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	TODAY: Friday, May 12
	What the heck is going on in Toronto? By Jayson Stark ESPN.com
	We're not sure exactly when that SkyDome in Toronto was secretly moved to the top of a mountain in Colorado. But it apparently happened a week or so ago when no one was looking. What has transpired inside that dome during the Blue Jays' most recent homestand was advertised as baseball. But the numbers on the scoreboard were changing so fast, it looked like the tote board at the Toronto Stock Exchange. Triviality Cal Ripken is the fifth player in history who won a Rookie of the Year award and went on to get 3,000 hits. Name the other four. (Answer at bottom) In the first seven games of the homestand, the Blue Jays and their two opponents -- Seattle and Anaheim -- cranked out 142 runs, 201 hits, 84 extra-base hits, 33 home runs, six games in which the winning team scored 11 runs or more, two games in which the losing team scored 10 runs or more, 23 different half-innings of three runs or more and just 16 of 60 innings in which both teams batted and neither scored. "We've looked up so much stuff," Blue Jays media-relations assistant Jay Stenhouse said, "we had to put in an order for more pencils." Asked what his scorebook looked like, Stenhouse reported: "It looks like someone dripped a lot of ketchup on it." On the same homestand, Toronto managed to give up 10 runs or more in three straight games for the first time in franchise history and also score 10-plus in three straight games for the first time in franchise history. The Federal Reserve Board is believed to be investigating to see if this is an exchange-rate problem. When the homestand started, a Blue Jays team with a stupendous collection of young arms had a 4.81 ERA. Seven games later, they were at 7.25, worst in baseball. And despite allowing 79 runs in seven games they managed to win three of them. That ain't easy, friends. But here's how this happened: Alex Rodriguez launched three homers Sunday at SkyDome. Helpless vs. Seattle First, the Mariners came to town last weekend. They'd just scored six runs in an entire three-game series in Detroit. Naturally, they scored six in their first inning in Toronto. Over the next three days, the Mariners scored six runs in an inning three times, five once, four once, three twice, two five times and one four times. They had more than twice as many multi-run innings (12) as 1-2-3 innings (five). Alex Rodriguez entered the series with two home runs. He hit three in one game Sunday. The Mariners won 11-9 in Game 1. They won 17-6 in Game 2. Then they became the first team to score 17 runs one day and then more the next since the 1953 Red Sox scored 17 against the Tigers on June 17 and then 23 on June 18. In one series, Seattle piled up 47 runs, 50 hits, 10 home runs and two grand slams. Pedro Borbon gave up both of them (to Edgar Martinez and Alex Rodriguez). He hadn't give any up in his career before that. No team in the '90s scored 47 runs in a three-game series, not even at Coors Field. "Back when I used to broadcast Rams games," the legendary voice of the Mariners, Dave Niehaus reported, "and they had that Fearsome Foursome on defense, I used to describe a hell of a lot of games where they didn't score that many points." Touched by the Angels You would have thought life would calm down after a series like that. But nooooo. Kelvim Escobar earned himself numerous automatic Cy Young votes by holding the Angels to one run in a 7-1 Toronto win Monday. But the Blue Jays followed those three games with a 16-10 loss, a 12-4 win and a 12-11 win in which they nearly blew an 11-1 lead. Totals for that series: 73 runs, 111 hits, 41 extra-base hits, 15 home runs. "Everything over the plate got hit," said turbocharged Angels broadcaster Rex Hudler. "It didn't matter how hard, how fast or how much spin was on it. It got clobbered." When all this was over, 33 different men had gone to the SkyDome mound in seven games. Their combined ERA was 10.02. So think how much courage it took for them just to leave the bullpen. "All I know," Hudler said, "is they'd asked me to go in there and pitch, I'd have gotten in a World War II bunker, gotten all the armor I could against me, cover up and say, 'Here it comes. DUCK!' " Fields of Dreams revisited Somehow, we have a feeling that Comerica Park and