, and once inside, you may see them sliding past you on their IO Hawks — a mobility board that acts like an electric skateboard — or outside flying their drones or remote planes.

The scooter craze began with Price. He was gift-wrapped from the Detroit Tigers on July 30 as the most prized commodity at the trade deadline ("Honestly, I thought I was going to New York," he said). He brought along his electric scooter. The boys got curious, and before they knew it, Price bought eight of them for about $750 a pop, giving them free to the young guys who haven’t made their first million.

Center fielder Kevin Pillar, so excited with his custom wheels, taped a Bluetooth speaker to his handlebars, making sure they have music when they travel together.

"It’s turned a 10-minute walk into a two-minute ride," Pillar said. "We can’t wait to meet up and drive together in Philadelphia."

Considering the way the Blue Jays are playing these days, this could be a joy ride that lasts into November.

"I haven’t seen the city like this in 20 years," Hall of Fame second baseman Roberto Alomar said from his suite Sunday. "It’s just such a great atmosphere wherever you go. It’s been a long, long time.

"I believe in this team, and I really think they can make it all of the way."

Why not?

They’ve got the most explosive offense in the game, leading baseball with 622 runs — 63 more than the Yankees entering Tuesday. Their starting rotation has the lowest ERA in the American League since the All-Star break, yielding three or fewer runs in a franchise-record 20 consecutive games.

Third baseman Josh Donaldson, who’s serenaded by MVP chants when he comes to the plate, has been just as valuable inside the clubhouse as his on-field performance — 31 homers, 87 RBI and aleague-leading 86 runs. And they now have one of the league’s finest defenses after acquiring All-Star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, who replaced Jose Reyes.

"I feel like we’ve got something special here," said Price, dazzling in his three starts Toronto at 2-0 with a 1.61 ERA and 24 strikeouts in 22⅓ innings. "You knew this team had talent, but I didn’t realize how close it was. This team has got that it factor. It has the togetherness, that closeness, and you just want to be a part of it."

The Blue Jays clubhouse is a United Nations melting pot. African Americans. Dominicans. Australians. Canadians. Puerto Ricans. Mexicans. Venezuelans. Texans. Californians.

"We’ve got guys coming from everywhere. I think we’ve got just about every place covered," said Price, whose New York hotel was filled last week with teammates playing video games. "The clubhouse chemistry at this level means so much. Just ask the Giants. Ask the Cardinals. Ask the Royals."

Oddly, many of their stars never envisioned playing in Toronto.

Tulowitzki concedes that he’s still not quite comfortable after spending his entire career in Colorado but says he is energized being back in a pennant race in front of sold-out crowds. Buehrle was livid when he was traded to the Blue Jays one season after signing four-year free-agent contact with the Miami Marlins, but he has fallen in love with the gorgeous city and culture the last three years.

"Before I came here, this was a place where I never wanted to play," Buehrle said." There was no chance of me signing in Toronto. You come here as a visitor, and you have the customs, trying to figure out your phone bills, the money exchange, the temperature readings.

"But now that I’ve played here, it’s been so great. It’s just such a great place to live and play. They make it so comfortable for you."

The new guys coming in at the trade deadline were accepted and embraced so quickly, said veteran reliever LaTroy Hawkins, they feel like they’ve been around all season. Certainly, they made quite a grand entrance with the 11-game winning streak.

"I didn’t even know how many games it was," Hawkins said. "I just knew I haven’t shaken that many hands in a row in a long, long time."

If the new guys weren’t making their presence felt on the field, it was in the clubhouse. Just a few days after Tulowitzki’s arrival, Blue Jays third base coach Luis Rivera found a custom, personally engraved watch in his locker. It was from Tulowitzki, showing his appreciation for Rivera giving up his uniform number (2) to him.

Blue Jays first baseman Justin Smoak, who figures he was the first player to know about the Price trade when equipment manager Jeff Ross called him at 11 in the morning, was asked to give up his uniform number (14) to Price. Price has the uniform. And now the gift is on its way.

"He’s a huge hunter," Price said, "and I know nothing about guns, but I’m going to get him a pretty nice one, soup it up, and hopefully it’s the nicest gun he has."

There’s been such an ongoing exchange of presents in the Blue Jays’ clubhouse these days that right fielder Jose Bautista believes the greatest gift of all simply was the bundle of help that arrived at the trade deadline.

"It’s almost like being at war and running low on ammo," Bautista said, "and the next thing you know, here comes a little parachute with a crate. And it lands right next to you.

"And it’s full of ammo.

"You’re like,' Yeah, baby.' "

The Blue Jays acquired Tulowitzki and Hawkins on July 28 to replace Reyes and his rapidly declining defensive skills. They also had a deal worked out for starter Mike Leake of the Cincinnati Reds. Yet, just before pulling the trigger on the Leake deal, Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos checked back one more time with former Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski to see if Price was available. The deal was finalized less than 12 hours later at 3 in the morning.

A far cry from a year ago when the Blue Jays actually had a better record at the deadline, 60-50 and just 1½ games out of first, but stood pat. The players were incensed and the club collapsed, losing 17 of the next 27 games and falling out of the race.

"We plummeted psychologically," said Blue Jays knuckleballer R.A. Dickey. "I think everybody felt a little defeated. We nose-dived.

"This year, we made a move, made another move, made another move, and now everybody in here feels like we have a legitimate shot to do something special."

Said Anthopoulos, whose name was seen embroidered across a fan’s jersey last weekend: "It was different a year ago. We had a lot of holes, a lot of guys hurt, and we weren’t going to (deal) without doing some real long-term damage to the organization.

"If we had done some of those deals, Pillar and Donaldson are not on this team right now."

And Anthopoulos surely wouldn’t have had the wherewithal to turn on the afterburners last month.

"This is the first time for me that moves were actually made to improve the ballclub and go for it," Bautista said. "The message sent from the front office to the clubhouse was: ‘We believe in this team just as much as you do guys do. We put all our chips on the table.'

"Now, it’s up to us."

With a very real chance to end a 22-year postseason drought, the Blue Jays sold out four consecutive games, including a three-game series against Yankees last weekend, for the first time since 1994. Fans were screaming on every pitch. It may have been mid-August, but it sure felt like October.

When the Blue Jays’ 11-game winning streak was snapped Friday night, with Yankees closer Andrew Miller striking out Tulowitzki in an epic, 7-minute, 50-second at-bat that included four trips to the mound, one fan exiting the game told his friend in the stairwell, "Well, maybe next year."

When the story was relayed to Bautista, who was told that their fans actually were starting to believe they’d never lose again, Bautista never cracked a smile.

"You know something," he said, "neither did we."

The Blue Jays believe this is their time to write history, just as their predecessors did more than 20 years ago when they won back-to-back World Series titles.

"The memories I have as kid are those ’92 and ’93 seasons," said catcher Russell Martin, born in Ontario and living in Quebec then. "That’s what I grew up with. So I know how special that can be. Those are the kind of memories that stay ingrained with you your whole life.

"It sure would be nice to have people talk about this team 30 years from now, too."

Follow columnist Bob Nightengale on Twitter @BNightengale.

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