The tweet came out from the Bisons three hours before the first pitch and it was perfect.
The Herd, of course, spends hours upon hours every season chronicling player transactions. And the parent Toronto Blue Jays have been responsible for roughly 200 a season the last seven years, often causing big issues with their Triple-A club.
But this one was unquestionably the happiest of all time.
"Today's ROSTER MOVE: Sahlen Field has been promoted to the Major Leagues."
The tweet was accompanied by a Blue Jays' video showing highlights of the amazing three-week transformation of the downtown ballpark.
Today's ROSTER MOVE: 🔹Sahlen Field has been promoted to the Major Leagues https://t.co/JErahcNjaV
— Buffalo Bisons (@BuffaloBisons) August 11, 2020
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This was no exhibition game with the parent club. For the first time in more than a century, this was Major League Baseball. The history books will show the Blue Jays eked out a 5-4 win over the Miami Marlins on Travis Shaw's 10th-inning RBI single, after frittering away a three-run lead in the ninth.
But it's really a postscript on all it took to get to this point.
"Hey, that's a long time between wins in Buffalo for the home team," joked Rich Baseball Operations president Mike Buczkowski as he walked through the press area after the game.
I thought Buczkowski was referencing the Bisons' previous win here last August when he kept talking and dropped his punchline.
"It's been over 100 years."
Holy Buster Bison. He was right. It was Sept. 8, 1915, when the Buffalo Blues of the Federal League swept a doubleheader from Baltimore.
Three years before the first global pandemic. Just under 55 years before Buffalo lost baseball and 64 years from when it got the sport back. Just under 76 years before the city watched Miami get chosen by the National League. Just under 102 years before Celery finally won a race.
The Blue Jays should have come here all along. No place was going to move mountains for them like the city and its baseball team did the last month. And for all the rumored griping about playing in a minor-league facility, things sure seemed to go fine Tuesday.
"I've known this facility for a long time but the biggest mouth-opening, jaw-dropping experience I had was seeing it from the highway," GM Ross Atkins said on a media Zoom call a few hours before the game. "What they did to brand it and make it feel like the Toronto Blue Jays' home, it really is kind of jaw-dropping to see the significant different."
"I kind of expected to be underwhelmed," said shortstop Bo Bichette, whose three-run homer in the sixth should have been the winning hit before the bullpen blowup. "But the Blue Jays did an amazing job making this a big-league atmosphere. That helped us a lot to make us feel energy. It felt roomy. It felt good. It definitely exceeded everyone's expectations."
Vladimir Guerrero told ESPN.com earlier in the day the players could barely recognize the ballpark they knew because so much had changed in the clubhouse areas.
Pitcher Hyun-Jin Ryu, Toronto's $80 million free agent signee, said it felt like a home game – except for the staying-in-a-hotel part. And he said there were no problems with the reconstructed Sahlen Field mound, which he first checked out Monday night.
"Nobody complained about anything. Everything was fine," said manager Charlie Montoyo. "The field was playable. It was good. The lights were fine."
The Blue Jays had been on the road for three weeks. They're barnstormers no more.
"It's definitely a little bit of a relief," Bichette said. "We're still staying in a hotel but to kind of go somewhere it almost felt like the first game of the year to be honest. It was like, 'All right, this is our spot.' "
The spot felt familiar however when Francisco Cervelli's three-run homer in the ninth tied the game. The Jays have already suffered three crushing losses this season in the late innings. This would have been the worst yet.
"Tough ninth inning down to their final out, on a 3-0 pitch too," said Shaw. "We've lost a couple games late so far this year so it was nice to come back in the bottom of the 10th."
Shaw, who played here for Pawtucket, had no issues with the infield and said the extra power of the lights made a difference.
"That was everybody's question coming into the night," Shaw said. "And there's no complaints from our end."
Now, it has to be noted there's a lot of weirdness about all this. There's no fans – except for the ones the Buffalo police shooed away from the I-190 ramp on Oak Street. Because of that, players can go to and fro to workout areas in the concourse, and Miami DH Jesus Aguilar was limbering up and taking practice swings between at-bats right on the first-base walkway that splits the 100 level.
There's cardboard cutouts in the seats, and props to the Bisons for getting super fan Mark Aichinger in his customary seat in Section 102 right in view of the center-field camera. Gov. Cuomo was in the front row. Bob and Mindy Rich sat with Jimmy Griffin. Old friend Ben Wagner was with his broadcast partner Mike Wilner. Cardboard all of them.
That was fun, although it reminds us what we're missing and the infernal buzz of fake crowd noise was really annoying. The Jays should can it. But for a first night, with 26 more games left, that seems like an awful quibble.
We've waited a long time to see this. Most of us never thought Major League Baseball was ever coming here.
For one summer, it's here. And the Blue Jays feel they can quickly become the home team.
"It feels like I'm in a totally different stadium," said Jays pitcher Nate Pearson, who is Wednesday's starter. "Some of the guys that were skeptical about it after seeing the place, they're all pumped up and ready to go. I think we're going to have a lot of success here and we're all looking forward to it."
