Your midday sports snack.

Remembering Roy

Roy Halladay started 287 games for the Toronto Blue Jays. The one we’re basking in today is May 12, 2009.

That was the night A.J. Burnett returned to Toronto wearing New York Yankees grey, months after he opted out of his contract with the Blue Jays two years early to sign in the Bronx. That morning, the National Post billed the pitching matchup with a Star Wars reference: Darth Burnett against Obi-Wan Halladay on the Rogers Centre turf.

Over the top? Maybe, but not by much. Before the Yankees came to town, the biggest home crowd the Jays had drawn since the home opener was 22,164 — a figure they nearly doubled on this Tuesday night when a fair chunk of the 43,737 fans in attendance were hoping for something greater than a win. They wanted to see Burnett shamed. What they got was Halladay at his finest.

“I expected Doc to do what he did,” Burnett said after the game. “I made a few mistakes. He didn’t make any.”

That Halladay would make a point of shining that night was not exactly surprising, for one appreciable characteristic of his was that he almost never lost to the Yankees. In his last 19 starts against New York up to and including the Burnett game, he was 13-2 with a 2.09 ERA. Usually, though, the Yankees were at least able to hit the ball in the air on occasion.

On the night of Burnett’s return, they didn’t manage that meagre feat until the ninth inning, when Brett Gardner broke up a cascade of groundouts and seen third strikes with a fly out to centre field. The Yankees had five hits to that point, and had even scored a run in the seventh on a line-drive double and a rolling single. But Halladay was so dominant that he ensured the game was played on the ground, a setting where he had no chance of being beaten.

A few other standout tidbits from the game, a 5-1 Jays win:

• It didn’t take long to play nine innings with Halladay on the mound. This one was done in a tidy two hours, 22 minutes, Halladay’s shortest outing of the year to that point. Not incidentally, it was also his first complete game; he’d finish the season with nine to the lead the American League for the third straight year.

• Johnny Damon had two of the five Yankee hits. After allowing a Damon single with one out in the first, Halladay proceeded to mow down the next 17 batters, a streak only stopped by Damon’s double in the seventh.

• For all the scorn he faced in the way of boos and handmade signs, Burnett was decent in opposition: he allowed seven hits and five earned runs over 7.2 innings, striking out three and walking four. The Jays rung him up for three runs in the fourth inning and iced the game with two more, including a solo homer, in the eighth.

• The win moved the Jays to 23-12 on the year and bumped the Yankees to 15-17. On May 13 and 14, though, New York beat the Jays to kickstart a nine-game winning streak. By the fall, with Toronto well out of the playoffs at 75-87, the Yankees were celebrating a 103-59 season — not to mention their 27th World Series title.

That May 12 is a tidy snapshot of Halladay’s entire Jays career: brilliance on a night where the hype outpaced the eventual consequences. He controlled what he could control. For that, he should be saluted.

Toast points

• Auston Matthews will miss the first game of his NHL career tonight because of the upper-body injury that has been plaguing him recently. It is expected Patrick Marleau will shift to centre to cover for Matthews’ absence; expect some of the lines to be scrambled because of it. The Maple Leafs host the Minnesota Wild in Sportsnet’s Wednesday night national game. Minnesota has won their last seven meetings, all low-scoring, one-goal decisions.

• The NHL reports that Canadiens goalie Charlie Lindgren became the third netminder in the team’s long history to win his first five career games when Montreal beat Vegas 3-2 last night. His five appearances came across the last three seasons.

• Jaromir Jagr drew back into the Flames’ lineup last night and his appearance was his 1,925th NHL game played, including regular season and playoffs. That broke a tie for second place all-time with Gordie Howe. Jagr needs another 68 games to pass all-time leader Mark Messier.

• Panthers goalie Roberto Luongo also set a new milestone, playing in his 972nd regular-season game last night to pass Terry Sawchuk for third place all-time in goalie games played. He’ll become only the third to play 1,000 games when he reaches that level, after Martin Brodeur (1,266) and Patrick Roy (1,029).

• The greatest (and, really, the only) rivalry in international women’s hockey resumes tonight in Florida. Canada and the U.S. face off at 7 p.m. ET in each team’s second game at the Four Nations Cup, a day after Canada routed Sweden 9-0 and the Americans dispatched Finland 8-2. It’s all but guaranteed they’ll meet again in the championship game Sunday, when the U.S. will look to extend its streak of two straight gold medals.

• Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir will look to wrap up their spot in figure skating’s Grand Prix Final when they take the ice at the NHK Trophy event on Friday in Osaka. The Canadian ice dancers won Skate Canada two weeks ago, and another victory will easily give them enough points to qualify for the final in Nagoya, Japan in December. Patrick Chan pulled out of this assignment after his disastrous Skate Canada to concentrate on preparing for the Olympics.

• If it’s possible for any member of basketball’s notorious Ball family to keep a low profile, LiAngelo Ball managed to do that until yesterday, when he and two UCLA teammates were arrested for allegedly shoplifting sunglasses from a Louis Vuitton store in China. Ball, the younger brother of Lakers rookie Lonzo Ball, won’t play in UCLA’s season opener against Georgia Tech this Saturday in Shanghai, coach Steve Alford said today. Worse? The players could reportedly face three to 10 years in prison if they’re convicted.

Photo of the day

At nationalpost.com

• National Post arts and life editor Dustin Parkes dusts off his Blue Jays blogger hat to reflect on Halladay’s tenure in Toronto and how the city was OK saying goodbye to their sporting hero in 2009, when he asked to be traded from the perennially underperforming club to a contender. Saying goodbye this time is proving much more difficult.

• The Florida Panthers sent Owen Tippett back to his junior club this week and the 18-year-old has already shifted his attention to Canada’s world junior team. “I’ve dreamed about playing for Team Canada at the world juniors ever since I was a little kid, so to play in that tournament would be a really special feeling,” he told Michael Traikos. “I obviously can take a lot back from what I learned there and implement it here.”

TV tonight

Until 5:30 p.m. Tennis: ATP NextGen Finals TSN2
2 p.m. Hockey: Karjala Cup, Canada vs. Switzerland TSN1,3
7:30 p.m. NHL: Minnesota at Toronto Sportsnet, TVAS
8 p.m. NBA: LA Lakers at Boston TSN1,3-5
10:30 p.m. NBA: Minnesota at Golden State TSN1,3

Early Thursday

8 a.m. Tennis: ATP NextGen Finals TSN3
8:30 a.m. Winter sports: World Cup bobsled and skeleton from Lake Placid CBC.ca streaming
— Women’s skeleton heats, 8:30 and 10 a.m.
— Women’s bobsled heats, 12:30 and 2 p.m.

Hot Buttered Post is served Monday through Thursday.