[cknox0723]

Originally Posted by cknox0723

His team hadn't scored a run all game, hadn't put up anything except zeroes the day previous, but Ichiro had just saved a run in the field and then brought home two with one swing of the bat. (...) because he's all dirty, it's like some twisted game of pinball, at least from the other end.

I like staring into the abyss, I have to be honest. I guess that quality makes me the potentially perfect manager for a fake baseball team and also explains why this is post nine hundred something in this thread. Having blown a lead for the first time against an obviously better team and having it done in such gut-wrenching fashion, that's baseball's version of staring into the abyss.

Somehow Loaiza doesn't blink much, likely because most of the guys that follow Ichiro in the lineup can't do much but hold his jockstrap, or maybe yell out "You're bad!" in Japanese if they get too jealous of the guy.

My buddy's taken a few Japanese courses and he's going to a Cubs game Tuesday. I asked him if he was going to heckle Fukudome and that's what he told me, about the best he could do is yell out "You're bad!" It's not much of a heckle but maybe it's one of those universal things, we'll see. ¡es malo! Should have yelled that at the hero before he took over the game.

Loaiza manages to get out of the inning without further damage, but our at bats in the eighth are very meek and then our reliever Kiko Calero can't throw the ball anywhere but over the middle of the plate or nowhere near it. After two batters and two singles, we're back looking at the bottomless hole again, a pair of speedy runners on base, at the corners, no one out and contact hitter Luis Castillo at the plate. It's all PJ Bevis can do but to keep the ball within reach of the drawn in infield, maybe, or hope the second baseman pops one up, fouls out or something.

Instead he does something fox-like crazy, pitching out...but it's so crazy that it works, because of course Juan Pierre with 66 stolen bases is going to be running, and of course Miguel Olivo's going to make a perfect throw and not one into centerfield, because sometimes if you just do something different than what you're used to instead of the insane same thing over and over again, you get a different result. I guess in baseball that means pulling a pitcher when it's obvious he's got nothing instead of just saying, "**** it, game's over," or pitching out when you've got that feeling, or pinch-hitting on a hunch, or what have you. Follow your gut too much and you'll end doing plenty of stupid things, too, you've got to use your head a little bit. But sometimes...you just never know.

The Mariners probably would win this game in a simulation nine times out of ten, maybe nine and a half if you add in the factor of a crowd screaming at us how bad we are in eighteen different languages after that seventh inning, maybe nine and three quarters if I would have told you that Ichiro got on base again in the ninth inning.

But this time...Bevis came in with runners at first and third in the eighth, nobody out, and after that caught stealing there was a little hope. After Luis Castillo rapped a ground ball right at drawn in shortstop Jack Wilson, who didn't bobble it or kick it into left but just took a calm peek at third base runner Milton Bradley before firing a strike across the diamond. I think at that point any idiot would have started to believe we might actually get out of this one. There was still a #3 hitter to get out, but what was that compared to the abyss we'd been looking into? Adam Dunn hit a harmless pop up into left-center, and the game was still tied. It'd take a moment to sink in, **** maybe a day or two, but we were out of it.

I guess I could go into the details of the incredible top of the ninth. I could give you a longitudinal/latitudinal record complete with ball velocity and angular flight path of the booming double into the left field corner by our big bat, Magglio Ordonez, the blow which put two runners in scoring position with no one out. Or maybe I could write a second by second, heartbeat by heartbeat attempt of how Frank Thomas's fielder's choice felt, because really what the hell is more incredible than that single play that put us ahead, made even more enjoyable because the guy that hit it was a dinosaur, a brontosaurus and about as big as one, but a brontosaurus with arthritis and no teeth who's like blind in one eye and hit .163 on the year? Imagine that mental picture. Not a dinosaur baseball player, stop with that. But a big, fat guy with an aching back (I'm sure some of you reading know how much backaches can hurt), fading eyesight (could he even read Jonathan Dorf's advice to the budding playwright?), a guy who can't even really hit the ball out of the park in batting practice, and drop him into a bases loaded, top of the ninth playoff sitation. If ever there was a guy who'd need a personal pinch-runner, there's your guy. Imagine him pushing every last ounce of strength out of his aching body, lengthening his strides as long as possible, maybe wanting to collapse after hitting the first-base bag and fading off into the foul territory towards right field. I've gone running before where it's felt like I've had maybe ten strides left.

With no one out and the bases loaded, the Mariners pulled the infield in on the batter before, getting the force at home, so why they didn't get that force on Thomas, I don't know. It could be an example of the rudimentary AI on OOTP6 trying to go for the double play in that spot...I prefer to think that he hit the ball so hard that all first baseman Dunn could do was dive to his right and knock it down, firing to second once he got a firm grasp on it because his body was facing that direction and Eric Munson's kind of fat and slow, too. Let your mind wander in whatever direction that...:

1B Frank Thomas:
Grounds into fielders choice to the first baseman, Munson out at 2nd base.
M. Ordonez scores.
V. Wells to third.

...takes you. It takes me to a happy place. Most people hate .163 hitters on their favorite team but I'm fond of them. At least ones called "The Big Hurt."

Trying to explain it beyond a paragraph or two is like trying to explain what staring into the abyss is really like. I can't tell you, in general or specific or really any kind of linguistic terms that I know. Sometimes you're stuck staring for hours on end, unable to pull yourself away or bring yourself to care about anything else, and sometimes you realize what you're staring at is just a hole, and maybe if you fill it up a little bit it's really not so deep after all.

Maybe a 2-2 score really is like nothing-nothing, and if that's the case then maybe we did have a fifty percent chance of winning after seven frames. I don't really believe, not with the out of control downward spiral that was forming, same one that had formed in so many one-two-three innings, seven-run innings for the opposition and extra-inning losses. For some reason, we pulled out of it this time. I don't know why.

So instead of going back home down two games in the series, or knotted at one-one, we took a two-nothing series lead with us. They weren't buried yet but their last bottom of the ninth inning in Seattle was an example of the two games as a whole, an Ichiro single to lead off, then a strike out and game ending double play.