Pac Bell Park looked a lot better on their architects' drawing boards than they looked to the Tigers and Giants in real life last week. The Tigers got shut out four times in the first eight games in Comerica. The Giants played five games in their first homestand at Pac Bell -- and lost all of them. Sheez, John Rocker's homecoming went better than that. So here's a look at the gory details: The Comerican Dream. The Detroit Tigers wanted a ballpark that was slightly more pitcher-friendly than, say, Coors Field. Well, they got one, all right. What was the last park this pitcher-friendly? The South End Grounds (Boston, 19th century)? In the first eight games of Comerica Park, there were five shutouts (one by the Tigers, four against the Tigers). There have been 14 shutouts in six years at Coors Field. The Tigers have erected big fountains beyond the center-field fence that are supposed to erupt like a geyser every time they hit a home run. At this rate, they're more likely to have the pipes freeze. "It's old-timey baseball," said closer Todd Jones. "Detroit finally built a stadium that would have made Cobb proud. Just too late for him." Yeah. Like 74 years too late. Of course, knowing what we know of Ty Cobb, he might not have been so proud. He might have been ticked off he wasn't hitting 40 homers a year like everybody else. Comerica might be 20 feet shorter to the center field fence than Tiger Stadium, but it's still the biggest park in the American League. So last Saturday, when Bobby Higginson launched a ball 420 feet and still had it caught by Gerald Williams, he quipped: "That's life at Comerica National Park." "If they want to call it that," assistant GM Steve Lubratich told Booth Newspapers' Danny Knobler, "we've got Old Faithful (i.e., the fountains) out there." Pac-lash. If you have a tough time recalling the last time a Giants team went through a homestand of five games or more without winning a game, you don't need to report to a memory clinic. That's because, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, that never happened in the 20th century. Not at Candlestick Park. Not in the Polo Grounds. Not at old Hilltop Park. Never. Back in the olden days of Candlestick (shed a windblown tear right here), no team had a home-field advantage like the Giants. (We still recall this exact quote from former Candlestick fan Greg Luzinski: "They should blow up this bleeping place.") But nowadays, not only do the Giants have to adjust to life in their new home, they apparently need to hold a training camp to help their fans adjust, too. Because the turning point of their crushing loss to Arizona on April 15 came when Barry Bonds leaped at the fence in pursuit of a will-it-or-won't-it ball off the bat of Kelly Stinnett. And then ... It was caught by a guy wearing a Barry Bonds shirt -- but not Barry. Nope. The guy who caught this ball was 15-year-old Giants fan Rickie Navarette, sitting in the front row, just beyond the left-field fence. It turned into a three-run homer. The Giants went on to lose by (what else?) three runs, 7-4. And afterward, Jeff Kent observed, cheerily, of Pac Bell: "It's a little too fan-friendly, I believe." But unlike his homer-napping predecessor, Jeffrey Maier, Navarette quickly deduced he wasn't a good bet to be invited onto the Regis and Kathy Lee show. So he smoothly flipped the ball to Bonds, who was so disgusted, he didn't even mark this play, "Kid to 7," in his scorebook. Asked to rate Navarette's impressive technique on that flip, Diamondbacks reliever Dan Plesac told us: "I'd rate it a nine on a scale of 10. The only way he could have flipped it better was if he hadn't even reached into the glove with his bare hand and he'd just dropped it down with his glove hand -- with the old catch and flip, like Omar Vizquel." Navarette's flip may not have been Omar-esque, but it at least was a heartfelt gesture. The Giants didn't seem to appreciate it, though. "He already screwed everything up," said center fielder Marvin Benard. "He might as well keep the ball." OK, so maybe the Giants weren't feeling real grateful to young Rickie Navarette. But if it's any consolation to him, the Diamondbacks certainly were. "If we win the division by a game," Plesac said, "he may get a quarter-share." Wild pitches Box score line of the week (first prize) What do you do for an encore after giving