Poor Glavine. Poor us. That was baseball like it oughta be — two teams playing hard for big stakes, and one mistake cost us. Well, two mistakes — one of organization and one of execution. I felt for TEM. Watching him fumbling for that ball snapped me back to Keith Hernandez crawling in the mud in '88, a man trapped in a nightmare. Watching Looper I was a fan trapped in a nightmare, watching a closer who's only effective when guys are standing on one side of the plate.
Keeping one eye on the game at work, I wrote down scrawled notes on the back of a piece of paper. Some excerpts:
g butterfingered on dp, must pitch to utley. little flare by bell on 0-2 pitch, two runs. fuck! … reyes somehow out on high chopper to 3B bag. 3 pitches on 2 outs after glavine gassed. wtf, kaz? … coulda been leadoff single, score on double, double, 2-0 with beltran on 2nd, no out. instead it just sucks. … good inning by glav. 3-2 on vd — Ks. what was he looking for? great pitch on difelice … YES, TRIPLE! kaz RBI groundout. get run, kills a little mo. … goodness, victor. we got a call! TRAP! glavine? 3-2 on pratt? 124 pitches! YOW! 126 total. great performance by glavine. … reyes 3-1. wow. very close on 3-2. great pitch. he's learning. damn. no help from the sun. kaz will lead off. … FUCKING LOOPER! still, howard's gonna get a lot of those. we're toast. looper cannot get lefties! goddamn michael fucker. um, looper can't get lefties out. rollins! fuck! we cannot keep going w a closer who can't get lefties out. … c'mon kaz! we're ready to love you! 102 mph? really? he's missing. good eye, kaz. YES! KAZ! c'mon carlos, don't try to do too much. goddamn it! cliff. ugh. c'mon dw. oh boy. 0-2. great pitch! yes, yr out.
It's possible I doomed us by not having a big enough piece of paper — I was pretty much out of space as Wright came to the plate. Apologies.
Dunno what I could really add to my play-by-play. We didn't find the handle and we lost. Simple as that. Can we survive Florida, Atlanta and St. Louis? The stats would say no, the schedule would say no, the team's crazy quilt of Ws and Ls and highs and lows would say…who knows. I can't get the handle on that any more than TEM could. I suppose there's a reason they play 'em.
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