Not only did the Blue Jays catcher rip the game-winning, two-run single in the eighth, he followed that up by stealing a base in the major leagues for the first time in his 532-game career on Friday.<\/p>\n
Kirk, who never will be described as fleet-footed, swiped second without a throw after Texas Rangers reliever Phil Katon struck out Myles Straw.<\/p>\n
Game ops then put up that it was Kirk’s first career stolen base on the scoreboard, resulting in a standing ovation from the crowd.<\/p>\n
Kirk’s two-strike slash up the middle minutes earlier gave the AL-leading Blue Jays a four-run eighth, leading to a come-from-behind 6-5 win.<\/p>\n
Earlier, the fan favourite mashed a two-run homer to cut the Rangers’ lead to 3-2.<\/p>\n
Teammate Vladimir Guerrero Jr. grabbed the bag at second after the game and presented it to Kirk in the handshake line.<\/p>\n
“I thought it was great,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “The infield’s playing in, they’re not going to throw. He was moving, man. I think for Vlad to give him the base was awesome. The fact he was holding it on the field post-game was even better. I think they’re authenticating it. This should go down in major-league history.”<\/p>\n
When Blue Jays first-base coach Mark Budzinski gave Kirk the sign to steal, the catcher admitted he was caught off guard.<\/p>\n
“He told me and I just kind of turned around and looked at him like ‘are you serious?'” Kirk told reporters through a translator after the game.<\/p>\n
Starting pitcher Chris Bassitt thinks Kirk could have a new target.<\/p>\n
“He’s catching (all-time base stolen-base leader) Rickey (Henderson) slowly, I think,” Bassitt said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not only did the Blue Jays catcher rip the game-winning, two-run single in the eighth, he followed that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-73638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}