The stars were aligning for the Blue Jays until the Red Sox delivered the dagger — on the Jumbotron for all to see. Maybe next year

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This article was published 03/10/2021 (1496 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sunday bloody Sunday.

Giddiness replaced by baseball gore — even shown on the Jumbotron at the Rogers Centre, scrambled to Washington’s Nationals Park just in time to watch a home-run stake driven through Toronto’s heart.

A few tick-tocks later, it didn’t matter anymore that the Blue Jays had thrashed Baltimore 12-4, studded with jack-loads of their own and eventful consequences all over the scorecard. That they’d collected, in a silly team romp against the hapless Orioles, their ninth series sweep. That Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had torn the hide off the ball with his 48th home run and Marcus Semien cranked a historic four-bagger of his own, No. 45.

It still ended up as the crying game.

And the last game of 2021 for the Jays.

There would be no tiebreaker here, there or the other. There would be no wild card. There would be no post-season encore for a team that — how can this be? — set all sorts of franchise and Major League Baseball records, will boast a Cy Young winner or runner-up, an MVP winner or runner-up, was the best in the American League through a 22-9 rip from Sept. 1 to Oct. 3, yet somehow failed to make the post-season.

“Look, it hurts,” a mostly downcast Guerrero said in the aftermath of elimination, although he’s never entirely in the dumps. “Knowing that you win 91 games and you didn’t make the playoffs. It hurts me, it hurts my teammates. But that’s only going to make us more better for next year.”

Feels a long way off, next year.

Some might say it was a maddening waste of apex career seasons the likes of which might never come again, but that’s too jaundiced a view. Come on, wasn’t that fun? Didn’t Blue Jays baseball sometimes just take your breath away?

George Springer, who really did prove his $150-million worth in the last stupefying week of ups and downs, and went yard twice on Sunday — the second a grand slam — cut to the chase: “A 91-win season is something to be proud of, but we have to figure out how to win one more than everyone else.”

Ongoing pandemic restrictions prevented the media from getting an inside gander at the Toronto clubhouse after the finality of the Game 162 chaos was etched in acid in D.C., where the Nationals had somehow managed to gag on a 5-2 lead over the Red Sox. Doubtless the players were glad of retaining their privacy, apart from those perhaps arm-twisted into doing Zoom interviews. Whether in their inner sanctum or for the remnants of a crowd that had stuck around to watch what felt — by then — inevitable unfolding: Boston winning 7-5, snapping the last filament of hope for Toronto, already aware that the New York Yankees had walked it off with a 1-0 win over Tampa. Seattle had fallen to the Angels, meanwhile, but that became an irrelevancy.

All the possible permutations for Monday — flying to the West Coast, down to Boston, across to the New York — were blown away like dandelion fluff. The Jays are going home is all, wherever that may be, and some, sadly, likely won’t be coming back to Toronto again other than as an opponent. In that sense, yup, 2021 was a bugger, squandering stellar seasons from pending free agents Semien and Robbie Ray.

They’d known, were aware of what was happening/had happened in D.C. and the Bronx, and an astute observer might have noticed the slightest sag in their posture, in their strut. It just showed, you know?

Manager Charlie Montoyo had sat in his office in the minutes after his team departed the field — doffing their caps to the crowd — but didn’t watch the Washington-Boston broadcast. He felt it instead. A muffled roar whooshing into the bowels of the ballpark would mean “something good” had occurred for Toronto; silence or the trace of a groan meant “something bad.”

It was something bad.

“I’m so proud of this team,” the endlessly and defiantly upbeat skipper declared, as he has been doing for months. But the man has a point: three “home” ballparks, two of which were frequently more hostile toward the Jays than the visitors — Tampa fans in Dunedin, Yankees fans in Buffalo. “The city is so proud of them.”

Sure. But nothing really softens the blow.

Because for much of the afternoon, with all games starting at the same time, the stars seemed to be aligning perfectly for Toronto: Seattle fell back early to L.A. and couldn’t catch up; the Bosox were in a dreadful hole; the Yankees and Rays — well, nada. Hour after hour, bupkis. Until the bottom of the ninth and … you know.

Then the baseball world turned on its axis. As it often does.

One thinks back to the games that got away, the losses earlier in the year, and what a massive difference just one more W would have meant.

“It didn’t happen and it sucks,” said Springer, explaining that it was too soon, too fresh, to make an insightful assessment of the season. “I mean, you have to go back and start from the beginning … understanding who we are as a team.”

In time, sooner rather than later. But in these moments, George?

“Oh, we were rooting for Washington. Unfortunately, our fate was in the hands of other teams. We were hoping for something, it didn’t happen.”

Guerrero — who was the marquee star of baseball in ’21, Shohei Shmohei — clung to his belief in his team until the last out in Washington. “Honestly, I’m the kind of person who always had a lot of faith.” That two-run shot by Rafael Devers, though, making it 7-5 Boston in the ninth — spirits sank. “We all felt uncomfortable at the moment,” he understated.

God’s plan, he added. Or maybe he was just quoting Drake lyrics.

Still, hard to swallow after that divine September streak. “I don’t really think it told us anything we didn’t know,” said Bo Bichette. “Maybe some clarification. There were so many moments (earlier in the season) where it felt like we could have given up at any point, just from the start of the year, not many things going our way. But I’m proud of how we finished and these last three games too, how we took care of business.

“The way we fought through adversity. The things we dealt with aren’t excuses, but they are the reality of our circumstances.”

Proud of themselves, but also no one else to blame but themselves.

“At the end of the day, though, we held the cards pretty late in the season,” Bichette pointed out, just around the time that his voice started to crack. “We had our opportunities and we just didn’t get it done.”

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That could be their epitaph.

But better this parting observation from Semien — and we do mean probably parting: “We were a young ball club, a couple of injuries. We weathered the storm in the first half while playing in Dunedin and Buffalo.

“We got here … and started to build a culture. We had some fans to play in front of. And we became, in my opinion, the best team in baseball.

“But it was just a tick too late.”

Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno