The Blue Jays on Monday night topped the visiting White Sox by a score of 4-2 (box score). For the Jays one of the big blows came in the sixth, when Toronto third baseman Josh Donaldson blasted one to the opposite field off Sox starter Reynaldo Lopez. Have a look ...
You may have noticed that Donaldson, just as he was touching the plate, appeared to whistle in the direction of the White Sox's dugout ...
Yep, whistle pants activated. You have likely intuited that Donaldson is in some or fashion "Sticking It to the Opponent" by doing this. As it turns out, though, the White Sox started this particular whistle-ruckus.
First base coach Daryl Boston, as Colleen Kane of the Chicago Tribune notes, tried for a long time to learn to whistle on his own, but after failing in those endeavors Boston bought a whistle, which he uses to get his outfielders' attention and on occasion laud his troops for a nice play afield.
Whistles, however, are known to give off a shrill, high-pitched noise, and shrill, high-pitched noises often make the listener want to deliver a kidney shot to the nearest stranger. For instance, this scribe's male spawn may have received a whistle as a party favor from truly awful people once upon a time, and this scribe may have thrown said whistle the hell away while male spawn was sleeping and later pretended to not know what happened to it. In any event, Mr. Donaldson appears to be number among those of who can be moved to violence by whistle chirps.
Speaking of which ...
Boston "I was informed ahead of time that [Donaldson] wasn't particularly thrilled about the whistle and he showed me he was not. So I hit the whistle a couple times hard before he went to the plate and responded. You can pin that homer on me.''
— Daryl Van Schouwen (@CST_soxvan) April 3, 2018
Coach Boston kicked it to see if the bees would come out, and come out they did. Said Donaldson after the game: "As soon as I stepped in the box he started blowing it. I felt it would be appropriate if I blew it back at him when they didn't make the play."
In summary: Nazgul shriek from a coach's whistle, bad; choo-choo toots, good. By the way, these same two teams get together again on Tuesday.
