Both Texas teams went down in their deciding divisional playoff games—the Houston Astros to the Kansas City Royals, 7–2, and the Rangers to the Blue Jays, 6–3. The winners move along to their league championship playoffs, later this week, and the winners there meet in the World Series, starting on October 27th. Last night’s games, though locally painful and familiar—not including Wild Card games, the Rangers are 1–2, in post-season series-clinching finales, and the Astros are 1–3—would have rated as lowercase news but for the seventh inning at Rogers Centre (formerly known as the SkyDome) in Toronto, which will stand as one of the strangest runs of events in the annals. In the top half, with the score tied 2–2, and two outs and a Ranger base-runner on third, Toronto catcher Russell Martin made a routine flip back to his pitcher, only to see the ball ricochet off the upheld bat of the Rangers’ Shin-Soo Choo, innocently standing in the batter’s box. The ball trickled weakly toward third, whereupon the Ranger base runner, Rougned Odor—I love to write it—scurried home with the go-ahead run. The play was lengthily umped and viewed but stood up—not an injustice but an irreversible little unfairness, a bad joke. I’ve been watching baseball since 1930 and have never seen a catcher’s throw-back nick the batter’s bat or person. Apparently, neither had anyone on the field or in the Fox Sports 1 booth.
Irreversible until reversed by what came next. Elvis Andrus, the Texas shortstop, allowed the ball to slip out of his glove on an easy chance, putting a Blue Jay runner aboard. On the next play, first baseman Mitch Moreland, attempting a force, threw poorly to second, where Andrus could not hold the ball—E Moreland. The next batter, Ryan Goins, bunted down the third-base side, where third baseman Adrian Beltre grabbed it up and threw to third in plenty of time for the force, except that Andrus, covering the base as the result of a defensive shift, dropped the ball—E again: Andrus. With one out, Josh Donaldson nudged a little bloop, barely beyond the reach of second baseman Odor, and the score was tied. And here the next Jays batter, José Bautista, facing reliever Sam Dyson, rocketed his third pitch deep into the left-field seats, for three runs, putting the game beyond reach and his teammates and the fans into ecstasies. I had never seen a Toronto fan throw even a kernel of popcorn onto the field until the little shower of Labatt beer cans that came down after the nicked-bat decision, but I forgave them. No beer cans this time, but there could have been some car keys.
This was a crazy glorious ballgame, very hard on the losers—Rougned, look up Bill Buckner—and almost too much for everyone; the players of both teams twice emptied the benches. I have so far resisted writing “the baseball gods” in here but now give up. The baseball gods don’t toy with the players, but they enjoy writing tough little S.A.T.s on the odd evening. The Blue Jays aced theirs.
