Most of you know, or remember from reading this in the past, that I played baseball through college. I would guestimate that I have spent roughly 15% of my waking life playing or watching some sort of baseball (backyard, little league, high school, college, blitzball, wiffleball, dipperball, I am sure I am missing some), so seeing something that I have never seen before is pretty rare. Still, this playoff has delivered things I have never seen in consecutive nights. Last night, with a runner on first and the infield severely shifted to the right side of the diamond, lefty pull hitter Lucas Duda drew a walk. Daniel Murphy (whose later home run provided the winning margin and about whom many Mets fans will surely write Homeric epic poems entitled "The Murphiad"...yes they will all title them the same thing, back off) trotted towards second base, where he met Dodger SS Corey Seager and 3b/garden gnome Justin Turner. Murphy then realized that, with Gnome Turner covering second, that there was nothing keeping him from simply continuing on to third, so he did. A few pitches later, a sac fly sent him home to tie the game and set the stage for his later GW bomb. I cant recall a time when a player was able to essentially steal 3b on a walk that sent him to second. I have seen multiple times where a player who walks with a runner on third will run to second (famously depicted in Little Big League as something that Ty Cobb and Wahoo Sam Crawford used to do fairly often - no idea if they did or not, but Billy Heyward says they did, so I believe him), but taking a base because no one was on that half of the field is a new one. And for it to happen in such a huge game, and, really, to swing the tide of the game towards the visitors will cause some change. Perhaps it will force some teams to reconsider putting every infielder on one side of the field when there is a runner on base. Perhaps it will cause some to make sure that someone, anyone knows that third base needs to have someone paying attention to it.
The night before, not only did Russell Martin (who I apparently desperately want to call Russell Wilson) manage to hit Shin Soo Choo-Choo's bat/arm with a throw back to the pitcher that bounced harmlessly down the 3rd baseline and allowed Roughy Odor to score from third base to break a tie in the 7th inning of a deciding playoff game, in the next half inning Elvis Andrus managed to make 2 errors and fail to save a teammate from making another in a 3 batter sequence, allowing all 3 hitters to reach base and eventually score when Sir Joseph Bats hit one to Ottawa and then stared down no one in particular, puffed up his cheeks and then threw his bat to Niagra, and in between and after, the crowd went all Disco Demolition and started raining down garbage onto the field, players emptied benches twice and Rangers pitchers Sam Dyson proved he doesn't understand team dynamics by insisting that the Royals bean Sir Joseph to get back at him for what he did to the Rangers...umm..what? Read that 177 word sentence again. That is a season's worth of craziness that happened in roughly 50 minutes.
The night before that, the Cubs clinched a playoff series at Wrigley Field for the first time ever. The stadium opened in 1914 and the Cubs moved in in 1916 (the Cubs played at the West Side Grounds; the Chicago Whales of the Federal League played at Wrigley - then called Weeghman Park - in 1914 and 1915 before the Federal League folded. The owner of the Whales, Charles Weeghman, put a group together to buy the Cubs from then owner Charles Taft, the younger brother of President William Taft, and moved the team from West Side Grounds to Weeghman Park) and in the 99 years since, no Cubs team had clinched a playoff series while wearing the home whites. This seems statistically impossible, but...it happened. Seemingly equally statistically impossible is the ball that Kyle Schwarbomb hit that somehow landed on top of the right field video board...and stuck the landing (the Russian judges only gave it a 9.6...they say that it bounced a little on impact).Earlier in the playoffs, the second or third tallest player in MLB history, pitcher Chris Young, gave up a single to the shortest player currently playing (there have been a number of players smaller than Jose Altuve's 5'6" frame, but almost all of them are from a time when humans weren't as large as they are now and when baseball wasn't as physical a game.
Also, here is an email conversation between Kyler and I this morning that I feel compelled to share:
From: Commish
To: Kyler Sieben
Sent: Friday, October 16, 2015 9:32 AM
Subject: twobecomeone
To: Kyler Sieben
Sent: Friday, October 16, 2015 9:32 AM
Subject: twobecomeone
I did not see the beer slip and
slide, but I like it. Unfortunately, I must be against all things Mets
(other than Matt Harvey, I will still like Matt Harvey) for the next several
weeks. So that means that you will hear plenty of “Jacob deGrom is Val
Kilmer” comments from me (seriously though, how has no one else said this
before?)
Until he grows out the Doc Holiday mustache and beard – he
doesn’t exist to me. If he does that and starts calling himself docTor
deGrom, he will become my favorite non family member human being.
From: Kyler Sieben
To: Commish
To: Commish
Sent: Friday, October 16, 2015 9:46 AM
Subject: RE: twobecomethree
Subject: RE: twobecomethree
Jacob deGrom is a Saint!!
Hurray for coach TomSula (who is getting married tonight!!!!!!). You
should toast him and while doing so refer to him as “the real TomSula” and “Tot
head Champion”.
I wish draft weekend was
closer….
From: Commish
Sent: Friday, October 16, 2015 10:00 AM
To: Kyler Sieben
Subject: RE: twobecomethree
Sent: Friday, October 16, 2015 10:00 AM
To: Kyler Sieben
Subject: RE: twobecomethree
Jacob
deGrom is a saint, you say? Well Val Kilmer starred in a movie called
“The Saint.”
Is
this a picture of Val in the movie? Is it a picture of docTor deGrom waiting
for a subway?
I will leave it at that.
I also heard some rumor that MLB wasn't the only ones that had a playoff recently...
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