Will Middlebrooks homered three times and just missed a fourth on Sunday afternoon in Toronto. The Red Sox hit three home runs through eight innings.
TORONTO — They tried to shake his hand, they threw paper planes at him. Will Middlebrooks became celebrity in Toronto on Sunday, although teammate Dustin Pedroia posits that may not be a good thing.
"I don't know," Pedroia said. "It might be difficult for him to get over the border."
Middlebrooks knocked three home runs at Rogers Centre on Sunday in a 13-0 win over the Blue Jays, accounting for half of Boston's six homers on the day. His first two came off last year's National League Cy Young award winner, R.A. Dickey, but the only hit he got off a knuckleball was a third-inning double.
The first- and fifth-inning homers off Dickey, the seventh-inning shot off Dave Bush were all 80-something-mph fastballs.
The sophomore did his homework coming in.
"Yeah, I talked to guys just about knuckleballers in general," Middlebrooks said. "I faced R.A. in spring training, so I kind of had an idea of what his movement was, velocity, because he throws a lot harder than a lot of guys. And I know certain counts he likes to come with fastballs when he's not locating his knuckleball well. That helped knowing that."
The end result was a hit trick, and fittingly, considering the "Let's go Maple Leafs" chant that cropped up at Rogers Centre late.
"Good Lord," winning pitcher Jon Lester said. "About 2000 feet of homers it seemed like. He obviously feels pretty good at the plate. It’s fun to watch when we’re on that side of it."
Things almost got real crazy in the eighth inning, when Middlebrooks just missed becoming the first Red Sox player to go deep four times in a game. He sent one to the warning track in left off Bush.
"Hit it too high," Middlebrooks said. "Ball was about 65 mph. They must've turned the AC off on me. I thought it had a chance, just the way the ball flies here. I was blowing on it running down the line, but it didn't have enough steam."
Middlebrooks finished the day 4-for-5 with four RBIS, a double and a lot of notable factsin relation. The last time a Red Sox player hit three homers in a game was June 24, 2010, when Dustin Pedroia did it in Colorado.
It was a wild end to an intense three-game series, which saw Boston win two of three. Two fans ran on the field Sunday. One tried to shake Middlebrooks hand in the ninth inning and he didn't flinch. A few minutes earlier, Middlebrooks picked up a paper plane mailed from the stands that landed near him, crumpled it and put it in his back right pocket.
"He said he was happy to meet me, and then he got tackled," Middlebrooks said of the third-base visitor. "He started to say something else, but then he got drilled. That was a good tackle. Blind-sided him. He didn't really see it coming. He had his hand out for me. Got pretty close. I didn't know if he was going to make it. I was trying to time it out of the corner of my eye. I was like, 'Am I going to have to shake this guy's hand?' But they had my block.
Middlebrooks was the band leader, but he wasn't the whole show. Jacoby Ellsbury went deep for the first time this season, same for Daniel Nava. Mike Napoli hit his second, and Jon Lester went seven shutout innings.
The first homer for Middlebrooks came in a first-inning progression that saw the Sox take a 5-0 lead five batters into the game. The two-run shot to right, which capped that run, was modest in comparison to what followed.
Part deux was the mammoth of the bunch, second only to maybe Napoli's in distance. A full-count knuckleball from Dickey centered itself right over the middle of the plate, and Middlebrooks sent it a few rows up into the second deck to left. The solo shot made it 8-0 Boston.
The next home run was a lead-off job in the seventh, agains to left this time off Bush for a 9-0 lead. Nava followed two pitches later for the first back-to-back effort for the Sox this season.
"He swung the bat exceptionally well as was the case in a number of guys up and down the lineup," Sox manager John Farrell said of Middlebrooks. "I thought we had a very good approach against Dickey. We laid off some tough knuckleballs down in the bottom of the zone. But it’s good to see the number of swings we put on here today."
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