The Seattle Mariners have won every single playoff game they have had in Toronto, but lost when game three of the ALCS brought the Blue Jays as vengeful visitors to T-Mobile Park, where the team from Canada beat the team from the Emerald City with a score of 13-4.

Once upon a dreary baseball field, an azure jay came to land

The feathered foe from Toronto, was not the first one to score

That feat belonged to the sailor, who called this diamond home

The cobalt crow-like creature squawked “you need much more!”

The crowd grew loud and echoed with their roar “we need much more!”

Only two runs, for now not more

George Kirby had an uneventful enough of a first inning, dare I say a good one. Getting two swinging strikeouts, and only allowing one runner, Vladimir Geurrero Jr, who reached first on a single, and advanced to second when third baseman Eugenio Suárez botched the throw and it went out of play into the dugout. The Mariners had much better luck with their half of the first, and started off looking like they would do real damage to Shane Bieber. Randy Arozarena drew a leadoff, 3-1 walk (and stole second base), before Julio Rodríguez hit his third home run of the postseason 112.2 mph off of the bat to give the Mariners an early 2-0 lead.

At first the seaman merely scoffed, a man of farmer name they brought

This farmer sailor would feed the voyage, this they solemnly swore

Yet the cobalt crow had landed hungry, beak open and fast to feast

Between each gobbled ball of meat, came cries of “more, more!”

The sailor sullen, their score now sunken, whispered “no more”

In three, five did the birds score

Kirby had an even more uneventful second inning, facing the minimum, getting the contact-heavy Blue Jays to do so, but in playable fashion, collecting a line out, a pop out, and a fly out. The third inning was uneventful in the way that a circus is. A circus on fire. A circus on fire. ran by drunken animals. The Seattle starter only threw one sinker to Ernie Clement, who drove it into left field, and there was already a runner on second. Two pitches later to the Jays’ nine hole hitter Andrés Giménez, and the game was tied. Kirby would get George Springer to fly out and Anthony Santander to ground out, but wrapped around a Nathan Lukes single and a Vladdy double that put runners on second and third along with those two outs. Alejandro Kirk drew a 3-1 walk, and the bases were loaded. A wild pitch is what allowed Lukes to score, but a double given up to Daulton Varsho scored the other two. Addison Barger grounded out to end the inning, but now Toronto was up 5-2, a lead they would never surrender.

The feathered foe become a flock, all of them wearing sapphire

But what they wore was merely a color, the jewel in bats they bore

The boatman had an eye for rare, but lost his focus in longing stares

The flock landed one by one, each one settled with a “score! score!”

The mariner heard distant death knell bells, and did not like the score

The song a taunt, and the stage a floor

Kirby would go out and work the fourth, and find more success. More than the third, at least, as he did allow a run. After getting Ernie Clement to go down looking, and getting swinging strikeout revenge on Giménez, Kirby hung a sinker to George Springer, who hung it over the center field wall. That put the Blue Jays up with a score of 6-2, but as playoff history has taught us, that is not a score out of reach for the Seattle Mariners to overcome the Toronto Blue Jays. That’s what history taught us. Today taught us that not only would it be too much for the Mariners to overcome, they would have had to overcome much more.

The fourth was Kirby’s last, and Carlos Vargas came in to work the fifth inning. Only one pitch in the Blue Jays had another on the board, courtesy of a Vladdy bomb to center. That, followed by a combination of walks, singles, and outs on contact amounted to a total of two earned runs on four hits for Vargas, and the Jays were now up 8-2. Caleb Ferguson would allow four runs in his two innings of relief, all in the sixth inning, one a run scored on a fielder’s choice, the other three from an Alejandro Kirk blast. That twelve run total would hold for the Blue Jays until the ninth inning, where an Addison Barger home run added their final, thirteenth run, hit off of Luke Jackson.

The seafarer wanted fairer and so grabbed a trident, and with it waved

Some feathers fell as the black birds bounced, but none were sore

The sailor swung, the Mariner sung, a drum of “we must do more”

One hand a trident, the other an oar, swinging wildly, he finally scored

A squawking laugh, “you’ll need much more”

The Mariners wouldn’t end the night only having scored in the first inning, but by the time they scored again in the eighth it mattered little, although it did help to revive the crowd some. Shane Bieber only allowed those two runs in the first and lasted another five, walking one and pocketing eight strikeouts and 35% on called strikes and whiffs. Braydon Fisher followed him in the seventh and only allowed a hit, but the next up in Yariel Rodríguez would be where the Mariners would finally clip a wing.

First, Randy Arozarena crushed a slider to the center field stands.

Then, Cal Raleigh did it on a fastball, and to right field.

The main wrench in the day for the Mariners came in the performance they received from George Kirby, whose success today was always likely to rest on a razor’s edge, given his reliance on pinpoint control inside the boundaries of the zone, and Toronto’s propensity for feasting on balls anywhere they land there. To get the zone-happy Jays to chase, Kirby would have to rely on his slider, well, sliding. Today, it did not, something Kirby alluded to himself. “I wasn’t really making a lot of good pitches there in the third and the fourth”, he said, “I was just trying to be really cute with it and some sliders leaked over the middle.”

Also of note in tonight’s game was a rare MLB appearance from Harry Ford, and his MLB postseason debut. Against Mason Fluharty in the ninth, he hit a line drive that landed onto the center field grass in front of Daulton Varsho, Ford reaching with a single and his first ever postseason hit. The series now sits at 2-1 in Seattle’s favor, and with the next two games to their home field advantage, and them needing two wins to advance. Today, the cerulean corvid of doom came rapping at the Mariners’ door, and they entertained a crack to see who the visitor was, but it will be only themselves to blame if they swing the door wide.

The blue jays pecked as Mariners sang, a dirge of squawks down did rain

The flock of birds taunted, now brave, “never did this much you score”

The sailor was pestered and annoyed, but would avoid that wound to fester

The Blue Jays continued, violence renewed, a chant of “you need two more”

The Mariner smiled, and retorted, “yes, but it’s further for you, to four.”

Sea legs found, in hopes to lose nevermore.