Toronto manager John Gibbons argues with umpire Bruce Dreckman after Dreckman’s balk call on the Blue Jays’ B.J. Ryan in the ninth inning.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

The ball had settled into the glove of outfielder Alex Rios, and finally the Toronto Blue Jays had themselves a win.

Or did they?

As the rest of the Blue Jays filed out of the dugout and prepared to celebrate, second-base umpire Bruce Dreckman had other ideas.

Dreckman ruled that Toronto reliever B.J. Ryan hadn’t come to a complete stop before delivering the final pitch to the plate and charged him with a balk.

Brandon Moss, who had been at first, was awarded second base. Coco Crisp, who thought he had flied out to Rios to end the game, was given another chance at the plate.

And somewhere in the back of their minds, you know what most of the Blue Jays’ had to be thinking, regardless of their 3-0 lead: Here we go again.

Two times in two nights, the Jays had watched the Red Sox snatch a game with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and now, thanks to Dreckman’s “upon further review” balk call, it was going to happen again.

Dread filled the Jays, except for those who were filled with rage.

“Crap call — c’mon,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons would say later.

Gibbons, who thought he was leaving the dugout to congratulate his players on just their second win in the last 10 tries, instead found himself being ejected for arguing the balk call.

In the Toronto clubhouse, starter A.J. Burnett, who had blanked the Red Sox for 7 2/3 innings, saw Rios catch Crisp’s flyout and was waiting to exchange high-fives with his teammates.

But the only visitor was Gibbons.

“I was wondering,” said Burnett, “where the rest of the team was.”

The rest of the team, as it turned out, was trying, for the second time, to get the third out. It would take a while.

First, Crisp singled, sending Moss to third, bringing Jed Lowrie to the plate, representing the potential tying run. With pinch-hitter Jason Varitek, Wednesday’s ninth-inning hero waiting on deck, Lowrie got Ryan to run the count full.

Was this really happening? Was this how the Blue Jays were going to lose another one?

“That ended up giving them new life,” said Ryan. “You can’t let them get any momentum and turn that lineup over. My job is to go back out there, keep my composure and make good pitches.”

Eventually, Ryan did, slipping a called third strike past Lowrie. On Take Two, the Jays had their first win of the series.

Wins are a precious commodity for the Blue Jays these days. Picked to compete with the Red Sox and Yankees in the American League East and given a chance by some to break through the division’s glass ceiling, the Jays have instead stumbled.

Entering last night, they owned the second-worst record in the American League. Their three-city road trip, which wound through Orlando, Kansas City and here had been, in Gibbons’ candid assessment, “brutal.”

“We can feel good leaving here and hopefully, it’s the start of something,” said Gibbons. “It’s never easy to win here, but regardless, on top of what we’ve been going through, it makes it that much nicer.”

Until last night, each loss had seemed to nudge Gibbons closer to the unemployment line. General manager J.P. Ricciardi last week provided Gibbons with a vote of confidence, of sorts, and urged the Toronto media to blame the GM for the team’s poor start.

But Gibbons himself knows that if the losing continues, he — and not Ricciardi or the underperforming players — will pay. Gibbons’ tenuous status has become a daily topic of conjecture and Gibbons has engaged in his own bit of gallows humor with the reporters covering the team.

Burnett was asked if he thought about pitching for his manager’s job last night and his response was both honest and revealing.

“I try not to think about it,” he said.

There’s still time, of course, for the Jays to get back into the race. The Yankees are seemingly losing players to the disabled list at a rate of one per day. Few expect the Orioles to continue to contend. The Rays are talented, but alarmingly young.

Five months remain in the season. The Jays, however, can’t afford to take the long view. They need to win now or else.

Gibbons said he hoped last night’s win — especially the bizarre nature of it — might be enough to begin a turnaround. He was then asked if there had been other games this season that he thought would get the Jays on track.

“Well,” he chuckled in his drawl, “we haven’t won many in the last couple of weeks. But we’re due. By the law of averages, we’re due.”

That’s the least that can be said about a team that needed 28 outs to get a win it desperately needed.

smcadam@projo.com