The best pitchers in baseball were going to pitch on the same day! In the same place! Walking distance from my home! On a day I didn’t have to work! This dream confluence would give me a chance to watch reigning Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal, always a delight, and my first in-person look at Pirates ace Paul Skenes. Skenes had pitched in Detroit last year—also in the second game of a doubleheader that began with a Skubal start—but I’d missed it because I was in New York at company meetings for my (dumb) job and only caught a few minutes when Jasper gave us breaks from looking at his impressive charts.
Some fans complained that the two aces would not start in the same game on Thursday, though as someone with plans to attend both, this didn’t especially bother me. What did annoy me was it being a split doubleheader: I’d have to buy separate tickets, and leave and come back. A small price to pay, I reasoned, for what was sure to be the greatest day of my baseball-watching life. Around 12:30, the Tigers announced that the 1:10 first game would begin in a rain delay. A slightly larger but still small price to pay, I reasoned, for what was sure to be the greatest day of my baseball-watching life. I waited out the delay at home, enjoying the broadcast’s interstitial highlight reel of new Pirates manager and former Tiger Don Kelly.
When the long-awaited Skubal-Skenes day (the greatest of my life) finally began, at the new first pitch time of 1:50, it was hard not to feel completely owned. The rain was now much heavier than it had been at 1:10, and it was clearly making things hard for Skubal, who walked three batters. “My hat is literally leaking water in front of my face as I’m pitching,” he said afterward. “Why didn’t we just wait? That’s kind of what I’m thinking.” In his first 14 starts of the season, Skubal had walked nine batters total. Each walk this afternoon felt like he had given up a three-run bomb. Wet and cold in the pouring rain, I grew miserable as the third and fourth batters he faced drew back-to-back walks. The illegitimacy of this game and pitching performance began to rankle me. Oh, I’m SO sure, I’m sooooo sure that “Alexander Canario” is working a walk against Tarik Skubal. One might tell me to “chill out” on account of “the Tigers ultimately winning the game 9-2.” But counting his walks, we basically lost 11-9. I will never chill out.
Once I’d left the ballpark, charged my phone, dried my hair, stewed over Alexander Canario’s first-inning walk for 40 minutes, and returned for Game 2 at 6:10, the weather had cleared up. All sun, blue sky. A comfortable breeze sailed in from left field. Naturally, this incensed me. Where Innocent Tarik had toiled thanklessly in the rain, now Special Skenes would enjoy perfect, beautiful conditions, with the help of pitcher-friendly shadows—help he hardly needed. The Pirates tagged the Tigers opener for four runs early, and the game felt over fast. Four runs constituted shocking run support for Skenes, whose 4-6 record belies his sub-2 ERA. Of course! Of course the Tigers win would be marred by terrible weather, and the gorgeous evening weather would be marred by a Tigers loss. Women really can’t have it all.
The universe had teased me with convenient circumstances only to smite me down. Rather than put on a daylong show of dominance, neither ace pitched particularly well by their respective standards. Skenes walked five batters and gave up two runs; the Tigers fought enough at the plate to foreclose the indignity of a complete-game shutout. Just my luck: a loss without even an awe-inspiring Skenes start at which to grudgingly tip my cap. My frown softened when Tigers third baseman Colt Keith hit a baffling, game-tying home run that looked weird off the bat and even more improbable on replay. A win here could salvage the day. As the Pirates offense made quick outs, I was swept up in Tigermentum. We were going to win! I even came up with the perfect post-sweep pity compliment I could offer my poor Pirates fan colleague Sean: “Nick Gonzales plays a nice second base.”
Walk-off heroics would have to wait. Battling rain, Pirates closer Dennis Santana had recorded the first out of the bottom of the ninth and had a second batter in a 1-2 count when the crew chief rushed in to stop the game and the grounds crew rolled the giant tarp onto the field a little before 9 p.m. Kelly got in the crew chief's face, and he had a point: A cartoonishly dark cloud had hovered over the field for at least the last 20 minutes, and the rain had re-started in the top of the ninth. Even the smallest amount of foresight would have saved his closer. Warned of lightning in the area, the fans packed themselves into the concourse. It was now raining so hard I didn’t want to walk home in it. And I’d always harbored a dream of being one of those 30 stragglers who witnesses a rain-delayed, midnight walk-off. Many more than 30 people had done the same calculus.
We rejoiced at the sight of brooms on the field, sweeping aside the water in foul territory. The rain stopped. The tarp came off! The game would resume at 10:05. But two feeble at-bats meant our magic late-night walk-off would have to wait until extras. A very long time. In the top of the 10th, Ke'Bryan Hayes singled to score Manfred Man Tommy Pham, whose terrible slide forced a play at the plate. The Tigers challenged the safe call, and the video replay convinced this restless crowd that Pham was out. To their dismay, the call stood. The ambient anger rose to meet mine. Tigers manager A.J. Hinch, who never gets ejected, was ejected for arguing the replay review result. He would ultimately be one of several people there whose night was cut short. Earlier, security had escorted out some rascally looking teen in a Pirates jersey (but Tigers hat?) for arguing with Santana above the bullpen. In the top of the 10th, the umps booted three fans behind home plate for beefing with Tommy Pham. There but for the grace of God (and my seats being 400 feet away) went I. At this point, I was certainly tired and cranky enough to get into it with Tommy Pham.
My fellow cranky remaining diehards broke into “Ump, you suck” chants, which I didn’t even have the energy for, in my 10th hour at this stupid ballpark. Coincidentally, they had continued selling beer during the ninth-inning rain delay. The Tigers kept getting singled to death by a bunch of jokers in extras and lost 8-4. I reached home at a quarter to 11. It would take me another three hours to calm down and fall asleep. And then I had to come to work today, where my awful editor Barry made me relive this miserable day for YOUR entertainment. Ugh!!!!
