Blue Jays preach patience after disappointing Opening Day loss

Toronto excitedly packed the Rogers Centre on Tuesday night, but the Blue Jays gave them little to cheer about.

The most anticipated Blue Jays season in years began with a thud, a 4-1 loss to the Cleveland Indians in front of a sellout crowd of 48,857. Raucous ovations during pre-game ceremonies turned to frustration and boos by the second inning when the Indians took a 2-0 lead.

Much of the fan frustration early on was directed at Blue Jays catcher J.P. Arencibia. Arencibia struggled to corral R.A. Dickey’s knuckleball, allowing two passed balls in the inning which led to runners advancing and eventually scoring. Dickey isn’t concerned about Arencibia, or the Blue Jays 2013 fortunes.

“We’re family in there, you try to stay positive, but it’s a tough thing to do [catch a knuckleball],” Dickey said. “I’m sure he’ll identify whatever inhibited him and fix it. Sometime you throw a good knuckleball, and no one is catching it. That’s just the way it is. We’ll fix it.”

Dickey, making his first career Opening Day start and his first start with the Blue Jays, also praised the Toronto crowd for the energy in the building early on.

“Tonight was a real special night for me. The welcome I got from the fans was borderline supernatural. It was pretty awesome.

“Deep down you want so badly to give them a great show and entertain them, you want to pitch a one hitter. I think everybody who came tonight understands we have a pretty good ball club and the season is not won or lost on opening night.”

That remains to be seen, actually.

The sellout crowd was silent by the fourth inning, cheering only when urged by the jumbotron. There were scattered boos when Dickey gave up a two-run homer to Asdrubal Cabrera in the fifth.

On Twitter, the excitement and anticipation of the first game quickly to turned to the usual Twitter snark and negativity when things went sour on the field. Tweets like this were the norm from the fifth inning on:

It didn’t help that the Blue Jays, a sexy World Series pick with a newly loaded lineup, went hitless between the third inning and Arencibia’s two-out double in the ninth. Indians starter Justin Masterson tossed six innings, giving up one run on three hits and struck out five.

“They pitched well,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said. “We couldn’t get anything going. I know we’ll take heat for this. . . But we’re in for a fun, entertaining year.”

Before the game, scalpers were selling upper-deck 500-level tickets for $100 each, lower-level seats were fetching as much as $350 each. The home opener in Toronto is always hot ticket, but the general feeling in the city is there’s enough buzz, and expectations, to keep fans coming out all year.

When Jose Reyes, Melky Cabrera, and Jose Bautista went down in order in the top of the eighth, many fans took it as a cue to head for the exits. The attendance for the rest of the week, and indeed all season, will be worth watching.

One would hope the traditionally fickle Toronto sports fan will have enough perspective to forget this game and realize it’s just nine innings out of 1,458 (or more) in the season before jumping off the bandwagon en masse. If not, the ever philosophical Dickey has a message for fans.

“You wish it would have went different, you know, Opening Night, everybody’s here, full of energy – but the nature of this game is it’s a marathon, you can’t panic.

“Nobody in here’s panicking.”

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