Time only moves forward. For years, you live your October around the playoff schedule of one middle relief pitcher, staying up late and stepping outside at weddings and telling United Airlines you saw a bomb on the plane just so you can take a moment, open up your smartphone, and watch Joe Kelly pitch. Then, on an otherwise normal sunny day, he isn’t there. Or rather, he is there, but he isn’t pitching. Or rather, he is there, and he is pitching, but he’s doing it while wearing a mariachi jacket and his three World Series rings instead of a uniform, and it’s a ceremonial first pitch, and you hope he just stays on the mound and keeps pitching when the leadoff batter comes to the plate but you know he won’t, and even if he did you couldn’t watch because you’re at urgent care with your baby whose double-pink-eyed tear glands are pumping out pus like Cam Schlittler pumps out strikeouts, and Texas Children’s (great urgent care, by the way) has Disney Channel on instead of ESPN and there’s a big sign that says they’ll misdiagnose your baby with a penicillin allergy if you change the channel. (This isn’t true, it’s a wonderful urgent care and they were very careful to warn us about what’s normal and what isn’t in a child’s first interaction with the ’cillin. They did say not to change the channel, though.)
Time only moves forward.
Wild Card Series REACTIONS (not the allergic kind, baby Joseph is fine):
The Dodgers are funny because they’re so good that when things are going well, it’s like watching an earthquake against a shanty. It’s impressive, but cheering for the earthquake must feel like cheating. There were eleven playoff teams this year, and the Reds also made the playoffs. Tell me, Dodger fans, was that really all that fun?
Something I like about this year’s Dodgers is that they leaned into the “we are going to ruin all our pitchers physically” philosophy that’s held them back in previous Octobers. Yes, they have eleven pitchers on the IL, but they brought extras. Even if they sacrifice Tyler Glasnow’s UCL on the Division Series altar, they can plug in one of the greatest pitchers of all time as their fourth postseason starter. Add in that Roki Sasaki might have just saved their bullpen, and yes, it really feels like the rest of the league is fucked, fucked, fucked. But there’s hope:
The Dodgers are funny because they’re so good that when they do lose, it isn’t just painful for Dodger fans. It’s mind-bending. And because this is baseball, there’s like a 1-in-4 chance that somebody does beat them.
More REACTIONS (ooh fun I get to talk about the Cubs):
I know the chic thing right now as a Cubs fan who talks about sports in public is to say, “Yeah, that was a bad call, tough break for the Padres,” but D.J. Reyburn got the call right. Robot umps would have called that pitch a strike. ESPN has a hard time getting the top and bottom accurate on the on-screen strike zone. Why does ESPN put it up there anyway? I don’t know. Even if it’s perfectly accurate, it takes away from watching baseball. It’s like when broadcasts show the pitch clock. I know it’s there. I’m happy it’s there. But let me watch a baseball game like this is 2004. (Update: My bad, I did not understand how ABS works. Thank you, Baseball America. He did get the call wrong. I was wrong. Yeah, that was a bad call, tough break for the Padres.)
The Cubs beat the Padres, and they beat them fair and square, and if you don’t like it all I can say to you is this and also this. Are these Cubs good? I don’t think so. The starting pitching is so thin that Jameson Taillon threw four scoreless innings yesterday and got the Silver Star. Can these Cubs beat the Brewers? I think they can. Don’t know if they will, but I think they can.
I liked that they got Jake Arrieta to throw out the first pitch and Anthony Rizzo to narrate the hype video. I liked that Carson Kelly gave us a taste of a Kelly playing hero in October. I like that Seiya Suzuki is stepping up right as Shōta Imanaga runs out of gas a little, because my dad’s in Japan next week and I’m glad he has a Japanese Cub to bring up when my mom tells waiters they’re visiting from Chicago. I liked that the Cubs rubbed in how Eddie Vedder doesn’t cheer for the Padres. I like that Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner and PCA make the Cubs even stronger up the middle defensively than Crystal Lake American Little League’s 2007 twelve-year-old all-stars. I like that I can trust Nico Hoerner with my life even if nothing he’s doing has anything to do with my welfare. I like Nico Hoerner. I love Nico Hoerner. If I have another baby I’ll name them Kelly but the third one might be Nico. Even if they’re a girl. If I was handing out parachutes after a misguided bomb hoax on a commercial airliner and there was only one left for myself and Nico Hoerner, I would ask Nico Hoerner to autograph and bless my soon-to-be corpse. I thought Craig Counsell overthought the opener thing in Game 2 and that if he hadn’t started Andrew Kittredge, he wouldn’t have used him at all, and then both Kittredge and Brad Keller would have been fully available in Game 3 and we wouldn’t have had to deal with the scary parts. I like how much the Cubs mean to Matthew Boyd and Carson Kelly. I like that the Dodgers played the long game when they gave us Michael Busch, knowing he would eventually deal with the Padres on their behalf. I like Daniel Palencia, and I really like his dance moves.
Division Series THOUGHTS (forgot these above so let’s do the whole NL at once):
Dodgers vs. Phillies is titanic and I cannot wait. Cubs vs. Brewers is silly but it’s nice that they let the Central Divisions participate.
More REACTIONS (this is AMERICA: we speak AMERICAN League):
I have a note here from after Game 1 that says “Red Sox/Yankees fun good wow.” I could probably leave it at that, but instead…
Connelly Early did a fine job last night, but I did have a “why is that child playing in this baseball game” moment when looking at his face, which wasn’t that fun. Time only moves forward, or so they say. Thankfully, his hair looked like Red Sox hair is supposed to look, so seeing the guy in gray and red pitching to the guys in the pinstripes was timeless as timeless can be. There is something stirring about a Red Sox pitcher on the mound at Yankee Stadium.
