Every pro sport gets better in the playoffs. The intensity may jump most in the NBA, where defense morphs from optional to mandatory. In the NFL, adrenaline turns everyone’s speed-off-the-ball up a click. In the NHL, shots blocked by diving bodies go from admired to expected.
But baseball is transformed.
Why?
First, the facts. For 10 days — with comebacks, tape-measure home runs, leg-breaking slides, bench-clearing feuds, smart unorthodox managing and scads of rookie stars — the first wave of MLB’s postseason has been cresting. This week, it hit shore with a glorious crash. On Tuesday, generations of fans contorted their faces in glee as the Cubs won a postseason series for the (blank) time in the 101-year history of Wrigley Field. Answer: First. As in, never ever.
Then came Thursday in Toronto. America’s fans screamed, smacked their heads, laughed and then finally took a step back in respect; many, and not just baseball fanatics, said the Blue Jays’ 6-3 win in Game 5 over Texas was the most emotionally intense sports event they had ever seen.
Jose Bautista throws his bat up in the air after he hits a three-run home run in the seventh inning of Game 5 of the ALDS against the Texas Rangers. (Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images) Bautista delivers a bat flip for the ages and the Blue Jays move on
Baseball?
What happened at Rogers Centre in the seventh inning illustrates why summer and autumn baseball are utterly different experiences. If this game had been played in July, it would have been lucky to get 30 seconds on “SportsCenter.” After all, what was so rare or spectacular?
The Rangers took a 3-2 lead in the top of the inning when a runner scored from third because the Blue Jays catcher carelessly tossed the ball back toward the mound but hit the batter in the hand with the throw instead. That has been a “live ball” since John McGraw. Run counts.
In the bottom half, Texas made three errors in a row, all involving Elvis Andrus, who wished he could have left the building. Then a blooper fell that should have been caught. Give a team seven outs, somebody will hit a three-run bomb. Jose Bautista did. Like I said: 30 seconds.
In July, you say “cool game” and go home. In October, you save the scorecard for your casket.
That inning took 53 minutes, every one riveting. Civil Canadians bombarded the field, and lower-deck fans, with a million Labatt cans, eh — first in anger at the Texas run, then in joy. Benches cleared twice. The umps had five conferences. And Bautista flipped his bat. Into the 500 Level.
The glee of Houston’s Colby Rasmus and George Springer during Game 4 of the ALDS was short-lived as Kansas City ended up advancing. (Patric Schneider/AP) So what’s the difference between July and October? Tension, mounting tension over a long time, then ecstatic release.
Every sport pushes these buttons. But playoff baseball taps into them the best. Time is on baseball’s side, at least in the postseason. The Super Bowl takes four hours, most of it commercials and music Don Shula remembers. The Rangers-Blue Jays series took five games and seven days, with barely any emotional pause between games: That’s 168 hours of anticipation.
Baseball combines the most-games-in-the-fewest-days factor, which gives a building sense of elation or panic, with individual games that twist slowly enough to torment but resolve themselves in explosions that can change everything in a blink. In other sports, you score one goal or basket at a time. A statistically significant lead takes time to disappear. In MLB, it just vaporizes. On Tuesday, the Cardinals had a 2-0 lead and a 68 percent chance to win; the Cubs manager let his pitcher hit for himself with two on, two out. He singled. Next pitch, three-run homer. Cubs: 73 percent chance to win. That was the second inning! Wait for the fourth quarter? Not baseball. You’re never safe.
Every series also has a nerve-shredding narrative. The Rangers led by two games, helped by questionable bullpen strategy in the eighth inning of an excruciating 14-inning loss. That put Blue Jays fans on a five-day high wire, staring down at elimination. Bautista’s homer turned all those days of “We’re probably dead” into “WE JUST KILLED ’EM.”
Baseball has a unique relationship with time. Everyone notes that it’s the only team sport without a clock. That has implications. Counting by minutes and seconds can make a game feel smaller, shrinking what’s possible as the clock runs down. Counting by outs expands imagination. What can be overcome by mustering sufficient defiance, by rousing a crowd? Let’s find out.
For example, on Monday night in Houston, the young Astros got back-to-back homers from Carlos Correa, 21, and Colby Rasmus to eliminate the defending AL champion Royals, 6-2 — or at least that’s what the governor of Texas thought. He tweeted his (premature) congratulations to the Astros and said he hoped they would meet the Rangers (leading their series, too) in the ALCS.
As that tweet appeared, the Royals’ odds of winning that game, much less the whole series, dropped to 2 percent. Then the Kansas City eighth inning began with a single (odds of winning now 6 percent), a single (10), a single (18), a single (30) and another single (45) — five in a row, most with seeing eyes. The Astros didn’t need math degrees from MIT to sense those changing odds tightening like a noose.
That’s why, as the next Royal chopped a grounder up the middle, both the Astros pitcher and shortstop barely touched — and deflected — what should have been a double play. As the ball escaped to center field, two runs scored. Those sickly 2 percent odds of a win? Now 75 percent.
You can call the governor all you want, but that execution wasn’t going to get stayed.
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Baseball fans, like everyone in Toronto on Wednesday, don’t just feel the tension of a five-game series. The playoffs come on top of a pennant race and perhaps a wild-card game. Why are nerves raw? Why, in this one series, did Mike Napoli, Rougned Odor and Josh Donaldson all perpetrate takeout slides more nasty than Chase Utley’s? And why did 49,834 often too-polite Canadian fans go nuts, standing and roaring continuously for more than an hour?
Baseball, the postseason version, did it to ’em.
Almost all the elements that enhance baseball intensity in the playoffs also exist in the NFL, NBA and NHL. But baseball just does tension better, always has. It turns the screws more slowly within one game, yet transforms games with “big innings” more suddenly. Then it rushes another crisis in your face the next day.
Now the stakes and the pressure just get higher. Starting this weekend, two pennants will be at stake in seven-game series, possibly requiring nine days — more time for more tension.
How long can baseball make you wait?
At the corner of Addison and Clark streets in Chicago, there’s a homely old park, made beautiful by ivy, brick and memories. It has waited 101 years, in vain. So long as the Cubs are still playing, think of Wrigley Field as the symbol of a whole sport that both loves and despises these long waits and deferred gratification.
And think of just how that wait might end.
