Friday, October 28, 2011

Great game 6 writeup


Game 6 Revisited: "How Did This Happen?"

 Jonah Keri
Imagine living your life with no clock.
No more dragging yourself out of bed when it's still dark out. No more fighting through miles of traffic, everyone around you bound to the same schedule, stuffing muffins in their faces, spilling coffee on their laps, texting with one hand, driving with no hands. No risk of getting dumped or fired or scorned for being late. There are no deadlines. Only moments. Only possibilities.
You might go the rest of your life and never see a more perfect example of that existence than what happened last night. Only baseball could have made that happen.
For the record, the Cardinals' 10-9, 11-inning win over the Rangers in Game 6 of the World Series took four hours and 33 minutes to play. But this game, like every other baseball game ever played, wasn't bound by timed quarters, halves, or periods. Baseball games are marked only by outs. Never has getting those outs seemed more difficult.
After six innings, Game 6 looked poised to go down as one of the worst World Series battles of all-time. Hell, we even ran a data query for it. Mark Simon, the excellent researcher at ESPN Stats & Info, framed the question this way: "How many World Series games have featured a combined five errors, a pickoff at third base, and at least two wild pitches/passed balls combined?" Answer: none.
These were, admittedly, arbitrary parameters. Leaving aside the rarity of a third-base pickoff, there's no perfect way to measure the worst World Series game in history, just as there's no perfect way to measure the best one. But it certainly felt like something historic was going on. With all the miscues happening on the field, and all the preposterous decisions being made by the managers (mostly one manager), Game 6 was shaping up as quite possibly the most excruciating World Series game of our lifetime.
The carnage started in the fourth inning, with the score tied 2-2. Fernando Salas relieved Jaime Garcia, who looked nothing like the dominant pitcher he was in Game 2, and escaped with only two runs allowed thanks to some guile on his part and a whole lot of blown chances by Rangers hitters. Nelson Cruz, the first batter facing Salas, lofted a popup to shallow left. Rafael Furcal drifted back, onto the outfield grass, further and still further, well into Matt Holliday territory. The outfielder going forward must always call off the backpedaling infielder in that situation. Holliday did not. Replays would later show Holliday's furtive cry to Furcal: "Take it!" Furcal could not, nor could Holliday, and disaster ensued. When Mike Napoli cashed Cruz with an RBI single to right, you couldn't help but think the Rangers would win it all, and Napoli, with 10 World Series runs driven in and a long list of big moments, would be MVP.
Two batters later, more ugliness. Colby Lewis hit a tapper back to the mound. Salas wheeled and fired to second … air mailing everybody. Two on, one out, a chance for the Rangers to tack on more runs. Didn't happen. Texas put 14 men on base through the first five innings, but scored only four runs. Those early failures kept St. Louis in the game, as did the Rangers' own defensive breakdowns. Lance Berkman reached first to start the bottom of the fourth on an error by Michael Young, who booted the grounder wide of first, then made a poor throw to pull Lewis away from the bag. Holliday redeemed himself a bit with a walk and a takeout slide at second, forcing an errant throw by Andrus that helped set up the tying run. The Cardinals returned the favor, with David Freese bonking a routine popup by Josh Hamilton to start the fifth, and looking ridiculous doing it.
Then Ron Washington decided not to pinch-hit with a one-run lead, Salas on the ropes, the bases loaded, a deep, fully rested bullpen and several on-call starters standing by, and Colby Freaking Lewis the guy deemed irreplaceable.
Then, an inning later, Young made yet another error, this time doing nothing more than taking the ball out of his glove, only to drop it.
Then Washington decided he needed to go even further with Lewis.
Then Lewis, by now running on fumes, walked Freese to load the bases.
Then Washington looked down at the bullpen, considered an entire army of choices, and tapped the one guy who'd been a complete disaster throughout the World Series, Alexi Ogando.
Then Ogando walked in the tying run by very nearly hitting Yadier Molina in the face.
Then Holliday, failing spectacularly at bat and in the field throughout the World Series, completed the trifecta with brutal baserunning, getting picked off third by Napoli … with the bases loaded … on a throw from Napoli's knees.
Had the game kept going in that vein and ended in some generic way, this would have been a stinker for the ages. If you hadn't made a Tom Emanski joke by this point, you didn't have a pulse. But that's the thing about a sport with no clock. You don't have a finite amount of time to take a lead or mount a comeback. Anything is possible, so long as you have outs still left to burn. From this moment on, finding outs was something neither team could manage.
Leading off the seventh, Adrian Beltre launched a shot over the wall in right-center to reclaim the lead for the Rangers. Then Cruz bashed a ball into the stratosphere to make it 6-4 Texas. As Lance Lynn stood dejectedly on the mound, Tony La Russa no doubt had the same thought that he did during BullpenPhoneGate: What the hell is he doing out there? Four batters later, Ian Kinsler knocked home Derek Holland with the Rangers' seventh run, and the game seemed well in hand.
