ST. LOUIS
The Phillies escaped October’s classic Game of Death here on Tuesday.
Adrian Beltre hit three home runs as the Rangers beat the Rays 4-3 to clinch their playoff series in four games. Philadelphia edged St. Louis 3-2. Ben Francisco hit a pinch-hit, three-run homer in the win. The Phils lead that series 2-1. (Oct. 4)
But how they did it, the maniacal capriciousness of their 3-2 win over the Cardinals in a pivotal Game 3 of their Division Series, was Exhibit A to explain why only three of the last 21 teams in the Phils’ shoes — owning the game’s best regular season record — have actually won the World Series.
The notion that any team, including Philadelphia and its Four Aces, is so good it can simply dominate postseason baseball without surviving constant cardiac calamities was exposed again Tuesday as a shibboleth, a canard and, well, you know, pretty much a barrel of stinking Mississippi catfish.
The Phils slipped the noose on a three-run seventh-inning homer by pinch hitter Ben Francisco after Tony La Russa, playing a hunch, intentionally walked No. 8 hitterCarlos Ruiz to get to him.
So the Phils’ winning run was an “intentional” gift of the Cards’ manager. Who also let his starting pitcher, a lefty who’d faced 26 hitters, pitch to Francisco, a right-handed hitter. Hook him? Nobody was hot in the pen.
The Phils also escaped because closer Ryan Madson got a five-out save, starting with an inning-ending double play that he induced from Allen Craig on a smash straight at second baseman Chase Utley. If it’s a yard to either side, it’s a two-run hit. And who was left on deck? Albert Pujols.
What did Pujols, the greatest hitter since Ted Williams, do on the first pitch of the next inning? Of course you know. He smoked his third double and fourth hit of the game. So, according to baseball-dugout thinking, that means, if Craig had simply struck out, Pujols would have come up with the sacks drunk in the eighth, cleaned them and St. Louis would’ve won, 4-3.
A logical fallacy? Bet you can’t find 10 players in this game who agree.
Of all the luck-soaked, nerve-shredding tests that drive baseball people nutty, the best (or worst) is this sort of five-game Division Series that, year after year, sets up some great regular season team to have its heart smashed.
And within that format, worthy of a torture chamber, the back-breaking fulcrum is Game 3 when it’s tied one game apiece. The winner has advanced to the League Championship Series 19 of 23 times. Those aren’t odds. That’s a near-death sentence if you lose.
“You felt like you were dodging bullets all day,” said Phils Manager Charlie Manuel who pulled as many right levers as La Russa yanked grenade pins.
“No, I wasn’t ‘nervous.’ Sort of excited, a little butterflies. That’s the fun of managing — you see games like this,” Manuel said. It’s a good thing he doesn’t get nervous, otherwise he’d look a thousand, not just 100.
This game also provided perhaps the 50th example, over many years, of a crucial game played at a ridiculous time to accommodate TV. The Cards and Phils played a game at a similar time earlier in the season that brought extended wails of protest that the ball simply could not be seen properly. This time, later in the year, the bad light didn’t last as long. But Garcia still got the first 15 outs on 51 pitches, 39 of them strikes. He pitched as if the Phils had no idea what was coming — even after they actually saw it. Which, of course, is exactly the case. You see a black spot, not a spinning baseball with seams that help the sharp-eyed identify the type of pitch.
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