Poking the bear

 Look, I get it. Fans get excited. They get jacked. They also get on the outside of a few Molsons or Labatts on occasion -- if we're talking Toronto Blue Jays fans in particular,  which we are.

But, oh, my, O Canada. That doesn't mean you take your brain out of your head and commence playing with it.

Deep into Game 1 of the World Series last night, you see -- the ninth inning, to be specific -- Shohei Ohtani came to bat for the Los Angeles Dodgers. The game was gone by then for the Trolley Dodgers; a nine-run Blue Jays sixth had taken care of that. And maybe that, and the fact it happened in the Jays' first World Series game in 32 years, is what caused their fans to lose their damn minds.

Because that's when they started chanting, "We don't need you!"

At Shohei Ohtani.

At the best player in baseball.

At maybe the best player who ever played baseball, although history takes the long view and it's history that ultimately decides these matters.

In any case, it was a  cringey moment, because as Blue Jays pitcher Chris Bassitt said later, "Don't poke the bear."

Well. They poked, those silly Canadians.

They poked, undoubtedly, because they were still stoked by that sixth inning, when the Jays torched the Dodgers bullpen like Sherman torched Georgia. Starter Blake Snell loaded the bases, and then relievers Emmet Sheehan and Anthony Banda unloaded them. Sheehan walked in a run. A couple of singles added a couple more runs. And then pinch hitter Addison Barger came on to hit a grand slam off Banda, which only made him the first pinch hitter in World Series history ever to do that.

A two-run jack by Alejandro Kirk followed, gild for the lily. And, bingo, nine runs, an 11-4 rout and a 1-0 lead in the series for the Jays.

And yet.

And yet, "We don't need you!"

At Shohei Ohtani.

At the best player in a baseball.

At a guy who'd already launched a two-run tater in Game 1, and who, in the four-game sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers in the NLCS, batted .357 with three home runs, four RBI, a triple and a stolen base. Oh, and who pitched six scoreless innings to pick up the win in Game 4, when he allowed just two hits, struck out 10 and, oh, yeah, hit three home runs when he wasn't throwing the baseball past assorted Brewers. 

 Now, no one's saying Game 4 is going to happen again. It was, after all, maybe the greatest individual performance in the history of the game. But it could. Which is why taunting Ohtani is probably not the best strategy, even if it is in the midst of a stem-to-stern tattooing of the defending world champs.

As Bassitt warned, you don't poke the bear.

Oh, sometimes you can get away with it. But sometimes the bear filets you like Leonardo DiCaprio in "The Revenant," and that's just too gruesome to contemplate if you're the Toronto Blue Jays.

Stay tuned.