But there were tactical errors, more heroics by the unkillable Cardinals, and more amazing moments still to come. Holland led off the bottom of the eighth by retiring the fifth straight batter he'd faced. He'd more than done his job, especially after throwing 116 pitches in Game 4, and with a cavalcade of right-handed hitters now coming up. The Rangers had spent two good prospects to get Mike Adams at the trade deadline. He was their clear eighth-inning guy, so much so that Washington wouldn't think to use him two innings earlier, when Lewis stayed in way too long and Ogando threw gas on the fire. Surely Adams was coming in now, right? Nope. First, Allen Craig blasted a homer to cut the lead to 7-5. Two batters later, Molina singled. Finally, only after La Russa sent punchless backup catcher Gerald Laird up as the potential tying run did Washington go to his setup man. The Cardinals followed with two straight singles, the first one a play that was a clear error by Andrus, which allowed pinch-hitter Daniel Descalso to reach. But Furcal, the only Cardinal rivaling Holliday for World Series futility, spoiled a bases-loaded rally by hitting the ball 40 feet. On the first pitch. Inning over.
When Texas went down quietly in the top of the ninth, the Cardinals were down to their final three outs of the season. But no matter what the Rangers tried from that point on, they couldn't seize that last out.
In what was supposed to be the final at-bat of his Cardinals career (again), Pujols lashed a first-pitch double. Neftali Feliz, a fire-breather of a closer with a 100-mph fastball but also some scary command issues, walked Berkman on four pitches. Still, the Rangers seemed ready to celebrate. Feliz struck out Craig on an unexpected slider, then got two strikes on Freese. One more strike and the Rangers would have their first World Series in their 50-year franchise history. Feliz threw a fastball. Freese drilled it. Cruz, playing all the way back near the warning track, needed just a few steps to get to the wall. Somehow, he still missed the ball by a mile, the carom whizzing by him, and Freese buzzing into third with a triple. A two-run, game-tying, down-to-their-last-strike, outfield-can't-possibly-allow-a-triple,triple.
From then on, you couldn't breathe. We'd crossed the plane of reality to some screenwriter's fantasy, a script so implausible that no one would ever greenlight it.
Josh Hamilton, he of the groin so wrecked that one jackass baseball writer told his manager he should be benched, walloped a two-run homer to give the Rangers a 9-7, 10th-inning lead.
Then Darren Oliver, a pitcher who's been around so long he was once Nolan Ryan's teammate, came in to face two Cardinals lefties … and both of them scratched out singles.
Then La Russa used a pitcher, Edwin Jackson, to pinch-hit for another pitcher, Jason Motte. Then, before Jackson could get to home plate, he pinch-hit with another pitcher, Kyle Lohse, for Jackson.
Then after a Lohse sacrifice, Scott Feldman came in, looking for his first career save.
Then after Feldman notched the second out of the inning, Washington ordered the fourth intentional walk of Pujols in two games.
Then, down to their final strike once more, Berkman lined a single to center to tie the game, saving the season yet again.
Then with two outs in the top of the 11th and a runner on first, Washington sent up light-hitting, seldom-used utilityman Esteban German to die a quick pinch-hit death against Jake Westbrook, yanking Feldman out of the game in the process and leaving the Rangers bullpen exposed.
Then Washington went to his worst, and least-used reliever, Mark Lowe, with the game on the line.
And then, in a final masterstroke of temporal chaos, David Freese, the kid who grew up a Cardinals fan on the edges of St. Louis, the unlikely hero who hoisted his teammates on his back to get to the World Series, the man of destiny who waited until one strike remained in his season before granting his team deliverance, hit a cannon to straightaway center that sailed over the wall and into baseball history.
As the Cardinals piled onto the field and their fans reached a state of delirium, Joe Buck delivered an homage to his father, aping Jack's Game 6-ending call to the 1991 World Series, "We will see you tomorrow night."
And we will. Cruz and Holliday are both questionable with injuries, Napoli's hobbled after a badly turned ankle, the bullpens will get another full night, the Rangers will try to recover from the worst playoff loss since that other Game 6 a quarter-century ago, and Chris Carpenter will go for the win in a park where he's been nearly perfect all year.
But the Game 7 prognostication could wait. As Freese's teammates shredded his jersey at the bottom of a dog pile, the words of Buck's broadcast partner Tim McCarver kept resonating. Amid a din that engulfed half the state of Missouri, he could only rightfully ask, "How did this happen?"
It happened because only a game with no clock could give us a play-by-play graph that mimicked the roller coaster ride we all felt while watching. It happened because only a game with no clock could render one of the worst World Series games into one of the best, thanks to the wildest finish we've ever seen.
It happened because it's baseball, a game where time stands still, and the impossible becomes possible.
Jonah Keri's new book, The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First, is a national best-seller. Follow him on Twitter at @JonahKeri.

