10 things.

Ten things:

1. I've gotta admit, when I landed in Toronto Wednesday night, it sorta hit me -- this felt like a Jays win in four games. With the Toronto offense being what it is, I felt good about the Cole Hamels start but not great about the other three Texas would need to play before getting the ball back to its number one starter. I figured each team might steal a game, but it still felt like Jays in four.

Then I walked to my Rogers Centre seat Thursday afternoonand a different vibe swept over me. Rangers taking BP with soaring shots getting lost from view in a grid of rafters and girders . . . . reverberating in that weird and different way that bat-on-ball sounds indoors . . . David Price walking down the third base line toward the bullpen for his pregame work . . . Game One in enemy territory.

It felt strangely like 2010 in Tampa Bay (not so much 2011, when the ALDS kicked off in Texas), and even without a Jeff Francoeur sighting I had that 2010 feeling again. This ballclub, 5-0 in playoff games indoors and on turf, was about to play its sixth. Opposite Price, in spite of what will be a top 2 Cy Young finish, who came into the game 0-5 in playoff starts (Game 163 against Texas in 2013 wasn't considered a playoff game), with three of those losses hung on him by the Rangers, and on 11 days' rest (which worried Jays analyst Gregg Zaun, who feared Price "could have too much gas in the tank").

He's now 0-6, 4.54 in post-season starts, the first pitcher in big league history to lose that many without a win, and his effort -- not terrible but not dominant (ESPN reports Texas didn't swing through a Price fastball one time in the game) -- was not unlike the playoff games he pitched against Texas in 2010 and 2011. Whether or not that history weighed on Price coming into Thursday, the lefthander did admit after the game -- incredibly for a pitcher of his stature -- that he was nervous.

Which is exactly what I wasn't, oddly, when I settled into my seat before yesterday's game.

2. I really like this city. It's clean, the people are friendly and cool, the roads are wide and the sidewalks are wider, traffic isn't terrible, there's water, and the ballpark is downtown. The crowd in Rogers Centre was a really good one. Loud without prompt (and evidently that way in the regular season as well), and educated. (I was surrounded by Jays fans where I sat, and the ones I talked to understood the Dyson/Tolleson dynamic [more on that later] and cringed when they realized the Jays weren't going to get a shot at the Rangers' closer, against whom they'd had some success this year.)

When you're on the road and a crowd that energetic and vocal (amplified by roofed acoustics) is absolutely silenced for stretches, there's not much music that's sports-sweeter.

3. Yovani Gallardo, man. As we've talked about already, I'm not sure he would have even gotten a start if the Rangers had drawn Kansas City rather than Toronto. And here he was, getting the ball in Game One.

After the game, Jeff Banister would say: "Yo did what he does." After three very clean, uncharacteristically economical innings, he got into traffic in the fourth and fifth, falling behind in the count and getting his pitches up, but he managed to limit the damage.

Which is what Yovani Gallardo does.

This is a pitcher that Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos has told reporters he discussed with Texas late in July, presumably before the Rangers traded for Hamels but possibly even afterwards, as the Rangers weren't ruling out moving a veteran or two in the right deal. Instead, he held baseball's hottest offense down to open the ALDS.

And if there was any question as to whether a qualifying offer might be too risky to offer the righthander this off-season, surely that's gone -- some team is going to offer Gallardo multiple years, even at the cost of a first- or second-round draft pick. I doubt Texas has plans to bring him back, for various reasons, but the club shouldn't fear extending the qualifying offer at this point.

Thursday's effort was classic Gallardo -- nibbling by design (moving the fastball around and avoiding the center-cut cookie) but lacking the out pitch to avoid deep counts, keeping hitters off-balance and routinely wiggling out of trouble almost as often as he created it (I wonder if the closed roof cost Toronto another homer or two) -- but on that stage, it just seemed different.

Enough about 2016. There could be a handful more Yovani Gallardo starts to go in 2015.

4. The antithesis of the lengthy Yovani Gallardo at-bat is the typical Rougned Odor at-bat. I wrote last time that I was a little worried about Odor in this series, because he finished the season looking like he was trying to do too much, both at the plate and at second base, and I was concerned that the brighter post-season spotlight could eat him up. ("Odor has never tasted the playoffs and I fear he’s going to try and hit six-run home runs with the bases empty.")

