This, citizens, is why you put your kids into youth sports and then spent all those extra hours yelling at other parents' children. This is why you bought all those unnecessary rounds at the tavern and needed to leave your car behind to get home. This is why you blocked out all those Sundays and didn't attend family gatherings because there were games into which you needed to immerse yourselves. All for this, a day with three win-or-go-golfing games in succession.
True, it wasn't quite what we all hoped for, the rarefied Agony Grand Slam when every series goes the distance, and true, a three-game series rather than the more ideal best-of-seven rather cheapens the effect, but baseball did its damnedest. It produced delightfully taut shows in Cleveland, Chicago, and New York. All were constructed similarly, in the all-hands-on-deck, all-ideas-in-play style that separates the postseason from some Tuesday night in July. The losers in Game 1 rose to fight back in Game 2, and did so in grandest style. Even the 26 pitching changes that begin with the stultifying imagery of old people walking slowly to remove young people and insert new young people were fraught with possibilities for brilliance (Mason Miller) or disaster (Garrett Whitlock), and made the 11 hours and 57 minutes of baseball sail by, relatively speaking.
The Reds did their damnedest, taking an early 2-0 lead in Los Angeles, but the re-Dodgered Dodgers, who finally look like the team that spent $350 million on humans, brought their best wares to market in an 8-4 win that advanced them to a best-of-five series that begins Saturday in Philadelphia. The Reds were the surprise neighbor who turned up at the party with someone else's invitation (hello, Mets) and did what they could to expose the Dodgers' cringey bullpen, but seventh-place teams masquerading as sixth-place teams don't keep the mask on long.
But the other three games were certifiably delightful, even if you are Comrade Anantharanam, who nailguns her heart to her forehead with every Tigers pitch. The Guardians, who had been abject at the plate for 16 consecutive innings, reaching the outfield rarely and ineffectually in a conga line to and from the dugout, suddenly burst into form off Detroit's fourth and fifth pitchers. Troy Melton? You bet he was. Brant Hurter? You bet he did.
First, Brayan Rocchio, who miraculously plays a full schedule despite still being at his original birth weight, powered an out-of-context homer to right to give Cleveland a 2-1 lead and startle the crowd at Mostly Regressive Field out of its torpor, and then two doubles, a free pass, and a three-run homer by the spectacularly underpowered Bo Naylor blew up a game that felt the entire time like Detroit's to put away. It also helped that Cleveland started outfielder Chase DeLauter, who had never played a major league game before and mangled his first chance in the field, because we got to see his parents celebrate his every ensuing triumph from their much-worse-than-they-should-have-been seats. Bathos, pathos, and a guy named Petey Halpin—how can you not love the Guards? Well, if you are Comrade Anantharanam, for one.
Padres-Cubs was a simpler matter, powered as it was by Manny Machado's fifth-inning two-run homer, and then a hilarious three-inning turn in which first Miller and then Robert Suarez dared the Cubs to figure out whether the next pitcher was going to be in the high 80s with nasty movement or the low 100s with competitive lethality. Hint: they couldn't. Whatever the West Sacramento A's were able to get from the Padres to convince them to trade Miller, they were still swindled pantsless.
Red Sox–Yankees was the capper, even if like so many others you are sick of the overblown rivalry and the mechanical smugness of each fan base. The Yankees, who had sent Nick Turturro screaming into his phone the night before about pulling Max Fried and not being able to get a hit with the bases loaded and nobody out in the ninth, avenged their profligacy by taking a 2-0 lead on a Ben Rice homer in the first, giving it back, retaking it on an Aaron Judge RBI single in the fifth, then giving it back again.
The game remained tied at three into the bottom of the eighth until a two-out walk to Jazz Chisholm and a line single to right by Beefy Freddie Mercury—err, Austin Wells—that scored Chisholm with a glorious head-first dive that barely beat Carlos Narvaez's sweep tag. Both teams having averted ignominy by winning a game, they now tempt it again in yet another made-for-a-tedious-movie moment today, one that if the galactic pixies are on their jobs for a change will last 16 innings and five hours.
In fact, let all the games go five hours. Let Thursday be an emotional torture rack for everyone. Let the agony commence. With all the agonies we have been forced to endure this year, at least one should make us happy. Well, less miserable, anyway.
