Defence is the order of the day

Varsho and Springer play Superman for Jays with their backs against the wall

- ROSIE DIMANNO

There was The Catch. And then there was The Catch. And in between there was The Catch.

On a Sunday in Toronto, the Blue Jays looked rather like the team they were designed to be: defence facing, with a solid starter dealing on the mound and just enough scraping offence from a scuffling lineup to hold fast to a 3-1 lead and prevail over the glitterati Los Angeles Dodgers.

Goodness, the Toronto arms — three of them followed Kevin Gausman’s season-high seven innings, just the one run on five hits for the string bean — even managed to blunt Shohei Ohtani, 0-for-4 on the afternoon. Although the endlessly booed superstar came this close to driving another one out of the Rogers Centre in his first at-bat.

Except Daulton Varsho, as he’s wont to do, tracked that sucker (106 m.p.h. off Ohtani’s bat) to the wall, 402 feet from home plate, and brought it down. Bounced off the wall, too, staggering but stayed on his feet as Gausman saluted him with a thumbs up from the bump.

Let Varsho tell it: “It was honestly a weird ball because I thought it might have stayed straight. It actually had some tailback to it, so I had to kind of flip my body really quick. It was one of those where you think you have the right read but you don’t … being able to adjust on the fly and being able to do it quickly.’’