Thursday, September 29, 2011

The Day After


Mere words cannot convey what occurred last night.

My spine and my skull have been tingling all day and I've been devouring all the recaps, reflections, and write-ups I could find but nobody has accurately described what went down last night. The eminent baseball penman these days, Joe Posnanski, wrote a fine piece and yet it disappointed me until I realized that all of the articles I was reading were disappointing. The shockwaves of sublime joy and amazement shook up the best baseball scribes so much that they were rendered speechless. Twitter was fun:

"Holy fuckity fuck fuck. That's all I got"
- Kevin Goldstein(@kevin_goldstein)

"Khhoihdfslj sjfslkjf fjsfs;ljsdf chjkabdskjfh boop de doop. #mlb"
"The night has reduced me to gibberish"
- Dayn Perry (@daynperry)

The Tampa Bay Rays completed the biggest comeback in baseball history with perhaps the most exciting and unbelievable single game in baseball history. And it all occurred while three other meaningful games intertwined with it to create arguably the most amazing evening in baseball history.

I've actually been keeping a notebook of baseball thoughts for the past couple months and during the action last night I jotted that there was a stunning symmetry to it all. The four games we were all focusing on seemed eerily similar (featuring 2 first place beasts, 2 last place spoilers, 2 desperate failures, and 2 history chasers) and around the 6th inning in each game the scores were: 7-0, 7-0, 3-2, 3-2. The symmetry didn't last, though; in fact, the very bounds of rational existence came undone. In so many of the pieces I've read today the authors have cited the mind-boggling mathematical odds against any of this happening: the odds that the Rays would ever come back from a 9-game deficit in September, odds that the Red Sox would lose with 2 outs in the 9th, odds that the Rays would win when down 7-0 in the 8th inning or when they were down to their final strike in the bottom of the 9th.

The odds of all of that happening were essentially zero or something like 0.00000014 meaning "hell no it'll never happen." And then it happened. And it all seemed to happen at once. All of it unfolded in a mesmerizing sequence that left the global baseball community in breathless rapture.

A miracle happened last night.

4 comments:

  1. PQ, I can't take this journey with you, but I see that one of my other blogging friends is also on this subject, and I think you might like to join the conversation which I'm sure is soon to ensue there. Here's the link.

    Personally, I'll wait till you guys are back on books or movies.

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  2. Thanks for commenting, I'll definitely check that blog out.

    I've been trying unsuccessfully to explain to my girlfriend how huge Wednesday's events were but she "can't take that journey" with me either. Totally understandable.

    I jump through some pretty distinct flavors on this site, maybe to its own detriment, but I certainly hold nothing against readers who don't share all of the same tastes.

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  3. No, I don't think it's to the blog's detriment. I think in a way it shows how Finnegans Wake fits into the real world.

    Thanks for taking my advice and taking the leap over to Adrian's blog. I think discussing the pronunciation of buoy was probably getting a bit old for him...

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  4. It's a shame I missed it, the Rays are my local team now. Rocco and I pet sting-rays last week.

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