Baseballmageddon!: the Morning After

I am not the only one who thinks that yesterday may have been the best day for baseball in a long, long time. Over at ESPN.com, Buster Olney points out that

The Yankees hadn’t lost a 7-0 lead in the eighth inning or later since 1953, and that’s what happened. The Red Sox were undefeated this year when holding leads after the eighth inning, yet they lost. There were four games involving the wild-card races Wednesday, and in three of those, a team came to within one out of victory, and lost. At 11:40 p.m., the Atlanta Braves matched the greatest September collapse in history, and 25 minutes later, the Red Sox set a new standard for September collapses. And Evan Longoria’s game-winning homer was merely the second in history that propelled a team into the playoffs, on the last day of the season; the other belongs to Bobby Thomson.

Olney adds that someday, “somebody will write a book on baseball’s greatest day ever”.

[Addendum: Dave Sheinin at the Washington Post writes, ""What that was, quite simply, was the best day of regular season baseball the game has ever seen".]

Meanwhile, MLB.com has a convenient timeline in text and video format, chronicling what went down last night. A Hollywood screenwriter could not have invented a more dramatic scenario.

And, best of all, at SI.com, Tom Verducci begins his column with this:

They will go down as the most thrilling 129 minutes in baseball history. Never before and likely never again — if we even dare to assume anything else can be likely ever again — will baseball captivate and exhilarate on so many fronts in so small a window the way it did September 28, 2011.

Verducci adds that the Rays’ nine-game climb up the standings is the “greatest comeback” in baseball history. Moreover, he says that Longoria’s twelfth-inning home run is “instantly” among the most famous ever, “right up there” with “Bobby Thomson’s Shot Heard Round The World in 1951. It lacks only the New York amplification of Thomson’s homer. It makes Longoria, already one of the game’s great players, a transcendent cultural player”.

That is a nice thought, and I hope it proves true. Certainly, should the Rays do well against Texas and, somehow, win another pennant, the events of last night will seem almost a legend – the sort of thing the Bob Costases and Ken Burnses of the world will recall ages hence. But even if that does not come to pass, and the Yankees and Red Sox-obsessed sports writers of the future try to push it from their minds, the rest of us will never forget game 162 of the 2011 baseball season, which I will henceforth call BASEBALLMAGEDDON!

[Addendum: The St. Petersburg Times is reporting that Cooperstown has asked Evan Longoria for the bat he used to hit that game-winning home run.]

Filed under: Current Events, Sports on September 29th, 2011 | No Comments »

Baseballmageddon!

_DSC1858 I am writing this after midnight on Thursday morning, September 29, 2011. I am in shock. My beloved Tampa Bay Rays have just won the 162nd game of their season, coming back from a seven-run deficit against the Hated New York Yankees to win in the bottom of the twelfth at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. With this win, the Rays go to post-season play once again. But this alone isn’t what makes tonight so amazing. Rather, it is the absolutely improbable, some said impossible, come-from-way-behind September the Rays have had, combined with the enormous effort on behalf of the Orioles to defeat the Boston Red Sox tonight in Baltimore.

Everything had to fall into place tonight. The Red Sox had been collapsing all month. The Rays had been improving. The last three games of the season would find the battle for the Wild Card take place between two very different teams, against two very different teams: Boston would get to play against the last-place Orioles; the Rays against the first-place Yankees. Two days ago, when it appeared the season would come down to this do-or-die scenario, I dubbed today “Baseballmageddon”. But I couldn’t have imagined this ending this way. I am not capable of writing articulately right now.

The Rays and Red Sox entered their respective games tonight absolutely tied. If both won, or if both lost, a tie-breaker game would be required tomorrow. If Boston won, the Rays were done, and vice versa. So when the Rays found themselves down tonight 7-0 in the eighth inning tonight, I told my friend Anthony it was over. In fact, I left his house convinced my baseball watching was done until next year. When he texted me ten minutes later to say the Rays had just scored six runs, I thought he was pulling my leg. I turned the game on in the car to hear that Orioles fans in Baltimore were chanting, “Let’s go Rays!” When the Rays tied the game I was stunned. But as the game dragged on and on, and reports from Baltimore looked grim, I began to lose hope. I went to bed, listening on the radio while the Rays batted, then turning it off while the Yankees batted. Then, out of nowhere, the radio announced Baltimore had stunned Boston in the bottom of the ninth at Camden Yards, which meant, at the worst, the Rays would get another shot if the game against New York didn’t work out. Then, as I listened in near panic, Evan Longoria hit the game-winning home run. I jumped from bed, letting out a scream that terrified my beloved wife. I still can hardly believe it. Everything had to work out just so, and it did.

I have watched and listened to baseball my entire life. I can say with certainty, I have never experienced a day of baseball like this. People will talk about this forever.

How will I sleep?

Filed under: Current Events, Sports on September 29th, 2011 | No Comments »

One Good Reason

Many people this week were upset over the execution in Georgia of a man named Troy Davis. I know next to nothing about that case, but from what I could gather, some had doubts about his guilt. Newspapers and radio featured editorials criticizing the American system of capital punishment, arguing that it disproportionately executes black and the poor, while also pointing out how a shocking number of individuals on death row have been exonerated after DNA evidence definitively proved that the crimes for which they were convicted and sentenced were, in fact, committed by others.

Almost none of these protests cited the one and only important reason capital punishment should be immediately and permanently abolished everywhere: capital punishment is wrong. Plain and simple. It’s wrong. Black or not black, fair trial or unfair trial, guilty or not guilty, capital punishment is still morally and ethically indefensible. So I don’t care if Troy Davis was not guilty of killing a police officer. And I don’t care if he received an unfair trial because of incompetent attorneys or a prejudiced jury. All I care about is that Troy Davis was a human being and that no man has the right to willfully take the life of any other unless his own life is in immediate mortal danger. Capital punishment does not meet that standard and never will.

Filed under: Current Events, Rantings on September 23rd, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Great Minds

I was just attempting to download a trial version of Adobe Photoshop. Their website requires you to enter your “Adobe ID”, which, of course, I do not have. I decided to make one up, but I didn’t want to give my real email address, so I entered fake@fakey.com.  When I pressed [Enter] I was told, “That email address already exists”. I love you, internet!

Filed under: Technology on September 22nd, 2011 | No Comments »

Still Alive

I haven’t died or given up writing on this website. I have just had a spate of computer-related maladies that have prevented me from devoting attention to this. For instance, in the past month, I have had to reformat my machine twice. This, of course, has cost me an enormous amount of time spent restoring said computer to a condition I find useful, adding my old programs and files right where they belong.

I will do my best to write a great big update on Thursday, and in it will tell you about school, Sloshball, and the wedding of two dear friends.

Filed under: Website on September 13th, 2011 | No Comments »