up nine runs in one game? Here's what Houston's Chris Holt did April 16 in San Diego: 3 IP, 12 H, 10 R, 9 ER, 0 BB, 4 K, 1 HR, 1 HBP, 70 pitches to get nine outs. Holt's summation: "I'm not going to win many games pitching like I did today." Hard to argue with that. (See our list of the week.) List of the week Chris Holt just became the sixth pitcher in the last 10 years to give up nine runs or more in back-to-back starts. Here are the others, courtesy of Stats Inc.'s Jim Henzler. Special citation to Jaime Navarro, who has done it twice. Chris Holt April 11-16, 2000 Pedro Astacio April 4-18, 1998 Jaime Navarro April 18-23, 1997 Robert Person August 16-21, 1996 Ramon Martinez June 27-July 2, 1995 Jaime Navarro July 9-17, 1993 Box score line of the week (second prize) Anaheim's Ken Hill got dragged into that house of pitching horrors, Toronto's scary SkyDome and emerged with this nightmarish line on Wednesday: 3 1/3 IP, 11 H, 10 R, 10 ER, 3 BB, 0 K, 3 HR, 79 pitches to get 10 outs. "I know that looked pretty bad," Hill said, with exceptional accuracy. Box score line of the week (offensive division) Try this Barry Bonds line, from Tuesday's game in Cincinnati, on your Sega machine sometime: 2 AB, 5 R, 1 H, 2 RBS. (Oh yeah, also 1 HR, 4 BB.) "I'm tired," Bonds said, after tying the team record for runs scored in a game. "I had to run all those bases. It almost killed me." Marathon men of the week Theoretically, it's still possible to get 27 outs in a baseball game faster than a guy from Kenya can run 26 miles. But you'd have a hard time proving it in Boston. Every year on Patriots Day, the Red Sox go head-to-head with the Boston Marathon. And even though the Sox zipped through a 1-0 game Monday in under three hours (well, 2:58), they were still beaten by the Marathon champ -- for the 24th straight year. Last time the Sox won this epic battle, according to the Elias Sports Bureau's Ken Hirdt: 1976, when Fergie Jenkins threw a five-hit shutout of the Twins in 2:05, and the Sox blew away Marathon champ Jack Fultz (2:20:19) by 15 minutes. It's been all down Heartbreak Hill ever since. Which brings to mind the greatest quote in Red Sox history on this topic, by Joe Hesketh after a 4-hour, 12-minute Patriots Day game in 1992: "We've got to find a way," Hesketh said, "to slow down the runners." Steal of the week Of course, maybe the Red Sox should just sign all those runners. Then they'd have an actual running game. They went 14 straight games without a stolen base this season. And only one team in modern history has taken that "Thou Shalt Not Steal" commandment more seriously. That was Sam Horn's '87 Red Sox, who went swipeless for the first 15 games. (The only other team since to even go 10 straight without a steal, according to Stats Inc., was this year's Devil Rays.) After Trot (I Am Not a Crook) Nixon finally expunged that zero in their SB column Wednesday, he told the Boston Globe's Mike Madden that he looked into the dugout -- and couldn't figure out why Pedro Martinez was holding up a bag. "I thought it was a hidden ball trick or something he was signaling," Nixon said. "I was looking all around, seeing who had the ball. Then I realized the pitcher had the ball and I figured out what Pedro was doing ... first stolen base of the year." Rundown of the week It started out as just an innocent pitch in the dirt. Twins reliever Hector Carrasco threw it Wednesday. Catcher Marcus Jensen trapped it. Royals baserunner Jermaine Dye tried to go from first to second on it. And the next thing anyone knew, it turned into an insane double-rundown play with chase scenes between first and second, and third and the plate, ending with the left fielder (Jacque Jones) tagging out the runner on third (Carlos Beltran) with a mad dive. And you can score it as just your routine 2-6-5-2-5-3-7 out at the plate. "`Jacque Jones made a heck of a play," said Twins manager Tom Kelly, "on one of the worst rundowns of the century." By the way, if you dial that phone number in the Minneapolis metropolitan area, you get a recording informing you that number does not exist. Power drill of the week If Richard Hidalgo and Orel Hershiser aren't out working on endorsement deals with Black and Decker after what happened Wednesday in Dodger Stadium, we've lost all faith in the American economy. Hershiser tied the modern NL record by hitting four