Blue Jays rout Cole Hamels, Rangers in Game 1 of ALDS

ARLINGTON, Texas – Jose Bautista clobbered a three-run homer, gently put his bat down and began a businesslike trot around the bases, displaying no emotion.

The Toronto Blue Jays slugger, Public Enemy No. 1 in these parts, had been roundly booed all afternoon, and the ninth-inning drive deep into the left-field seats presented him a chance to gloat.

He passed, letting the scoreboard serve as his revenge instead. At that moment it showed the Blue Jays with a 10-run lead over the Texas Rangers, on the way to a 10-1 rout in Thursday’s Game 1 of their American League Division Series.

Bautista was in the middle of the action, contributing an RBI single and also scoring in a five-run third inning – highlighted by Troy Tulowitzki’s bases-clearing triple – that broke the game open early.

But he happily shared center stage with right-hander Marco Estrada, who pitched 8 1/3 brilliant innings as the Blue Jays struck first in what figures to be a tightly contested ALDS, much as it was last year.

That classic series, of course, essentially concluded when Bautista launched a dramatic three-run homer in Game 5, a blast he punctuated with an emphatic bat flip that irritated the Rangers. The bad blood spilled over to this season, when Bautista was plunked in a May 15 game and took out his anger with a hard slide on second baseman Rougned Odor, who responded with a shove and a right cross to Bautista’s jaw, triggering a brawl.

Thursday’s snoozer featured no such rowdiness.

“I wanted to avoid all the questions about the whole ordeal, because we’re baseball players, not UFC fighters, and we come here to play ballgames,’’ Bautista said. “That’s why I wanted everybody to kind of focus on that in our clubhouse, and we did that and played a pretty good game today.’’

It was better than that.

The Blue Jays pounded Rangers starter Cole Hamels for seven runs – six earned – in 3 1/3 innings, and he left in the fourth trailing 7-0. It was the most runs allowed and the shortest stint in 16 postseason starts for Hamels, who was seeking his fifth consecutive win in a Game 1.

After breezing through the first two innings, Hamels couldn’t put batters away in the third, allowing all five runs to score with two outs and requiring 42 pitches to get out of the inning.

His fielders certainly could have been more helpful. Adrian Beltre failed to snag a hard two-out liner by Josh Donaldson – who went 4-for-4 – and it skidded off his glove for a double that drove in the game’s first run. Four batters later, Tulowitzki belted a deep drive to center that eluded center fielder Ian Desmond, a tough but makeable play that wound up as the inning-capping triple.

“I’m not real sure of the relationship with Desi and the wall, but we’ve seen him make that catch,’’ Rangers manager Jeff Banister said. “And it would have been a great catch.’’

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The Blue Jays scored twice more in the fourth, one of them on a home run by Melvin Upton Jr.

“The combination of it being a tough day for him (Hamels) and their guy being on, you see the results,’’ Texas catcher Jonathan Lucroy said.

Handed the comfortable early cushion, Estrada cruised through eight innings of three-hit ball in an economical 95 pitches before yielding his only run in the ninth.

By then it was much too late even for the usually relentless Rangers to entertain launching a comeback. They had a major league-high 49 come-from-behind wins during the season, overcoming multi-run deficits in 29 of them. This one was much too big, and it silenced the sellout crowd of 47,434.

“Obviously, scoring seven runs by the fourth, that’s going to keep a lot of people quiet,’’ Estrada said. “It makes pitching a little funner, I guess. You’re able to make a little more mistakes.’’

For the Blue Jays, who on Tuesday walked off with an extra-inning victory over the Baltimore Orioles in the wild card game, the fun began even before the game.

Bautista’s first trip back to Arlington since the Punch Heard ’Round the Baseball world had been the hot story since the clubs’ rematch was set, and his teammates were kind enough to prepare him for what was to come.

“We knew Bats was going to get booed, right?’’ Tulowitzki said. “We were actually excited for it. We had fun with it. We were trying to boo him all day as well.’’

Clearly, it worked.

GALLERY: ALDS — RANGERS vs. BLUE JAYS