Swing-Dancing with the Rangers, October 20, 2010

Man, I need to stop going to bed. I'm missing all this good stuff.

Baseball games are long and slow. It's the truth. That perception is only sharpened when it's football season, when one is used to watching sports in which plays go a lot faster and there is a terminal clock dictating just how long these proceedings can last.

I get it that Cliff Lee is pretty awesome. I watched most of Game Three Sunday night, when he continued his ridiculous Bob Gibson/Sandy Koufax impression by improving to 7-o lifetime in the postseason, with an ERA in the low 1.00's, with his third 10-strikeout game this season. But no one was that surprised. After all, Lee came in with that insane postseason resume, some of it (two wins in the '09 World Series as a member of the Phillies) coming against the Yankees, and the unflappable man continues to toss. Easy. 2-1 ALCS lead for the Rangers, behind their ace.

I coulda told you all that just watching through the sixth or seventh inning. It was 2-0 when I went to bed. I saw Josh Hamilton in the first inning, putting a relaxed, easy swing on an Andy Pettite cutter, still somehow sending it 320 feet into the right field stands. I saw Pettite toughen up after that, looking like a guy who is the all-time leader in postseason wins. But Lee kept sending the Yankees hitters away like an angry man hanging up instantaneously on telemarketers.

But, in the ninth inning, the Rangers teed off against the Yankee bullpen (it wasn't a save situation, so Mariano Rivera wasn't brought in), scoring six times to make it an 8-0 game instead of a 2-0 game. Apparently, fans left the glorious new Yankee Stadium in droves. I wouldn't know. I was asleep.

So, last night, I watched two and a quarter hours of baseball, of the pivotal Game Four, the one the Yankees had to win. I saw A.J. Burnett, the Yanks' much-maligned fourth starter, who had a 10-15 record this year, pitch far better than anyone could have anticipated. He gave up two runs (without allowing a ball out of the infield) in five innings. I saw Rangers' right-hander Tommy Hunter give up a home run to Robinson Cano (on a ball that Rangers' right-fielder Nelson Cruz complained that a fan had reached over the wall and interfered with--my diagnosis? The ball was out of the park. I don't think Cruz gets that ball even if the stadium is completely empty. A fan did grab his glove, but it was after the ball had landed. The hands 'in his way' were ones trying to catch a baseball falling at them from 315 feet away.) I saw Lance Berkman, two batters later, lose a home run to instant replay umpire review, on a bomb that just barely faded foul down the right field line.

I saw Derek Jeter throw all the crap about a .270 season out the window by breaking some more postseason records, dropping a double, a triple, and a run-scored onto his already illustrious career resume. I saw a fan down the left field line bounce a foul ball off his fingertips, thus knocking the ball out of the way of Yankees' left fielder Brett Gardner, who had a clear shot. Of course, this brought up mention of the hapless Cubs' fan Steve Bartman.

But, when I went to bed, I had seen four-and-a-half innings. Burnett was doing pretty well. The Yanks had a 3-2 lead. Hunter had been chased. Yet I watched from 8:00-10:15! But that was all I saw, because, during their innings of trouble, Burnett and especially Hunter seemed to go about two minutes between pitches. Baseball can be slow. Have I said that yet?

Well, after I went to bed, Yankee first baseman Mark Texeira blew his right hamstring running to first, A.J. Burnett intentionally walked a left-handed Ranger to bring up right-handed Bengie Molina, and surrendered a back-breaking three-run homer on the next pitch. Josh Hamilton hit a home run later. Josh Hamilton hit a home run later. Sorry, did I just say that twice? Well, it's the truth. Hamilton hit homers in the seventh and ninth innings against a Yankee bullpen looking worse and worse by the day (literally). Two batters after Hamilton's second drive, Nelson Cruz sent a missile into the second deck in nearly-empty Yankee Stadium, making it 10-3, and four home runs, all in favor of the Rangers.

So, allow me to continue my metaphor from the title of this post. Everyone's invited to the parties, they start late and they end later, they can be kinda slow, but, once mere mortals have gone to bed, they open up the dance floor, and the guys from Texas hit it. Then Hamilton, Cruz, Molina, and their buddies Michael Young, Vladimir Guerrero, and Elvis Andrus clap their hands, stomp their feet, and ultimately dance around like kings of the world, who, along with party security, can't seem to do a thing about it. Oh, and there's the odd VIP appearance by Cliff Lee, the biggest party crasher of them all.

It's 3-1 Rangers in the ALCS. Yanks' ace C.C. Sabathia pitches tonight to try and save his team's season. Texeira is done for the year.

Walking with Giants
Another inexcusable pun, but in the other, equally-dramatic, but less-watched, LCS, the San Francisco Giants took a 2-1 lead in the first game Bay-side with a two-out uprising in the fourth against proven postseason starter Cole Hamels of the Phillies. High-riding folk hero Cody Ross had the first RBI hit. Aubrey Huff had the second. An RBI groundout the next inning added a third run, and so it went, 3-0 Giants. That's the way it would end. Young right-hander Matt Cain shut down the Phillies for seven innings, the bullpen did the rest, and almost no one noticed a guy named Barry Bonds sitting in the front row, because the Giants on the field are far more interesting and far less controversial.