And it goes on. And on.

After thinking St. Louis was out of it many times in the last few days they just keep battling back. Would have been amazing to have been there for game 6. What a show that was. Stunning victory. Wow.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Goodbye St. Louis

What a great trip. Leaving early in the morning to get back home. Had a nice day of walking and tours today. A finale dinner at Carmine's Steakhouse was fantastic and a nice way to end the trip.

Can't wait to get home and see the kids again.

After all this, it was even better than I had ever imagined it could have been. What a great experience. So glad dad and I were able to do this together.

Memories for a lifetime! :)

Busch Stadium tour

Great tour of Busch stadium. Go to go in the press box and dugout.

Game 2

Amazing. Game was exciting right to the end. Seats were better. Crowd was awesome. Food was better in this more private area of the stands. (yes, took a picture of brisket sandwich. You know me...)

What a great time. Seemed like the game went by way too fast. Neither dad nor I wanted to game to end and we didn't want to leave when it was over. All told, just a GREAT night at the ballpark!

Tours, tours and more tours

Toured the Anheuser Bush compound yesterday - amazing to see the scale on which they make beer.

Toured to historic courthouse in downtown St. Louis today - was definitely worth the time.

Leaving now for a tour of Busch Stadium - we didn't even know tours were available for this week until we just happened upon it.

What a great "bonus day"!

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Pujols

I just love that name. Pujols. Pu-jols.

World Series 2.0

Game 2. Great vibe here in the city. Or maybe it's buzz from free Stellas at Anheuser Busch tour which was awesome.

5-10 degrees warmer tonight. Sunny and dry. Less windy. Wearing more layers. Better seats. (second level behind home plate section 249).

Having a great time. It kind of hit dad and I standing in line - the surrealness of it - as in "Holy crap, we're going to game 2 of the World Series". This is amazing. Soooooo glad we did it. A story for a lifetime.

Cheers!

St. Louis and baseball

On a positive note, this really is a great baseball town. Everyone is talking baseball. The city is living for it right now. Every store clerk, waiter, bellhop, etc. is wearing Cards red or at least talking about the World Series. Starting mid afternoon the whole downtown is consumed by fans/parties/music/beer and baseball. Lots of fun to be around it!

St. Louis

If you're like me you have probably wondered at some point: "Is there anything in St. Louis besides sports and the famous arch?"

Well, I can now answer that for you. The answer is "no". No, there is not.

The place is fairly clean. It's not ugly. The people are nice. But in the words of Frank Drebin "There's nothing to see here". Dad and I have walked, alone or together, all of the downtown area. There are hotels. There are restaurants in the hotels. There are office buildings and streets that seem way too big for the number of people using them. That's about it.

The pizza is bad. How do you make bad pizza you ask? Come here to find out. The secret? No mozarella cheese. A mix of other cheese that ends up tasting and looking like velveeta. Yuck.

