Space, time and Danny Jansen: A look at the oddities of the Blue Jays-Red Sox suspended game

The beginning of Monday afternoon’s Blue Jays game at Fenway Park in Boston will feature an unusual pair of public address announcements.
“Now catching for the Red Sox, No. 28, Danny Jansen.”
“Pinch-hitting for the Blue Jays’ Danny Jansen, No. 28, Ernie Clement (or Alejandro Kirk, or Leo Jimenez, or someone else).”
No, there hasn’t been a tear in the space-time fabric, though it may seem that way. The Jays and Red Sox will be resuming a game suspended June 26 because of rain. Jansen was at the plate for the Jays, but has since been traded to the Red Sox. When the game resumes, he will become the first player in major-league history to play for both teams in the same game.
“Baseball has been around for so long, there’s so many things that’s happened in the game,” Jansen told reporters in Boston. “So I was surprised when I found out I was the first.”
Two months ago, the 29-year-old Jansen fouled off the first pitch of his at-bat against Kutter Crawford, now his teammate, so whoever hits for him will assume the 0-1 count while he settles in behind the plate.
In a quirk of baseball scoring, had Jansen been in a two-strike count and the pinch-hitter struck out, the at-bat would reflect on Jansen’s record and he would be awarded both a strikeout and a put-out in the same at-bat. We won’t get that, but we will get history as Jansen appears on both sides of the box score.
The suspended game, which is tied 0-0, will resume with one out in the top of the second inning and Davis Schneider at first base. The two hitters who were to follow Jansen in the Jays’ batting order are no longer on the team, either: Isiah Kiner-Falefa is with the Pittsburgh Pirates now, Kevin Kiermaier is with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Bo Bichette, who was hitting after Kiermaier on June 26, won’t be available since he’s on the injured list with a calf strain. And, a little later, the Jays will have to pinch-hit for Justin Turner, now with Seattle.
Once the game is finished, it will go into the record books as having been played on June 26, which means Jansen will have played in a game for the Red Sox more than a month before he was traded to them. And it’s likely Jimenez will get into the game, since the Jays will need to replace two infielders, which means that he’ll go down in history as having played with the Jays eight days before his July 4 major-league debut.
“I actually had no clue until you just said it right now,” Jimenez said. “It sounds amazing. Impressive. Like, I wasn’t even here at all and I’m playing a game that (happened) back then. It’s a little bit crazy.”
The same will apply to Will Wagner, who went 2-for-3 for the Sugar Land Space Cowboys on June 26 and didn’t debut in the majors until Aug. 12.
“That’s weird, right?” Wagner said. “Is that the first time in history that’s happened?”
No, it’s happened a few times. Barry Bonds, for example, made his major-league debut May 30, 1986, but because he played in the resumption of a suspended game a couple of months later, he’s credited with a 17th-inning RBI single on April 20.
“Well, if I’m going to be mentioned with Barry Bonds, I’ll do it,” Wagner said. “That’d be sick.”
Monday’s game won’t be the first time something wacky has happened to the Jays as a result of a suspended game.
On Aug. 28, 1980, the Jays and Minnesota were tied 5-5 after 14 innings when the game was paused because of a 5 p.m. curfew. The Cars were booked for a concert that evening.
First baseman Otto Velez was involved in a car accident that night and wasn’t able to play when the game resumed the next day, so Jays manager Bobby Mattick shifted his defence and put a young pitcher named Dave Stieb into the game in left field.
Stieb, drafted as an outfielder, would get his only big-league at-bat in that game. He flied out to centre field in the bottom of the 15th. The Jays lost 7-5.
In 1986, Tony Fernandez set a Jays record that can never be broken. The shortstop played in 163 games that season, including a 6-6 tie in Cleveland on Aug. 26.
Back then, games that were rained out before becoming official were replayed in their entirety, and if a game had become official but was tied after five innings, it was still replayed. All the stats from the rained-out game counted, though. That gave Fernandez an extra game played.