In a sign of how far the Yankees have fallen, I’m glad they won. It was getting boring how much they kept losing every postseason series that would have felt meaningful to win. In 2003, I cried when I got drafted onto a Little League team named the Yankees for the third straight year. The Yankees have become so impotent that I am now glad they beat the Red Sox. What a weird world.
Thankfully, this makes the rivalry capital-b Back. Next year, I hope the Red Sox beat the Yankees. Preferably in the ALDS. Three games is a weird length for a series.
SIDE TANGENT ON THE FUTURE OF SPORTS IN AMERICA (this is important, listen up):
The ten-team playoff format was great. A twelve-team playoff format would be great if each league only had two divisions, so the division champs got byes and all the Wild Card teams played each other. What made the ten-team format so good, though, was the full strength single-elimination game. We did get three single-elimination games yesterday, but none of them were full strength, preordained, this–game–is–on–the–schedule–and–Jake–Arrieta–is–talking–shit single-elimination baseball. The three-game Wild Card Series is worse than the one-game Wild Card Game. Hearts don’t pound like they used to.
The series expanded for the sake of TV inventory, which—sure, fine, whatever. More money in baseball is better than less money in baseball. The problem is that American sports keep doing this. Major League Baseball, the NFL, college football, and now college basketball have all expanded their postseasons for the sake of a little extra short-term revenue. Why do we specify it’s short-term? Because my fear’s that by putting teams like the Reds and SMU in the playoffs, decisionmakers are eroding their sports’ quality, and that this is dangerous for the long-term product. Look at how insufferable the NBA regular season has become. American sports need to stop pursuing that path.
BACK TO RED SOX/YANKEES:
Say what you will about Aaron Boone, but leaving Cam Schlittler in for so long last night rocked. (Shoutout to Dave Roberts for letting Yoshinobu Yamamoto throw 200 pitches, too. That also rocked, and it’s unfortunate that it’ll get brought up when Yoshinobu Yamamoto has his next Tommy John Surgery. The Dodgers aren’t hurting pitchers by overusing them in playoff games. They’re hurting pitchers in way more ways than that.) Also, holy Schlitt. What a game. We saw great starts this week, but doing that when the bullpen’s thinned out on its third game in three days is different from doing it in Game 1 with all your team’s guns at your back.
Last REACTIONS (AL Central Championship Series, we could never forget you):
Good for Tarik Skubal, who seems like a good guy. After he got so sad about David Fry hitting himself in the face, I kept thinking about this picture of Skubal with Sarah Langs and Jason Benetti. It’s just a picture, but something gets to me about baseball’s greatest current ace, a bulldog on the mound, chopping it up with a reporter with ALS and his team’s play-by-play guy who has Cerebral Palsy. I hope that isn’t condescending towards Langs and Benetti, two especially cool people in baseball media. What stands out about the picture is how natural and not condescending Skubal looks. I don’t know the first thing about his relationship with Benetti or Langs. But in that picture, it looks like they and Skubal are friends. Baseball is the best.
It was sad in Game 1 that José Ramírez didn’t score in the ninth, but I do think it’s fair that the universe capped the Guardians at only one run per game on ground balls to the pitcher. It was sad in Game 3 that Ramírez got caught trying to grab second base. It’s easy to overdo the “don’t run yourself out of the inning” thing—as long as it’s before the ninth inning, that extra base does mean something even if the runner’s not the tying run—but it stung. We need Ramírez in a World Series in the next couple years. Preferably against the Dodgers or another really good, really expensive team (the Mets if they ever figure their shit out). We need to see a team like that try to deal with José Ramírez and a bunch of raccoons in a trench coat.
Division Series THOUGHTS (I almost forgot again, wow there’s more baseball coming up this is awesome):
I’m assuming the Tigers start Skubal in Game 2, which is good because he played college ball at Seattle, so him starting his game in Detroit would make the broadcast less fun. It’s weird how the Tigers aren’t more likable going into that series. Javy Báez? Cool-ass dude. Skubal? Everything we want our men to be. If they beat the Mariners? That’s a crime against the sport and they should be moved to Windsor to send a message.
Most of this, of course, is Cal Raleigh, and a quick note on him: I didn’t know that the Pho Kit shirt was a whole-team batting practice thing. Did it start with him? Is he a pun guy? Is a he a one single pun guy? Is that pun “Pho Kit”? The shirt fits Seattle well. Seattle is a pho city the same way Detroit is rapidly becoming a city of boneless chicken wings.
The Blue Jays should get me more fired up, and I think they would were Vlad Guerrero Jr. still somewhat new. Maybe this is that Yankees impotence again, but I’m having trouble getting fired up about the Blue Jays. I do want them to win, but if someone throws a full beer can at an outfielder like I think they did in the Jose Bautista game (might have been a different one, maybe one against the Orioles), I might pass. I know it’s a double standard. If a Yankee fan did that, I’d ask what else they were expected to do. I want my Blue Jays fans to be drunk but non-violent. That’s what I ask of Canadians at sporting events. Unless it’s a Leafs game, in which case I want them to be drunk and whiny and visibly terrified of what’s to come even if they deny the terror which consumes them internally and floods from every pore. Or a Canadiens game, I guess, but Montreal’s only half-Canada. Detroit is getting to be almost as Canadian as Montreal. (I don’t know why I’m on an anti-Detroit kick today. I like Detroit a lot. What have Cal Raleigh and José Ramírez done to me??)
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