There are museums that celebrate farming and exploration. There are churches that are ALMOST a hundred years old. There are "exciting" retail venues that are filled with nothing but t-shirt stores. Yawn.

The baseball and spending time with dad is great. That's all we're here for. Can't wait for the Anheuser Bush tour this afternoon and game 2 tonight. Until then will read my book and sip coffee.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Game 1

What a great game. Great park. Great fans. Great pitching performance by Carpenter. Great moves by Tony LaRusa. Cold but barely rained. Great Cheesesteak sandwich (sorry, no pictures). So glad dad and I were there!

First pitch

Wow. Dad and I were hoping to see a MAJOR celebrity throw out the first pitch. And boy - it was the local Taco Bell franchise owner. Awesome! :-/

We're in!


Always just a tiny bit nervous as the tickets are being scanned. But they were good. Very good! Great atmosphere in the city today. Whole place is paying attention. The park is amazing.

Heading to park!

Almost time to go in to park - new hats all around!

Weather

Mildly bummed it's not sunny as was projected a few days ago. Minimal showers and 10 degrees or so. To us here Canadians? BFD...

Big Mac Land

Tonight, for game 1, dad and I are sitting in left field, in a section referred to as "Big Mac Land".  Yes, this is related to both Mark McGuire and MacDonalds.  We're in row 6 behind the Big Mac sign, shown here after Albert Pujols once knocked out the letter I with a home run ball.  Can't wait for the game.  Going plenty early as we ereceived an e-mail saying security will be tight and entrance slow due to "dignitaries" at the game, and want to see lots of the ballpark and players anyway.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Beer us

First (but not last) beer of the trip! In Bangor airport waiting for delayed flight.

On our way!

Mom drove dad down to SJ this morning. Pic of us with tickets. Note Irving Pulp N Paper stack in background. Driving to Bangor for flights via Philadelphia. Can't wait to land in the STL...

You can find me in St. Louie...


So Cards are in - phew!  You know how a team can grow on you?  This team has.  Fun to watch.  The Brewers just didn't have it.  Pujols/Freeze/Berkman are quite a combo.  Larussa is looking like a genius almost every night.  I can't say I'm an honest to God fan of either the Cardinals or Rangers but this will be a great series.  Dad was hoping St. Louis because he sees them play multiple times every spring in Florida and will likely continue to do so for years because they stay near Jupiter where they do Spring Training.  (Freddie and I went with dad to a game last spring, was great except Pujols didn't play)

So, dad and I are heading to St. Louis.  Today!

We'll be at games 1 and 2, more details and pictures to follow.

Woohoo!  After all these months of planning I can't believe we're finally going!

Greg

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Almost decided...


Rangers are in. They're the best team in baseball.

Right now Cardinals are looking good and Brewers terrible. Sipping a Busch beer (made in St. Louis MO) and watching the innings tick away...

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Musings on travel


This has mostly been fun. Watching the games and getting to know teams I knew little about is fun. Caring about who wins, even though my two favorite teams (Jays, Phils) aren't in it is fun. Talking to dad every couple of days about the games has been fun. Buying tickets on Stubhub, picking sections and seats for games has been fun. Researching hotels/tours/restaurants on Tripadvisor for cities I've never been to has been fun.

Know what's NOT fun? Stressing over flights. Literally losing sleep over them. We have to leave Thuesday and still not sure where we're going. Every day almost prices go up and seat selection goes down. Milwaukee is especially bad - best we can do now would be a slightly expensive three-hopper from Bangor. Ug. And we won't know for SURE until at tomorrow night at the EARLIEST, and Monday night midnight if it goes seven games.

I felt the need to gamble a bit again. I can still get flights to St. Louis for a very reasonable cost, and flights that are actually convenient. Can't sit together on all flights but I guess that's not too big of a deal. Booking St. Louis arriving Tuesday, leaving Saturday. I don't want to risk flying day of game 1 in case of flight problems, and want to stay the extra day in case of rain delayed game, and to have one more no-flying day in St. Louis.

If the Brewers stage a major comeback (certainly possible given their home field dominance this year) it's going to be tricky to get there, but we'll find a way.

Fingers croseed. But NOT "cheering" for the Cardinals. Yeah, that's right, really I'm not... :)

Greg

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Tickets!

