I felt that way when the Sunday game started at 5 p.m. and still felt that way five hours and 2.5 martinis later when the Angels scratched out a run in the 12th inning and made it stand up in spite of some horrendous fielding.
So Monday night with John Lackey pitching, I was sure they would come back to the Rally Monkey in Anaheim for the final game, even when the Angels were down 2-0 in the eighth inning. And they did.
They tied the score and put the winning run on third base with one out in the ninth, then botched a highly dubious suicide squeeze — and started their winter vacation early.
They looked bad overall in this series — fielding and base running atrociously and leaving clusters of men on base in virtually every inning. But some outstanding pitching certainly made it interesting.
The Angels rented Mark Teixeira to beat Boston and win a World Series. It didn’t work out that way so he will probably carry his bat to a higher rent district next year and the Angels will be looking for another franchise player. And we will read about it over the winter and debate it and await spring training impatiently while the country — and quite likely the world — self destructs.
So you say that sweating out a baseball team under such circumstances is an inexcusable glorification of piffle? Not at all. It’s a rock of sanity in a world gone mad. The distance from the pitcher’s mound to home plate hasn’t changed in 150 years. You can depend on it. How many other things can you say that about today?
I once wrote an essay called “The Ultimate Therapy” whose thesis was the importance of investing real caring and attention in people, places and games of absolutely no importance in the great scheme of things.
