Kansas City Royals @ Toronto Blue Jays (1)

Today was my first full day in Canada and I'm still recovering from the extremely late arrival. Fortunately, the hotel serves breakfast until 11.30am during the week (and until 1pm at weekends!) so I didn't have to get down there really early, like in some other places.

I walked around some of the buildings that are near to the hotel, in particular looking for the coach terminal that I'm going to need to go to on Sunday - but I didn't find that, so I'm going to have to look for it again tomorrow. I walked around a little bit of the underground PATH network where many of the shops are. The tunnels are well used by everybody and it's nice to be able to get out of the heat at this time of year. I made my way gradually southwards along Yonge Street and then along Front Street to the stadium. It is extremely useful that the Blue Jays' stadium is right next to the CN Tower, as it makes it very easy to locate. There's a lot of construction work going on along Front St though, which makes the whole area rather chaotic at the moment.

To be honest, the best thing about the Rogers Centre is that it isn't the Rogers Center. It's fundamentally a round, concrete building with little aesthetic value at all. It looks quite odd with the Renaissance Hotel also forming part of the stadium, with its modern shiny glass. I had to walk half way around to get my gate, but when I got there, there was no queue and I was able to go straight in and up to my section in the "TD Comfort Clubhouse" zone. What this means is you get at-your-seat service throughout the game and comfy seats, although I thought that they were a little narrow compared to lots of other stadia, probably with the exception of Wrigley Field. The roof was closed for today's game, the opener of a three game series against the Royals of which I'm seeing the first two games. There were two good starting pitchers, as well, with Mark Buehrle for the Blue Jays going up against Ervin Santana of the Royals.

During this game, I kept having to remind myself that I was watching an American League game - the teams raced through the innings and by the 2 hour mark we were already into the 8th inning. The Blue Jays got on the board early with 2 runs in the first inning, and added another later whilst Buehrle kept the Royals quiet. As soon as he was out of the game, the Royals staged a rally, getting two of the runs back, but ultimately got no further and Janssen picked up the save in a tense 9th.

Both teams were having good seasons, but they are now languishing a fair way behind their respective divisions' leaders. Watching this game, I can see how frustrating it must be for fans of both teams. They both play well most of the time, the physical stuff is right there with some outstandingly good defensive plays, but then they throw in what can only be described as complete brain fades. Three examples in today's game: a tame ground out to the Jays' first baseman Adam Lind, but does he run to the bag to make the out? No, and neither did the pitcher, which left Lind standing a few feet up the baseline with the ball whilst the runner made it to first base; the other two occurred on the same play where the Royals had a man on first and the batter hit a sharp single up the middle. For some reason, the lead runner decided to try to make it to third, but realised that this was a mistake around a third of the way to third base and gave up running - only to find that the centre fielder, having come forward to shallow centre to field the ball held the ball and didn't throw it to third. Batter safe, runner safe, centre fielder embarrassed, crowd angry!

The game was a quick one at under two and a half hours - which can be mainly attributed to the quality pitching. The official box score says that the attendance was just over 21,000. Really? Or was that the number of tickets actually sold, because there were lots of echoes in the stadium and it looked very sparsely populated to me. Even the ticket touts outside were trying to flog tickets for half the face value.

I bought some tokens for the subway for the journey back to the hotel. They are tiny things, about the size of a half penny piece used to be, but it worked the ticket barrier and I was able to sit in the nicely cool subway train for a few minutes back up my hotel.