ALCS II

Sometimes, you win. Sometimes, you lose. Sometimes, it rains. That's what they say, isn't it?

Most major league baseball games don't matter. It's such a long season, stretching out across the sweaty summer right through the first frost, with your team playing more days than not. It's cumulative, played not so much in games as in stretches of games. For five games this guy can't hit. This pitcher makes three bad starts in a row. One game here or there almost never seems crucial. You're not in trouble when you trip -- only when you start to slide. So it isn't until there's a game you can't get back, that you want desperately, that you really fully appreciate how delicate baseball is, and how little separates winning and losing.

I went to the game last night with Snowmobile Boy and my friend Little Feet, who is nine months pregnant. She climbed up twenty-eight rows to our seats at the very top of the upper deck. Dedication? Oh, yes. I think so. In recognition of the fact that her situation wasn't necessarily comfortable or easy, SB and I responded in the true spirit of friendship by picking on her mercilessly from pretty much the minute we met up with her for dinner. On the shuttle bus on the way to the game, she commented that her father had said he was looking forward to seeing the birth of his first grandchild -- on the Jumbotron. SB and I made a bet on how many "Twins" jokes she would have to endure. "You know, [Little Feet], from the back, you look almost completely normal," I told her as we left her house. We speculated about what we would do if she went into labor during the game. She said her hospital was pretty close to the Metrodome, so SB and I had pretty much settled on passing her down through the crowd, like Dick Vitale at a college basketball game, and pinning a note to her that said to take good care of her and get her to the hospital. It's a good thing she is a good sport, isn't it? When we got to the Metrodome and found our way to the seats, we reminded her that she could probably get on TV if she would just go into labor. We also suggested she should have worn a shirt saying, "I DON'T WANT TO SEE ANY CONTRACTION!"

During the first game, I can honestly say I felt the entire time like the Twins would win. It felt right. The crowd buzzed, the pitching was on . . . even though the lead was so small, I felt confident all night. Anxious, heart-pounding, but in the end, I felt confident. And just as thoroughly, last night felt permeated with doom almost from the outset. Erstad knocked a home run in the first inning, which took the air out of the crowd pretty thoroughly. It's so strange -- when you don't have TV announcers yelling, "This! Ball! Is! Gone!", and you don't have six slo-mo replays that make them look like they came from a movie, you tend to see home runs the way they really are. One bad pitch, not hit all that much harder than a hundred playable fly balls. The home run, in and of itself, felt small. But the air changed. You could feel the energy hiss out of the building like a leaky balloon. Ssssssss . . .

One bad pitch.

The Angels' second inning started with a single. And then a double that came when the right fielder failed to get under one he probably should have had. And then another single. 2-0. But the next guy popped up harmlessly, and the next one bounced an easy one that let us successfully tag the guy at third as he tried to weasel his way home. This began to bring the crowd back. We screamed as loudly as we could. Things might be starting to turn around. Get us out of this at 2-0, and we'll get some offense going, and . . . well, there you have it. It got even better when we suddenly trapped the guy on first off the bag, and we had him dead caught between the bases. But Mientkiewicz went home to nab that guy, and A.J. couldn't hang onto the ball. 3-0, and then another single. 4-0. By the time we got out of it, it was officially ugly.

I was impressed that the crowd didn't check out sooner. We tried again and again to get back into it. We got a leadoff single in the third . . . but the guy managed to get himself picked off. We managed leadoff singles in the fourth and the fifth, only to bounce into double plays both times. Every time, we yelled. Every time, we tried to get back into it. And honestly, after the second, Rick Reed really didn't pitch that badly. He did well in the third, the fourth, and the fifth, and in the sixth, he again suffered for the failure of Cuddyer in right to make a catch. And then one more bad pitch, sent over the fence, and suddenly it's 6-0. Wow. 6-0 is bad. It was at this point that I saw people start to leave. In the sixth inning. I hate those people. Those people should have to give back any remaining tickets they have. They should have to forfeit their foam fingers and their homer hankies and their team jerseys. Faithless morons. Moreover, when they took out Reed, there were actually people there stupid enough to boo the home team. Booing your own team? Earns you a special place in hell.

Our big effort at a comeback was in the bottom of the sixth. It wasn't tricky, it wasn't elegant, we just got hits. Got a hit, got another hit, and managed three runs. We were right back in it. We threatened again in the eighth, but our big pinch hitter took a called third strike to end the inning. Damn.

We just didn't have enough to come back. It's remarkable what a fickle game it is. I look back, and I stare at my scorecard, and I think about these weird little moments, and the way they separated us from victory. What if A.J. hadn't dropped the ball? What if Cuddyer had caught at least one of those two that he missed? What if we'd avoided the pickoff move? It hurts to speculate about what would have been enough, because all it does is remind you how little probably would have been enough. A little here, a little there. The single we almost caught. The grounder they almost missed. The called strike that, from the very top of the stadium in the far right field corner, certainly looked like it might have been an inch or two off the plate.

It's strange to say that it was another great night, nevertheless. As we made our way out of the parking lot where the shuttle had dropped us off, SB went into a standup comedy routine that was unusually funny, even for him. And he's funny. Little Feet and I were laughing so hard that eventually, she asked him to stop. "It hurts my belly," she said plainly. Poor thing. We went back to SB's house, where Little Feet and I had left our cars. She took off, and I went inside to get my bag. As I was picking it up, we grumbled that it had been so close. Just a little here, and a little there. "And I still believe we're going to win this series," he said evenly.

