I’ll take the victory tonight in the City of Brotherly Love. It’s always nice to see us beat the Phillies since it brings back those heartwarming memories of the 1993 series and that iconic game 6 walk-off by Mr. Carter. Frankly, I was thrilled enough that my boys were even on television where I am (south-central Pennsylvania). This was a rare opportunity to watch the play-by-play action, but going into the ninth I convinced myself all I had done was found a new way to torture myself as a Jays fan. To recap: this team led the AL East for most of April and May until a 9-game losing streak. Since then, they’ve managed to scuffle their way into a third-place tie with Tampa Bay. Thankfully, the Phillies read up on one of my favorite children’s books: “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.”

The plot (if you can call it that) goes like this: if you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to want some milk. And once he has milk, he’s going to want something else to go with that. You can see how it develops from there. Tonight, the Jays were a group of mice, and acted just as timid when it came to crossing the plate. Going into the ninth, they had only plated two runs. Lyle Overbay extended the game with an impressive run-scoring base on balls (way to stay off Madson’s change-up, his out pitch!), but that was sandwiched between Alex Rios striking out looking with no outs, a Rod Barajas infield fly (the third time in the game he was called out on the rarely-called infield fly rule; that has to be a record), and a John McDonald punchout. After nine innings, the Jays had left an astonishing fifteen men on base…eight of them left there by Rodney Bara-ha-ha-ha.

Rod watches another blast off his bat travel a hundred feet high and twenty feet from the plate.

Just like that greedy little mouse though, the Jays couldn’t resist taking more. Downs worked a perfect ninth to produce extra innings. In the tenth, Toronto would not falter. They scored five runs on a series of hits and walks — even the futile Barajas slammed a two-run double into center — and took the opener of the series 8-5. Unbelievably, this was the first interleague win of the year for Toronto; they went 0-6 against Atlanta and Florida. As I mentioned previously, the interleague series the Jays face this week and next will serve as the barometer for the rest of the season. They absolutely need to start winning series and even grab a sweep or two if they want to compete. Tonight, they battled against an incredible pitcher in Cole Hamels, last season’s World Series MVP. Getting a win against him might just be the catalyst this scuffling team needed.

One can only hope that in future series, we might be a little more efficient in getting guys to home plate. Not every team will be as futile in laying mouse traps as the Phils.

Ryan Madson (2 BB, 2 H, ER, BS) is no Pied Piper.