Man. Game One belonged to several players and a manager, but without Rougned Odor Texas doesn't win that one.

Two hit-by-pitches and a 113-mph response over the right field fence. Three outstanding defensive plays (tough plays in huge situations) and some good judgment and restraint in that role that we're not always accustomed to seeing out of him. Runs scored in each of the Rangers' three run-scoring innings.

He's 21 years old. Joey Gallo is older. Dillon Tate is older.

The seventh-inning laser extended 4-3 to 5-3, which felt huge with nine Jays outs to go. It registered as the hardest-hit ball he's had all year (they don't count BP, but I'd like to know the data on the pitch he hit into the fourth deck off Jayce Tingler before the game), and the hardest hit in the MLB playoffs this year at the time he hit it.

Odor is the third-youngest player to go deep in the playoffs in the last 10 years (only Bryce Harper and Manny Machado were younger), and the youngest second baseman (and ninth-youngest player overall) in baseball history to homer in the post-season.

I'm having a hard time imagining how there will ever be a time in Odor's career when Texas could possibly entertain allowing him to play in a different uniform.

5. Which brings me to the lead I've buried, because it's something I really don't want to write about.

I didn't think Adrian Beltre had functioning tear ducts.

When Beltre singled to center field in the third to score Delino DeShields and give Texas a 2-0 lead, if Kevin Pillar had been thinking like a Little Leaguer he'd have thrown to first rather than the plate, and he'd have retired Beltre easily and ended the inning without the run counting.

Beltre's back had seized up on the deflating Prince Fielder 4-6-3 that ended the first inning, when he slid into second in an effort to break up the double play. (So strange that both teams lost their star third baseman Thursday on a slide at second to disrupt a pivot.) He wasn't tested defensively in the bottom of the first or second. He stepped back up to the plate in the third, with two outs and DeShields on second.

On an 0-1 pitch, he barreled up 96 on the outer half to double his team's early lead, and watching him hobble to first, and seeing the conversation between Beltre and his manager at the bag right afterwards, both of their heads buried in their chest, and realizing as he gave up trying to start the bottom of the inning defensively that there were tears in his eyes as he broke away from teammates on the field and accompanied manager and trainer back to the dugout -- tears probably not because of the pain, because this is Adrian Beltre, but instead because he was exiting battle and leaving his teammates' side -- was almost too much to take.

That run-scoring single will show on the video board when he's inducted, and when he's inducted, because it was classic Adrian Beltre.

I just hope he's not done for this series -- if the club deactivates him to get another third baseman (Joey Gallo or Ed Lucas) here then he's ineligible for the rest of this series as well as the ALCS -- but hell, this is Adrian Beltre we're talking about, and we can't really rule out that he's going to drive runs in later today.

6. What has happened to Prince Fielder?

He has some playoff demons to exorcise. And Texas needs him to be him.

I'm sports-sad about Prince Fielder.

7. Robinson Chirinos was briefly David Price's teammate in Tampa Bay in 2011, and he admitted after yesterday's game that from that experience he had a decent idea of how Price likes to attack hitters. With a man on first and no outs in the fifth, and a 2-1 lead, Texas called for Chirinos to lay a ball down to advance Odor (who'd been drilled for the second time) to second base for the top of the order. The pitch was up and Chirinos pulled the bat back.

Good thing.

Chirinos anticipated that Price might come back with a fastball middle-in, and he did, and the Rangers' nine-hole hitter delivered it on the other side of the left field fence, turning 2-1 into 4-1.

Just an awesome moment for a player who has a knack for them, in spite of overall numbers that are hardly predictive of how often he comes through with really big hits.

8. Before the game, Hamels was asked when it was that he first felt this team could win. He said he believed it when he arrived, but added that it was the club's bullpen acquisitions -- Jake Diekman in tandem with Hamels himself, and Sam Dyson days later -- that "set the tone." He said it gave the starters the confidence that if they managed to hand a lead off to the relief corps, those guys would shut things down, and that was a turning point of sorts.

Diekman was crazy-great on Thursday, retiring Toronto on six pitches in the seventh (strikeout, groundout, lazy fly) and prompting Banister to send him back out for the eighth, when he coaxed another groundout, a harmless fly ball, and a Jose Bautista foul-out to Mitch Moreland.

Sixteen pitches, 14 for strikes.

