We’ve beaten two 100-win, Live Mission dominant teams to get to the Series, and we get another Live Mission team in the finals, the
Tulsa Mother Road, a 98-win club that we faced during the season and beat three times in four games. As always, it’s the usual suspects on this team. Even in Silver, it would be nice to knock off three of these teams with my packs-only club. A win in this series would also give me one championship for all three of my clubs, with the Frogs winning in Rookie League back in Week 1 and the Warlocks taking a Gold title seven days ago.
Hey it’s Greg Maddux for the fourth time in 10 games! He duels with Noodles Hahn for eight innings and we head to the 9
th down 2-1. We get a man on third and for some reason Brendan Rogers tries a suicide squeeze play, which doesn’t work. But Ichiro and Paul Waner hit back-to-back singles, and we tie it to go to extras, where we score four in the 10
th to once again steal a game late, 6-2. We go down 7-0 early in Game 2 as Scherzer is ineffective, and despite a comeback that sees us cut it to 8-6 with a man on in the ninth, we can’t finish it off, and it’s tied heading home.
Verlander’s been scraping by for us and we’ve won all three of his starts. This time around he’s excellent in Game 3, holding a 1-0 lead in the 8
th. I can’t believe we leave him in, but we do, and Ichiro greets him with a game-tying dinger. We immediately bring in Dustin May, who gets two outs but then gives up back-to-back doubles, and we’re down, 2-1. We get nothing off Nathan or Mussina in the 8
th and 9
th, and are down in a series for the first time this post-season. We jump on Randy Johnson in Game 4 thanks to a two-run homer from George Foster, but Jose Fernandez can’t make it stand and we go to the 9
th 2-2. For the first time this postseason Dave Smith can’t get it done, surrendering a run, and we meekly go down in the bottom of the 9
th to fall into a 3-1 hole.
We don’t climb out of it. I know by the fact that the sim runs over by about seven minutes that we’ve lost, and it’s just a question of how. And the how is just awful. Up 4-1 in the 9
th, we turn to Dave Smith again, and he surrenders four runs. It’s 1-2-3 in the bottom of the inning, and we bow out in the Series, four games to one.
The good news comes with the awards announcements, as we collect a ton of hardware:
- Great Gloves for Mazeroski at 2B, Robinson at 3B, and Ozzie at SS (his 8th overall and 4th straight GG).
- A Platinum Stick for Brooks Robinson at 3B.
- A (shocking) Pitcher of the Year Award for Max Scherzer.
- And... an MVP for Brooks Robinson!
All in all, adding in a Save Streak bonus for Dave Smith and the 1,000 Great Score bonus, that’s 3,375 on Awards Day, all of which I’d happily trade in for a championship.