Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Regular season playoffs

Last night I was laying in bed, watching the second game of the doubleheader between the Twins and the Tigers. I was giving the wife some back rubs to try to help ease the pregnancy pains a little bit. It didn't take long for her to prop herself up slightly and say "a bit nervous, are we?"

So yah, I might have been a little tense. It was the ninth inning, and it looked for all the world that the Twins were going to come from behind and win the damn thing, which would have tied them for the division lead. They didn't, of course, and now have to turn their attentions to winning the next two games to have a shot at the playoffs.

The two games yesterday had everything that makes baseball so wonderful. The first game was a tense pitcher's duel, with the teams combining for five sacrifice bunts and two sac flies. The Twins looked like they were about to win in the ninth, only to have their rally stuffed mind-blowingly quickly on a play that put the suicide in suicide squeeze. The Tigers had the game- (and possibly division) winning hit slicing toward the right-field corner in the bottom of the ninth before Denard Span ran it down; Span was in right field only because of a defensive shift, one of six lineup changes the two teams made between them. It was absolutely a postseason atmosphere.

Which is why Justin Verlander's start in the second game seemed so much more amazing. The Tigers needed their ace to win a game single-handedly, and he just about did it. He was throwing 98 and still had his biting curve in the eighth inning, when the Twins finally broke through and made it a one-run game. It was one of those starts you usually see in the postseason, the kind where a pitcher has a career-defining moment.

It's hard to believe the teams can play any better games than the two we just saw. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if one or both of the next two end up being duds, just because of the tension from yesterday's doubleheader.

It was baseball at its best. If the Twins end up falling short of the playoffs this year, I won't be too upset. I'll know I'll have already seen them play two playoff-caliber games this year.



Yesterday was the anniversary of another game that reminds everybody of why baseball is so fascinating. Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, better known for The Catch. It was the defining moment of Mays' career, and it was a play that wouldn't have been possible in any other major league ballpark. Mays made that catch 450 feet from home plate; in any other ballpark, that's halfway up the centerfield bleachers. But that was a quirk of the Polo Grounds. Another one: In the 10th inning of that game, pinch-hitter Dusty Rhodes ended the game with a home run down the right field line. That ball traveled 250 feet in the air - in any other park it would have been a routine out.

They don't make parks like the Polo Grounds anymore, and I'm not sure that's a good thing.

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