There was never a question in Philadelphia about Diekman's evil stuff, as filthy as any lefthander's outside of Chris Sale and Aroldis Chapman. The question was about his command.

Sixteen pitches, 14 for strikes. Just incredible work.

After Diekman nailed down the seventh and eighth, I wondered the exact same thing that all of you wondered. Would Banister go to Shawn Tolleson in the ninth, leaving Sam Dyson in the holster in a two-run game with Edwin Encarnacion, Troy Tulowitzki, and Justin Smoak due in the ninth?

It's so refreshing to have a manager not married to the inning.

Banister said after the game that he talked to his big four relievers earlier in the day, explaining that their usage in this series would be dictated less by the inning of the game than by matchups. He said he sent Diekman back out for the eighth because of matchups -- and I trust he was referring less to wanting Diekman to face Ben Revere, Cliff Pennington, and Bautista (the latter as something less than the tying run) than to saving Dyson for Encarnacion (a former Jays draftee facing a former Rangers draftee) and Tulowitzki, in an effort to keep those two in the park.

Dyson: ground ball single, strikeout, fielder's choice grounder, fielder's choice grounder, ballgame.

Seventeen pitches for Dyson, the same number (in the sixth) for Keone Kela, and none for Tolleson ("Still our closer," Dyson would tell reporters after the game). Conceivably, all four of the Rangers' bullpen beasts should be good to go today, though one would hope that Hamels won't need all four to chip in.

The Rangers opened the season with Tolleson and Kela in the bullpen. The others -- Neftali Feliz, Anthony Bass, Roman Mendez, Phil Klein, and Logan Verrett -- have been replaced, at least as far as the ALDS staff is concerned, by Dyson, Diekman, Chi Chi Gonzalez, Ross Ohlendorf, and either Colby Lewis or Martin Perez.

A massive question mark (if not a trouble spot) has turned into an absolute strength.

9. Which brings me back to something I wrote last week -- that Banister and Jon Daniels, in a way, have been as valuable as anyone on this team in 2015.

Banister talked before the game about the importance of constructing a lineup so that you have the chance to create runs at the bottom of the order, which can be backbreaking to the opponent.

And then his eight and nine hitters went out and drove in three of the team's five runs, and scored four of them, allowing Texas to win a game in which its four-through-seven hitters went 0 for 15 with seven strikeouts.

He also talked about how confident his team is, how it's a group of players that's been "up against it all year long," and so being the underdog in this series is nothing new and doesn't even register with them.

What he didn't say, and never would, is that he has played and continues to play a massive role in setting that kind of tone.

I loved the bullpen management in Game One. I loved how he knew exactly how long to stick with Gallardo, following an analytically driven formula that he's been faithful to all year. I love the mindset that personifies the man and his team. Banister was a star on Thursday.

Casey Stern (MLB Network) tweeted after the game that Banister "show[ed in Game One] why he's the AL Manager of the Year."

With all due respect to the GM on the other side of the field, I'm not sure Daniels shouldn't be considered Executive of the Year, for pouncing on Hamels when he did, for getting Diekman thrown in, for acquiring Dyson criminally cheaply, for bringing Josh Hamilton and Mike Napoli at virtually no cost, for drafting DeShields when the Astros didn't think he was worth keeping in their farm system at the cost of a 40-man roster spot.

For hiring Jeff Banister when Tim Bogar would have been an easy and popular choice.

Daniels had a great Game One himself.

10. So with Texas 5, Toronto 3 in the books, there are a few ways to look at the series now. The way I prefer to view it it is this:

Texas now has home field advantage.

The Blue Jays now have to win three out of four.

And two of those four will be in Cole Hamels's left hand.

Both John Gibbons (after the game) and Marcus Stroman (before it) told the press they know the Jays have their work cut out for them in facing Hamels.

It's sort of an unusual concession to make publicly, the type that I'd be surprised to hear from a Rangers player or its manager.

But words are basically meaningless in the context of where we are (says the guy who just wrote half a million of them about one game in a best-of-five).

It's Cole Hamels Day.

Winning a game on the road against David Price with Yovani Gallardo sort of proves the point that no conclusion is foregone in the post-season, but I really like how things have kicked off, and how they line up as the next step is hours away, with the pressure firmly shifted from one dugout to the other.