Jose Bautista of the Toronto Blue Jays connects on a seventh inning base hit against the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium on September 20, 2014 in the Bronx borough of New York City.Jim McIsaac/Getty Images
There is a little league baseball diamond here adjacent to new Yankee Stadium where old Yankee Stadium used to sit and on the outfield fence there is a sign that reads: "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains."
It is a line uttered by character Nuke LaLoosh in the great baseball movie Bull Durham and somehow it seems to encapsulate the way things have gone of late for the Toronto Blue Jays.
There have been some good days for the Blue Jays this season to be sure.
But mostly the sun has refused to shine on the American League outfit, especially over the second half of the season where the bottom has fallen out on their once promising 2014 Major League Baseball campaign.
Toronto (78-76) managed to win one – finally – here on Saturday against the Yankees (79-75), snapping a season-worst six-game losing streak with a 6-3 victory before a sellout gathering of 42,292.
Jose Bautista knocked a solo home run in the seventh inning, his 34th of the season. The homer was also Bautista's 202nd as a Blue Jay, tying him for fourth place with George Bell on the club's all-time list.
Overall it was a monster game for Bautista who was on- base five times, going 2-for-2 with three walks, scoring four of the Toronto runs.
Bautista now has 101 RBIs on the year and 102 walks, the third season in a row he has surpassed the century plateau in both categories, an accomplishment he says he is proud of.
"I'll enjoy it more in the off-season," he said. "Personal accolades are great. That puts you in an elite group amongst major leaguers – 100 RBIs, 100 walks, good on-base percentage, driving in runs is what the game is all about when it comes right down to it."
Rookie pitcher Marcus Stroman enjoyed another solid outing, holding New York to two runs off eight hits over six innings of work while striking out seven. Stroman improved to 11-6 on the season with the win.
But the damage to the Blue Jays' season has already been done.
On Toronto's last visit to New York, in late July, the Blue Jays finally broke through and won the last two games of the three-game series.
For the Blue Jays, it snapped a club record 17-game winless slide against the Yankees in New York. It also marked their first series win in New York dating back to 2010.
The Blue Jays then went into Boston and swept three from the Red Sox and by the end of the month things appeared to be looking up as Toronto clung to the second wildcard spot in the A.L.
At the time, it prompted Toronto pitcher Mark Buehrle to remark that the Blue Jays might just look back at that New York visit as the moment they regained their swagger.
Instead, that swagger turned into a stumble as the Blue Jays would go on to lose 26 of their next 43 games heading into Saturday's affair to essentially kiss their post-season hopes goodbye.
Buehrle was asked what happened?
"Losing," Buehrle said simply. "When you're not winning it's tough to have a good clubhouse. It's one of those things. Everybody says team chemistry . . . it comes with winning. When you're winning you get away with murder and everything's fine in here. When you're losing, the littlest thing, you step wrong, and somebody brings it up."
Edwin Encarnacion, playing with a bit of a sore back, got things rolling for the Blue Jays in the first inning, doubling to centre to score Bautista all the way from first for a 1-0 Toronto lead.
New York would then move ahead 2-1 scoring single runs in the third and fourth innings before Toronto erupted for three in the sixth inning to chase Yankee starter Chris Capuano (2-4) from the game.
Danny Valencia carded the key hit of the inning for Toronto, a bases loaded double that scored two and helped lift the Blue Jays into a 4-2 advantage.
Bautista's homer in the seventh added a little more breathing room for Toronto, who will try to gain a split in the four-game series with a win in Sunday's finale.
Bautista enjoyed a little banter with the Yankee fans sitting in the right-field bleachers.
After catching a fly ball for the third out in the Yankee seventh inning, Bautista turned and made a fake throw to the fans and then hung on to the ball as he headed back to the Toronto dugout to a chorus of jeers.
In the eighth inning, after throwing a ball into the stands as sort of a peace offering another ball was thrown back out into rightfield and Bautista figured at that time the interaction would end.
Adam Lind was not available for the game for Toronto with a sore back that Gibbons hopes is not serious enough to have him miss more than one or two games.