The Yankees aren't hitting right now, spawning tweets such as this one: "If I were the Yankee pitchers, I'd confront the hitters. It's
reprehensible to work that hard, and do that well, and get no support at
all." --@JPGuerette Let us collectively collect our breaths so we can keep rolling on the floor laughing about that one.
That's just too entertaining. No need to use too many words to talk about it. I'll use one more word regarding that tweet:
As I listened to John Sterling, wishing disappointment on an entire fanbase, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't rooting for the moment.
After Ichiro homered, I called my dad who I know had been watching the game but decided to turn it off. "Are you watching the game?" "No." "Turn it back on." My dad has not really paid all that much attention to baseball in recent years. He was disappointed earlier that the "one time I'm paying attention they look like this," So, I thought he'd appreciate them making it a game. Jose Valverde has been pitching like that S-word, and with a 4 run lead, he could have finally, after all this postseason time, gotten his S-word together. But he didn't. After the 1 out home run by Ichiro, Robinson Cano struck out. And while I listened to Mark Teixeira keep fouling it off, my dad asked why "I was punishing him." "This is baseball, man." It's never over till its over, as that Italian man once said. And in that moment, I was rooting for baseball. I loved how untimed it was as those fouls, and fouls, and fouls went on and on. Then that bum Valverde walked the guy. And John Sterling* informed me that Raul Ibanez was coming to the plate in the form of the tying run. "No way he's gonna do it again," my dad said. "Wouldn't surprise me. Valverde sucks in the postseason, and he has to throw strikes to a guy who is crushing everything right now." Sure enough, the continued amazement, the sheer undoing of the space/time continuum, the ever and ever unbelievable, no longer are those things. That's why I love this game. Because the surprising isn't surprising anymore. My dad couldn't believe it. I was 8 seconds ahead of him, so I held reaction, except for a couple "Jesus Christ's."
"Oh my God, he did it again!!!!!"
"Yep."
Nobody could believe it. The stadium, in mayhem, couldn't believe it. John Sterling couldn't believe it, and continued to voice how much he couldn't believe it with cliche phrases about "right out of Hollywood" kind of stuff. Was I really the only one who completely believed it?
Though I was back rooting for our old friend, Octavio Dotel, on the mound for the Tigers in the bottom of the 10th inning, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't rooting for the moment. "Thanks for letting me know," my dad said with a smile as we parted audible ways at the end of the 9th.
PLAYOFF. BASE. BALL.
LET'S. GO. METS.
*I have to say I don't mind John Sterling, as I told my dad on the phone. I've heard a lot of Yankee Fans on the radio and what not really hate on John. I think he's got a good baseball voice, though I do have problems with his sometimes vague descriptions of plays and how he gets all excited with any towering fly ball because he's so used to so many fly balls traveling out of Yankee Stadium ("That ball is high! It is Far! It iiiiis....caught at the wall! Well, he almost got that one. But that's baseball, Susan.") He's certainly got a presence on the radio.
Top 12, John: I don't know if he can do it again. If he does do it again, they might need to rename this place Ibanez Stadium (chuckles.)
Well, this is baseball. That's why this is the greatest game of all, ya know. Looked like we were gonna get it, we didn't do it, we didn't quite get the 27 outs, that's part of the game. You're gonna get tested all the time in this game, and it's a good test. We're down to, basically, like the wild card situation was now: 1 game. Pretty simple. We played our hearts out, tonight we just didn't close it out."
Early morning, I tried real hard to make it through to the last out of the last ball game. After Raul didn't take a hanging slider in the 9th and a high fastball in the 12th, the remote landed on the A's Tigers game for the rest of the evening. I actually did an admiral job staying up until the 9th. I must have made it an out or 2 into the top frame, and then naturally dosed off the way a normal human on the eastern seaboard would do around 12:30 in the morning. At what appeared to be the stroke of 1, I woke up to see every member of the A's running out of their dugout towards Coco Crisp on the infield. I didn't see his game-winning hit live, just on every replay after. The frenzy must have woken me up. There was really no reason to doubt that the A's would have that game won by the time I woke up, but for some odd reason I really thought the Tigers would lock the series down during my slumber.
What a day of baseball ahead of us. Got two Game 5's with Bay Series Implications, and a couple Game 4's involving two Beltway teams with their backs against the wall. Should be quite an awesome-but-would-be-awesomer-with-Orange-and-Blue day.