"All we have to do is get one in Anaheim, and they'll get back to the dome."

We nodded at each other, and I went home.

SPECIAL BONUS: Here is some of the email correspondence between SB and me today, the Day After.

To: Snowmobile Boy
From: Alli

Do you suppose this guy watched the same game I watched?

Okay, I'm not sure I buy Reed as the goat. I'm not sure there was
one. It was nine hundred little things, no? Double plays, guys
letting called third strikes go by . . . I would almost give it to
Rivas for getting picked off as much as Reed. Given how badly they
needed runs, THAT was a disaster. And the whole "key move" thing,
picking the decision to leave in Reed for one more inning? He was
NOT "scraping by" when he started that inning. You looked at the
scorecard with me -- he had retired something like ten out of the
last eleven guys or something like that. Between the second and
the sixth, he did really well. I don't think people were clamoring
for him to get pulled until after the home run, or at LEAST after the
triple. He seemed, actually, to have settled down.

Similarly, Erstad as the hero for the first-inning homer? Yeah,
okay. I get that the early hit is important, but the hero?

I can't believe how all of the articles today say nothing but
"Reed got rocked, Reed got beat, terrible pitching . . . " We had
eleven hits and three runs! You want a "key stat," ESPN guy? That's
your key stat, as far as I'm concerned. Am I wrong?

To: Alli
From: Snowmobile Boy

I agree with you.

1. The goat, if it has to be anyone, is Cuddyer. The dome is
supposed to be an asset to us. Instead, he turned it into a liability. He
should have caught the bloop double and he could have caught that
6th inning triple (although admittedly it was a tougher play). He also
did nothing at the plate. And I'm not just talking results - he looked
like he was swatting flies.

2. Given #1, Gardy is right. The only earned runs scored
(official baseball definitions aside) were the two homers. No one else
should have scored or been in a position to score when they did (if
Cuddyer and A.J. make the plays).

3. It was either the fourth or fifth inning when Reed got out the
side on 5 or 6 pitches. At that point, I definitely felt like he was
"on" after a shakey start. You're right, the scorecard says he looked
fine. Hell, I was there, he DID look fine.

4. The key stat the guy picked (about Percival not allowing the
Twins to score)? What a bunch of nonsense. The stat reaches all the way
back to '95. O-kaaaaay. NOBODY let the '95 to '99 Twins score. [I got
that from somewhere in the Strib - Ruesse I think.] He is good, true.
But he really hasn't pitched that much against THIS team. The sample
is way too small to say the Twins simply can't hit him.

5. Erstad is not the hero. Their bullpen is the hero. Or possibly even Ortiz for getting immediately out of every even remotely tough situation until the 6th.

6. What's with all these writers saying the crowd was taken out of
it. I don't doubt Tuesday night was louder, but the crowd seemed very
energetic and supportive to me - especially considering the team
was down by three runs or more for eight of the innings.

To: Snowmobile Boy
From: Alli

I agree with you about Cuddyer, and I've heard almost no mention of
his play. Maybe it wasn't as bad as we thought? Maybe the one I
thought it looked like he lost in the roof was harder than it
seemed? I don't know. As I said, I think there's plenty of
goat-hood to go around. Interestingly, there's a lot more picking
on AJ than there is on Cuddyer, and I don't see how you fault a guy
who couldn't keep the ball in his glove when a two-hundred-pound guy
crashed into him and let off the hook a guy who never managed to get
the ball into his glove at all, even with no one within fifty feet
of him. I can't imagine what it's like for a catcher, having a guy
barrel into him like that. It would be like football, but with less
pads. And sure, that's what you pay your catcher for, but . . .
man, what are you paying your outfielders for?

I had forgotten the five-pitch inning -- I think it was five
indeed. And yes, it's remarkable that nobody's talking about that.
I mean, granted, Reed was shaky all night, but he definitely seemed
to be finding the groove by the time the sixth rolled around.
That's the kind of thing that makes you think that these media guys
really are spitting out prefab game descriptions -- "Ah,six runs,
including a triple-homer sequence in the sixth . . . must have been
a mistake to leave in an obviously weak pitcher." Same with Erstad
-- like you have to hit the long ball to be the hero. That's just
not sophisticated analysis. A home run is not THAT different from a
long fly ball in kind, after all. You need one hittable pitch, and
you need to hit it a little harder than a fly ball. I'd be more
likely to idolize a guy who does great stuff over the course of a
whole game. I think the whole homer-worship thing is a little goofy
in general, and that's a great example.

God, no kidding about Percival. By then, it just wasn't about him.
It was about a million missed opportunities before that. It's like
people who think a basketball game turns on one bad call with thirty
seconds left, when the team has shot 26 percent from the field the
whole game. It's that same weak addiction to whatever sticks out
the most, which tends to be the end of the game.

You're totally right about the crowd -- the crowd tried and tried
and TRIED to get back in it. I thought the crowd was actually quite
valiant, going back again and again to try to get something going.
But we got shot down with the pickoff, with the two double plays,
with the guy who (yes, this is how they scored it) managed to both
STRIKE OUT and GET TO FIRST BASE because he SWUNG AT A WILD PITCH,
with the dropped ball at home, with the one David Ortiz ripped foul
. . . the crowd tried. And through at least the eighth, I thought
the crowd was as loud as they could possibly have been expected to
be.

I would characterize that game as being about little screwups piled
up, one on top of another, until they just were too much to recover
from.

Posted by Alison-Jane at October 10, 2002 07:28 AM