Baseball's Finest Hour

Actually, a little less than a half hour,  from just past 11:30 to a few minutes after midnight.

The Cardinals put the Astros away early, and there was no need to follow that game. I started with Orioles-Red Sox on Gameday and Tigers-Indians on radio. 

Then it started raining in Baltimore. I switched to Braves-Philles. Meanwhile ... how'd that 6 get on the board for TB in the eighth? They were down 7-0 ... a three run homer by Evan Longoria? Wow ...

I tuned from WTAM to WCBS. On this first day of Rosh Hashana, Suzyn Waldman was off, and Constantino Martinez was on with John Sterling. He saw something that's only happened twice in 110 years of Yankee baseball: a seven run lead lost after seven innings. Daniel Johnson -- he of the .108 batting average -- with two outs in the ninth, the Rays down by one, 2-2 the count and nobody on, hit a line drive into the stands, he did, that brown-eyed handsome man!

Braves-Phillies went extra innings. In the top 13th, a dinker by Hunter Pence, that barely got to the outfield grass -- the kind of hit the Fighting Ferrets would string together to beat the Tigers -- scored Brian Schneider with the Phils' go-ahead run. In the bottom 13th, Freddie Freeman hit into a game-ending double play, and the Cardinals had the NL wild card. The umps looked at the clock, it was eleven four-oh, and they said time for you Braves to get up and go! Chipper Jones' inspirational pre-game speech (Win One For The Chipper) didn't work. 8 1-2 game wild card lead gone. Meltdown complete. Hahaha Braves! But worry not, Bravos fans; those foam tomahawk chop fingers they gave out tonight are still good ... for next season.

Play had resumed in Baltimore. With the Red Sox leading 3-2, bottom ninth and two out, Chris Davis doubled off Jonathan Papelbon, and Nolan Reimold doubled him in. Tie game. Sox nemesis Robert Andino hit a liner that Carl Crawford almost reached. He slid, the ball fell under his glove, and Reimold scored. Meltdown complete. The Red Sox looked at the clock, it was twelve-oh-two, and the final score said game's over for you!

Three minutes later, Longoria hit his second homer of the night to give the Rays an 8-7 walkoff win and the wild card.  I looked at the clock and it was twelve-oh-five, and the Red Sox didn't know if they were dead or alive! Their announcers hadn't even finished the post-game post mortem. No Red Sox Nation in the playoffs, no renewal of The Rivalry, hahaha! Carl Crawford, the Bill Buckner of the new century; they had to have him, and he took the money and ran. Now he gets to watch his former teammates go for the big October prize on TV (and I'm sure it's the biggest, most expensive big screen hi-def TV there is). 

Wasn't that something? John Sterling rhetorically asked his listeners. Indeed, it was. The Longoria homers, the Johnson homer, and everything else that happened tonight. 

The 2011 finish is already being compared to those of 1951 (Bobby Thomson), 1964 (the Phillies' collapse) and 1978 (Bucky Dent). But those meltdowns involved two teams. Tonight, four teams -- two in each league -- were playing for their lives. Well, yeah ... carve baseball up into enough divisions and make the second-place teams eligible to advance, and something like this is bound to happen sooner or later. But three of the four key games were decided on their respective final plays, and within a half hour of each other. They could have all been blowouts. They were not.

All evening, there were dramatic twists and turns, Diamond Gems and clutch hits that sent the plot in exactly the opposite direction from where the reader expected it to go. That's what makes great fiction great. But all this was real. And it helped clear the odor of Jose Reyes' backed-into batting title from the second floor baseball bunker. 

The Tigers were also playing for something, and won 5-4 on an eighth inning Peralta homer. The Rangers, however, didn't read the script and won 3-1 in Anaheim. So they play the wild card, T-Bay as it turns out, and the Tigers go to New York. Which might not be so bad after all. The D-Rays have Mo Mentum in uniform, and the Yankees have been beatable lately, as they were tonight -- 

A grown man going gaga over a bunch of baseball games ... (My editor has taken time out from preparing breakfast to proofread this final blog post of the regular season.)

Yes, my queen, but you were listening. And watching. And you're the one who said Longoria would be the night's hero -- 

Don't send that to Chuck Berry, she says. He'll sue you.

(Actually, he won't. He stole it from Wynonie Harris.)