You can trail five times in one game, facing elimination. In that game, you can be down two runs in the ninth inning against a reliever who throws 100 mph. Then you can be down to your last strike — and tie it up on a hometown boy’s triple when a Rangers right fielder named Cruz maybe cruises just a little, just enough, to miss a championship catch by a yard.
You can trail again by two runs in the 10th inning but still have life because, in a no-sudden-death sport, Josh Hamilton’s home run doesn’t end anything. It just continues the fun, heightens it and opens out imaginations.
Lance Berkman’s last-strike, season-saving single in the 10th and David Freese’s walk-off homer in the 11th inning both came after most other sports would’ve said, “Good night.” Sometimes, baseball can take too long. But when a game suddenly becomes too good to be true, baseball lets the drama play its way out to its true, full and sometimes absolutely perfect ending.
The last month has underlined almost everything in baseball that broadens a sport’s appeal. The game’s next labor agreement, due soon, will barely raise a ripple. “Both sides finally learned what damage that does,” Selig conceded.
Though some ballplayers got injured, and plenty played hurt this month, none were maimed and the sidelines didn’t need parking spaces for gurneys.
As for parity, for the fifth time since 1997 a wild card won the World Series, proving that the regular season is for bragging rights but October is forever. Many towns envy obscene payrolls in a few cities, but, while extra millions help, they aren’t indispensable to a high-five with your room service eggs.
In other sports, seasons simply end. Baseball lingers. In my office, I keep the scorebooks of my handful of favorite Octobers. Those scribbled personal accounts stay behind with us, letting you replay, relive and, deep into winter perhaps, have yet one more insight into what should have been done, but wasn’t. Other sports say they’ll have to look at the films before they will know what really happened, then they never tell you what they saw.
Baseball shows you everything the first time, in plain panoramic view, then lets you figure out what you saw, again and again, forever.
Excuse me, while I find a place for my scorecards for the last month. I may need a ladder. They’re going to have to go on a very high shelf.
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