The 'Who Jays' are in first place. How is this happening?
Fluharty. Lauer. Little. Sandlin.
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Wagner. Straw. Nance. Lukes.
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Clement. Jimenez. Schultz. Schneider. Fisher.
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If you can't match a first name to a last, that's understandable. Most of baseball couldn't. This is the most unique, the invisible, unexpected team in Blue Jays history.
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And we can't take our eyes off them.
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They won't let us as they remain in first place in the American League East, now four games up on the Yankees, with a better record than the huge spenders in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
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They won't let us turn away. These are your first-place Blue Jays, winners of 11 in a row at home. Yep, that's 11 in a row.
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Those World Series champions of 1992 and 1993 never won 11 in a row at home in Toronto. The great 1985 Jays, who probably should have won a World Series in an awful stadium, never got to 11. Same with those electric teams of 2015 and 2016, at least one of which should have been fitted for rings and didn't quite get there.
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There were not a lot of Nathan Lukeses on those teams, or Addison Bargers or Will Wagners or Joey Loperfidos. And you can keep adding on to those names. The great Blue Jays teams in history had MVP candidates such as Jesse Barfield and George Bell in 1985 — the AL MVP that year was won by current Blue Jays coach Don Mattingly — like Joe Carter and Roberto Alomar and Dave Winfield in 1992 and John Olerud and Carter and Paul Molitor in 1993. Great players doing great things.
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Josh Donaldson won the MVP in 2015 when baseball returned to life in the city and finished fourth the following year — with Jose Bautista hitting 40 home runs in 2015 and Edwin Encarnacion hitting 42 homers in 2016.
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That's the history of winning teams in the sport. The best players, the biggest boppers, the deepest bullpens win. There aren't 15 or 16 of who-are-these-people? on most winning teams.
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Mrs. Nathan Lukes, who has followed her husband city to city, league to league, and knows the letters DFA well, noticed the other day that the Jays starting lineup against the San Francisco Giants had two players on Major League contracts and everybody else in the starting nine were hoping there is a next year on any of their deals.
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'That's the beauty of this team,' said Lukes, who hits wherever the Jays put him the lineup and plays whatever position he is asked to play. This is his 10th season of professional baseball and the Blue Jays are his ninth team.
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