The Bronx Bombers light up the Blue Jays in the first game of the Rogers Center big series

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It was a game and situation two years or more in the making for a Blue Jays team that accepted the bumps from a 95-loss season in 2019 in the belief that the massive takedown would lead to bigger things.

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Playing most of their games as without a true home, the Blue Jays continued to advance despite the challenges and arrived at a vibrant and vocal Rogers Center Tuesday night for the most important game played here in more than five years.

After a complete 7-2 destruction at the hands of the New York Yankees, the team’s tenacious endurance will be put to the test once again, however, it will start two more games against its American League East rivals and its season now. it is officially reaching the moment of despair.

In what was a memorable night for a team and its long-displaced fan base, the Blue Jays missed an opportunity to gain ground from both the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, who were upset by the Orioles in Baltimore.

And instead of the largest crowd to attend a Toronto sporting event in more than two years celebrating, he suffered a landslide loss to a sometimes despised division opponent.

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The most explosive noise of the night, however, came not from the 28,679 in the expanded capacity downtown dome, but from a prodigious blast from Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton’s bat.

The 421-foot rocket off the wall in left field was a three-run dagger for the Blue Jays. The seventh-inning hit was Stanton’s 35th home run of the season and the fourth straight game in which the oldest of the Bronx Bombers hit an out.

The Blue Jays’ loss left them three games behind the Yankees, who own the first AL wild-card spot with Toronto still one game behind the Red Sox for second place.

The way Boston is going – losers of four games in a row – there are still no mandatory wins. But with only five games remaining on the season, coach Charlie Montoyo’s team has certainly exhausted its margin of error.

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It may end that the Blue Jays were left with too much to do after losing a couple of games at Minnesota last week as part of a 3-4 road trip, but the opportunity awaiting Tuesday was palpable.

What a sight it was to have fans at level 500, as the capacity was expanded to 30,000 for the first time this season, double the previous limits. The Rogers Center, empty throughout 2020 and as of July 30 of this year, was jumping at the prospect of beating the Yankees in the first of a six-game home stay with the possibility of extending the season.

Montoyo felt it, calmly confident that his team was up to the challenge given the mostly spectacular September he designed to fight in the race. And at the Toronto clubhouse, confidence was high after living through that 95-loss season in 2019 and then struggling in the extended playoff pool from last year’s shortened season.

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“You dream of playing these games,” said Cavan Biggio, who was activated from the disabled list before the game. “Being called up in (2019)… the team that we were, you could see where it was going.

“Now that we are finally here. We have worked hard and we are ready. We are excited to go out and play. “

Dreams on hold, for now anyway.

Heading into Tuesday’s game, there was at least a quiet optimism that one of the rebuilding’s first big walk-ins, Hyun-Jin Ryu, might come off the disabled list and summon something of the ace form expected of. he.

Ryu was not in his prime, but he was credible enough to give his team 4.1 innings and hold the Yankees to three runs and six hits.

“Last year he had a great win against the Yankees towards the end and obviously, with the poor Dodgers, he’s been on the bigger stages and handled it exceptionally well,” general manager Ross Atkins said before the game. “I think, first and foremost, he’s in a better position physically.”

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While Ryu was able to limit the damage of the gun-hot Yankees, now winners of seven in a row, the power duo of Aaron Judge and Stanton was always lurking at positions three and four in the Yankees’ order.

Judge did his part with a solo home run in the third, a shot from the opposite field that tied the game at 1-1. And then there was Stanton’s shot that opened up a fatal four-run lead.

It can be difficult to cool down the Yankees now. They have hit at least one home run in 19 consecutive games and multiple bombs in 11 of them.

With a Toronto offense that cooled on Tuesday, he now has to face the sheer power of Yankees ace Gerrit Cole, who has one last chance to defend an AL Cy Young award.

The Blue Jays offense, now limited to two runs or less in four of its last six games, will have to find a way to regain that against the strutted and streaky Yankees.

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AROUND THE BASES

A tight game of such importance will invariably provide some excruciating moments and the Blue Jays came up short on a couple of them. The first came in the Yankees ‘fifth when a throw to home plate by left fielder Corey Dickerson hit Gio Urshela, allowing the Yankees’ base runner to score … With one out in the bottom of the sixth, Bo Bichette he tried to seize a pass and slide into third only to be downed by Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez on a tight play that survived a challenge from the Blue Jays. You have to admire Bichette’s on-base aggressiveness in general, but a play like that in a one-out one-run game can’t happen … The Blue Jays drew the first action on the bottom of the first when shortstopBichette hit a two-out single to bring home George Springer, who had led the game with a walk.