Tampa Bay Rays celebrate after Jose Lobaton hits a home run in the bottom of the ninth as Mike Napoli of the Boston Red Sox walks off the field during Game Three of the teams’ American League Division Series.
Manager Don Mattingly, just hours after risking his Dodger career by starting his ace on short rest when it wasn’t necessary, wiped champagne out of his eyes and said, “Playoffs are stupid, aren’t they? Just crazy.”
After a bench-clearing cuss-off in Detroit, a near no-hitter to save a season by a Cardinals rookie, a walk-off homer by an obscure Ray off baseball’s toughest closer and a game-winning homer by a Dodger who had just botched two sacrifice bunts, I agreed with Donnie Baseball and hit the hay at 2 a.m.
Insight on the Nationals and all the latest news from Post reporters Adam Kilgore and James Wagner.
It’s possible that baseball has never had a better single day than the 12 hours from 1 p.m. Monday afternoon until after 1 a.m. Tuesday morning. Almost everything good about the game, especially its warped but wonderful postseason, was on display.
The best and worst aspect of October baseball is that you have no idea who will win or why or which heroes will emerge. The better team usually wins, but not often enough to claim that baseball’s format is any model of fairness. Instead, it’s the epitome of entertainment, but one that is so spread out that it demands hours of attention, or good luck, to see the best of it.
In each playoff team’s town, every moment is tasted, hair is yanked by its roots and throats are raw from screaming, just as Washington got to agonize through five division-series games last year and probably will return to this insane stage again fairly soon. But few, except those whose job is to follow baseball or who’ve had the misfortune to be furloughed by fanatics, get a sense of the whole sweep of the nutty thing.
In just one day, we saw several of the most powerful forces that magnetize us to baseball. One is the constant psychological game-within-the-game between pitchers and hitters, or between entire teams and pitchers they want to unhinge. In the ninth inning in Game 3 in Detroit, A’s closer Grant Balfour, who amps himself ’til his eyes bug out because his stuff isn’t quite top-drawer, flipped out when Victor Martinez of the Tigers stared him down after a foul ball.
Did Martinez provoke Balfour, knowing he’s on a precarious emotional tightrope every time he pitches? Balfour screamed an obscenity. Martinez screamed back, and everyone danced at home plate. But Balfour lost some command and might have melted down if he hadn’t had a three-run cushion. If he has another save chance, which Bengal will push his buttons now that he’s shown that you can wind him up until it hurts his pitching?
There’s just such a book on many a pitcher. Does he hate to field bunts, hold runners (Stephen Strasburg), watch hitters step out of the box (Jordan Zimmermann) or simply get nervous under playoff pressure (Gio Gonzalez). Championship teams have to iron out almost all such damaging quirks.
A pure October moment, crystallizing everything we love and hate about this freakish month, was captured by the monstrous walk-off homer by a .228 career hitter, Jose Lobaton, off Koji Uehara, who was the hardest pitcher to hit this year (.130), far ahead of runner-up Tyler Clippard (.152).
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