batters in one game. Hidalgo tied the modern major-league record by getting drilled three times in one game (twice by Hershiser, once by reliever Matt Herges). Hidalgo: "I'm mad -- and I'm sore." Hershiser: "The back of his jersey must have looked like a catcher's mitt by the end of the game." Astros broadcast witticist Jim Deshaies: "That was Ron Hunt-like.If Hidalgo had only known what the record was, he would have been leaning all over the plate (in his last at-bat) to get it. Of course, Alan Mills rushes it up there pretty good, so it wouldn't have been like getting hit by a knuckleballer." Comedy Central special of the week The Marlins and Cubs played a first inning April 15 that should have been guest-hosted by Adam Sandler. It included: A ground ball that hit Marlins pitcher Ryan Dempster in the shin. A Sammy Sosa ground ball that drilled second-base ump Mark Hirschbeck and sent Hirschbeck spinning like a foosball figurine. A late pickoff attempt by catcher Mike Redmond that ended with second baseman Luis Castillo making a throw to first that was so wild, it broke a TV camera. And a swinging bunt that Dempster fielded and fired halfway to Peoria. "That first inning had everything except the dancing bears coming out of center field," Redmond said. Marlins manager John Boles' review: "I was expecting Larry, Moe and Curley to show up." Mess of the week But as unsightly as that inning was in Chicago, if you can find a whole game less picturesque than the Reds' 13-9 loss to the Giants on Tuesday, let us know. Among the highlights (and we use that term loosely): 16 walks (10 of which scored), five errors, three wild pitches, two hit batters and one passed ball. Best description of this mess, from Reds catcher Eddie Taubensee: "It was like a total team effort -- in ugliness." Four pack of the week Chuck Finley may not hold the greatest record in sports. But he sure holds the most mathematically impossible record in sports. When you consider that a pitcher is only entitled to get three outs in an inning, think how tough it is to get four strikeouts in an inning. And Chuck Finley now has done this three times. In less than a year. Now tell us this isn't mathematically impossible. "I don't know," said Finley's teammate, Paul Shuey, the last Indians pitcher to whiff four in an inning (back in '94) before Finley did it April 16. "I used to think that home-run thing was impossible, too, till McGwire went wild and pulled a 70 on us. So I don't think anything is mathematically impossible anymore." And obviously, Finley is living proof. Last year, he became the first pitcher ever to fan four in an inning twice, then predicted: "That might end up on one of those video trivia machines in a bar somewhere." But last weekend, he did it again against Texas, skipping a third strike of Chad Curtis past catcher Einar Diaz, to enable him to four-peat one more time. No other pitcher has struck out four in an inning more than once. So how bizarre is it that Finley has done it three times? "I think four's old hat for him now," Shuey joked. "It's ho-hum, four punchies, no big deal. Now, probably five (in an inning) -- that would be something special. Four just means some extra pitches. If he can get five, he might even save the ball." Day-Nighter of the week It's always trouble when those Colorado Rockies schedule a day-night doubleheader. But last weekend, it was more trouble than usual. The first game -- Cardinals 9, Rockies 3 -- was fairly routine. But Game 2 looked for a while as if it might not end until Memorial Day. It finished Rockies 14, Cardinals 13. And along the way, there were 32 hits, 11 extra-base hits, 18 walks, 417 pitches, 10 pitching changes and a ridiculous 4 hours, 19 minutes worth of baseball to play nine innings. It was one minute shy of the record for longest nine-inning game in National League history. "I don't want to say it was long," said Rockies coach-humorist Rich Donnelly. "But you could have read War and Peace during that doubleheader -- and you'd have finished it. "I don't want to say it was long. But we had scrambled eggs when we got there. And by the time the second game was over, it was time for them again." Trivia answer Willie Mays, Pete Rose, Rod Carew and Eddie Murray. Jayson Stark is a senior writer at ESPN.com.		ALSO SEE Stark: Visiting realignment Stark: Cal Hall-bound long before 3,000