CHICAGO — You wait a whole baseball lifetime to simply get to a World Series — all the games and years and indignities — and then you are winning 6-0 early in a pennant clincher.
“What you feel is, ‘Why the hell is it only the third inning? Let’s hurry up and get to the ninth,’ ” Joe Torre said.
Few men on the planet understood what Terry Collins was experiencing Wednesday night at Wrigley Field better than Torre, there as MLB’s chief baseball officer.
For Torre used to dread even watching the postseason. Inevitably, a list of those who played the most games without reaching the Fall Classic would be mentioned, and there was his mug. Between playing and managing, Torre had 4,110 games without ever making the World Series — the equivalent of more than 25 162-game seasons.
He had been fired as manager by the only teams for whom he had ever played — the Braves, Mets and Cardinals — and assumed his career was over, no title chances. Then the Yankees came along in 1996, his dream team in a dream season, and suddenly he was winning ALCS Game 5 6-0 at Camden Yards after three innings, a chance to clinch the AL pennant.
Now, here was Collins, baseball lifer. He couldn’t make it to the majors as a player, emotionally bombed out as manager of the Astros and Angels. He managed in Japan, managed China’s WBC team, coached for the Rays, worked in the Dodgers and Mets minor league system and 11 years after his last managerial stint — assuming, like Torre, there was no next chance — he got the rebuilding Mets.
The oldest skipper in the game, at 66, Collins had the ninth-most games managed without even reaching the playoffs before this October — the second most since the playoffs first expanded in 1969.
Then suddenly, it is the second inning of NLCS Game 4, and he is up 6-0 with a chance to sweep.
“Yeah, I was counting outs,” Collins said.
Torre admitted fighting the same emotion, fighting to keep the thoughts of his brother, Rocco, who died that summer, out of his head, fighting not to think of his brother, Frank, who needed a heart transplant, fighting to manage the pennant clincher he would win 6-4.
“It’s what you wait your whole life for, and then there it is,” Torre said.
Collins lost his 95-year-old father, Bud, in spring training, lost the man who taught him the game, the man who convinced Collins not to quit early on when opportunity seemed like it would never come. NLCS Game 4 was played on what would have been Collins’ parents’ 73rd wedding anniversary; his mom in his mind, too, because she had written the fake sick note in 1960 so Collins could get out of school to watch the Pirates and Yankees play in the World Series.
“Holy crap, now I’m in it,” Collins said.
Collins stuck with it and got this: A rotation of relentless excellence. An historic postseason from Daniel Murphy. A roster that responded to his passion, trust and communication skills.
He got an NLCS in which the Mets never trailed — a sweep completed with an 8-3 triumph. So much talk of the Cubs’ curse and, yes, Chicago remains without a title since 1908. But that is a collective burden for organization, players, fans, city. Collins carried his burden solo.
“It was worth the wait and all the years,” Collins said.
Collins was called a “minor league grunt” by Cubs manager Joe Maddon, who was the same playing against Collins, and who served on Collins’ staff with the Angels.
Maddon hung outside the interview room to congratulate Collins with a hug, with praise for how terrific the team was and how great he had managed, and this advice for the World Series: “Kick ass.” Yep, Terry Collins gets to kick ass in the World Series.
“I know how hard he worked for this,” Maddon said.
Inside the game, Collins worked to focus. He needed to remove Yoenis Cespedes with a bum shoulder in the second. His huge decision came in the fifth, two on, two out, the Cubs with a chance to blast right back into the game, and — in Collins’ eyes — Steven Matz elevating his pitches. Collins called on Bartolo Colon, who struck out Kris Bryant. Golden touch.
He counted outs, 12, nine, six, three — that big early lead holding.
Finally, there was no more waiting, no more outs. Jeurys Familia fanned Dexter Fowler. Collins, baseball lifer, got to hug his coaches, join an on-field celebration a career in the making.
“I never really felt like I belonged until I got to a World Series,” Torre said.
An hour after the game, a few hundred Mets fans left at Wrigley chanted, “Terry Collins, Terry Collins.” He finally belonged. Terry Collins was, at last, a Fall Classic.