OK, it somehow feels more real now that I've printed off actual tickets for the game!  Here's one - makes me a bit giddy looking at it! :)

(BTW, I blocked off the barcodes and row/seat to make sure no one can steal this off-line and try to use it)

Milwaukee vs St. Louis - hotels and tickets

I'm done with predictions. Even SI sports writers are 50/50 on all of these series. You just can't tell who's going to win. So I'm just watching the games.

At the same time, I've scooped Milwaukee and St. Louis for tickets and hotels. Yikes. Milwaukee is heavily booked - you can barely get a room in even a crappy downtown hotel and all the good ones are full. Big convention on or something. St. Louis you can get a nice room for reasonable $ right by Busch stadium and the Arch thingie. And Cardinal tickets are cheaper. And Detroit is all cheap. So I booked hotels for Milwaukee and St. Louis. And may get tickets for both teams. Flights are the real stress. Hope someone makes this a definitive series win soon!!!

Edit - I boughts tickets for Oct. 20. Given that this is Dad's birthday, I didn't want to risk missing out somehow or getting stuck with bad seats. So I've bought tickets for Oct. 20 for both the Brewers abd cardinals, and pretty good seats too - I'm very excited. Especially if game is at Busch Stadium we'll be in section 249, which is part of the "Redbird Club" which is attached to a climate controlled (yeah in Late October!) place for food/drink/bathrooms. Will be a nice perk if it's cold or rainy. If at Miller park we'll be in section 227, which is decent and close enough to see the silly beer slide guy. Will go cheaper for a game 1 in either park, or in Detroit (where seats are pretty cheap anyway).

Can't wait for games tonight!!!

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Family baseball night

Got to hang out with mom and dad last night for the first time since I told dad about this. Was great! Big feed, kids love to visit them and stayed for a sleepover at cottage. Freddie was a tired dude. Tried to watch ALCS game with him on couch but he was tired. Moved him in to mom and dad's big bed with game on in there, set up on pillows relaxing with hands crossed behind his head. "This is AWESOME" he says. :)

So dad and I had a chat. We're going, just not sure where yet. Going to two games. Good thing is, games 1 and 2 can't be too far, either Milwaukee or St. Louis. Both are do-able in our time frame. I've never been to either place nor likely to for any other reason than this trip so neat!

AL is a different story. Texas Rangers I like, but with our timeline it's too far to be manageable. So let's go Tigers. (Too bad Veralander was less than stellar last night). Dad's a big fan of Jim Leyland.

So the plan is this. If the Rangers advance, we'll do games 1 and 2 in the NL team's park. If the Tigers win (more fun!) we'll do game 2 in Milwaukee or St. Louis and game 3 in Detroit.

Wish I could book flights and tickets now but can't. Getting all my $ back from Stubhub. Small consolation is that tickets for all of these teams are quite a bit cheaper than Phillies or Yankees. We'll see!

Friday, October 7, 2011

Out and out

Well, well, so much for predictions. Phillies and Yankees both out IN THE FIRST ROUND due to poorly timed offensive slumps. (Howard, A-Rod and Texiera = awful)

Think about this. Teams with the top 3 payrolls in baseball (Yankees 202 million, Rex Sox 161M and Phillies 173M) are all out before the LCS. Epic fails all around. That's over half a BILLION dollars of futility.

I want to go to Milwaukee. I like that team. Dad?

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Tense game 5's

I couldn't, just couldn't watch and cheer for AJ Burnett to win. So I went to bed.  But they won and I'm glad.  :)

It's absolutely painful watching the Phils bat.  Ryan Howard in particular has been AWFUL.
Cards have great hitting.

Both teams are in game 5's with playoff lives on the line.

Go Halladay. He can do it.

Dad - We'll see this weekend how our travel plans are lookin'. If Phils and Yankees both lose (hard to imagine but you never know), we want Milwaukee and Detroit.  This is all good fun.  :)

Monday, October 3, 2011

Two games in

Phillies are not playing their best. Need to win in St. Louis now. I still think they'll get it done...

Yankees are also tied in their series and this game 3 is huge. Can't wait to watch it tonight.

I like texting with mom and dad during games. :)