When Bobby Thomson hit his "Shot Heard 'Round the World" to win the 1951 National League pennant for the New York Giants, legendary Washington Post sports columnist Shirley Povich wrote that "Hollywood's most imaginative writers on an opium jag could not have scripted a more improbable windup of the season."
Were he still at his typewriter, Mr. Povich might have said of this year's World Series Game 3, "The nerdiest of all of the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library's rule book geeks could never have drained the glory out of a World Series game victory more completely than did umpiring crew chief John Hirschbeck, third base umpire Jim Joyce, and home plate umpire Dana DeMuth Saturday night."
In the 1946 World Series between the Cardinals and the Red Sox, St. Louis manager Eddie Dyer tried to contain the bat of Ted Williams by radically realigning his infielders to blanket the first base side of the field with what became known as the "Williams shift." Known for his nearly superhuman control of the bat, Williams could easily have hit to the opposite field. Believing that this would degrade the legitimacy of his hits, Williams chose instead not to adjust his swing. That same year in boxing, Billy Conn gave away a sure victory on points and the heavyweight title because, to him, the only victory over Joe Louis could be by knockout. By disappointing contrast, the Cardinals won Game 3 of this year's World Series not on a dramatic home run, not a brilliant pitching performance and not a play in the field that defied belief. They won instead by the umpiring team awarding them the walk-off, game-winning run on a technical call that Red Sox third baseman Will Middlebrooks obstructed the base path as the Cardinals' Allen Craig ran for home after a wild throw.
A postseason game had never ended on a technical call. Within five minutes, 110,238 tweets were sent, more than for any other event of postseason baseball this year, according to an article in Forbes Magazine by Maury Brown.
Since then, the baseball community hasn't rested. Fans have argued. Officials and writers have defended the call. Statisticians, or more accurately, stat-obsessed fans, have analyzed the call's impact in the grand scheme of the Series.
The play was a fluke. Craig knocked over Middlebrooks as he slid into third base on a steal. Catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia's throw was wild. When Craig saw that Middlebrooks didn't have the ball, he took off for home but tripped over Middlebrooks, who dove for the wild throw and lay completely flat on the dirt, genuinely unable to get out of Craig's base path. Craig was thrown out at home but called safe due to Middlebrooks' unintentional obstruction.
In an article titled "Call of the Century: Cardinals Win on Obstruction," USA Today writer Bob Nightengale said that the "St. Louis Cardinals, still seething over the blown umpire's call that cost them a championship 28 years ago, now may be forever indebted to those men in blue if they win this World Series."
I disagree. Joyce made the correct call, as confirmed by Executive Vice President for Baseball Operations and former Yankees and Dodgers manager, Joe Torre, and top Sports Illustrated writer Tom Verducci. But, I don't consider the Cardinals lucky. The have been cheated of the opportunity to win the World Series with the glory of true victory.
Every Major League ballplayer has the ability to accomplish incredible athletic feats. For that very reason, they balance one another out. It is through mistakes made on the mound and in the field that runs are scored – assuming the opposing players use their talents to capitalize on those mistakes.
A clean-up hitter sees a curveball the pitcher has left hanging, makes contact high and in and takes it 40 feet into the left field stands. A quick base runner sees that a pitcher has gotten into a grove of taking exactly "three Mississippi" in-between the stretch and the pitch, and the base runner leaves early and steals second, knowing a pickoff throw isn't coming. The contact hitter sees that the shortstop is playing close to second to take a pickoff throw, thus leaving a hole in-between himself and third base, and the hitter hits a blooper right in that gap.
It's true that Saltalamacchia made a mistake with his low, to-the-right throw, but had obstruction not been called, Craig may have been thrown out at home. It isn't quite fair to blame Saltalamacchia, because his wild throw would not have reaped the same consequences under normal circumstances. In fact, the throw was not ruled an error because it was not the direct reason the run scored.
But still, it's only one game. The Series is the best of seven, right? According to Sports Illustrated writer Cliff Corcoran, "Of the previous 104 best-of-seven World Series (four early Series were best-of-nine), 53 were tied heading into Game 3. The winner of that game has won the championship 38 times, good for a .717 winning percentage." Since the start of division play in 1969, the winning percentage increases to .889. Corcoran notes that, when pitching a four-man rotation, the same pitchers often pitch both the third and seventh games. That means that those winning percentages aren't particularly valuable, but they are nonetheless being talked about.
The weight of the lucky win is already being estimated. Had Craig been called out at home, the game would have gone into extra innings. And, it's only a matter of time before someone writes about the real winning record of the Red Sox (10-6) and the Cardinals (6-6) this season.
I was in fourth grade when the 2003 postseason took place and Josh Beckett led a young Marlins team to a World Series win over the only slightly post-dynasty Yankees. From that postseason, I recall only two things: Beckett's complete game shutout in Game 6 of the Series and the "Steve Bartman incident."
Going into the eighth inning of Game 6 of the National League Championship series, the Cubs were beating the Marlins 3-0. The Cubs had won three games in the series and were going to the World Series if they could hold the Marlins off two more innings. Marlins second baseman Louis Castillo hit a pop up in left field foul territory and Moisés Alou tracked it down. Just as the ball was falling to Alou's glove, a fan, Bartman, reached out of the stands trying to catch the ball and deflected it from Alou's glove. The Marlins scored eight runs that inning, won Game 7 and beat the Yankees in six.
Something about this case seems worse than that of the '03 Marlins.
Baseball is so frequently used as a metaphor for life that we often don't even realize it. But keep in mind that when you're "thrown a curveball" on a test, when you're told that "you don't have to hit it out of the park every time" or when you do "hit it out" – you're hearing baseball metaphors.
But why don't we say you "threw a Hail Mary pass for a touchdown?" Football is more popular in America in this century.
Life is so frequently thought of in terms of baseball because we want life to be similar to baseball. Chuck Klosterman commended baseball in an Esquire article for having the best scoring system of all sports, because it "doesn't have a concept of time" and because it "distributes runs in unorthodox increments." In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, "It ain't over 'till it's over."
The legend was right. Until the last strike is thrown, ball is caught or base or runner is tagged if the home team is winning, anything can happen. Likewise, until the go-ahead run is driven in or walked in, a guy on third steals home or an error is made, either team could win within the realms of reality. Time is never something you have to worry about running out.
A baseball game has the potential to be immortal.
When we see a game end like Game 3 of the World Series, baseball comes that much closer to life. In life, we don't always get our last at bat for reasons that seem unfair – for reasons that seem to be flukes – and that's frightening. The Red Sox struck out nine times in that game. A fluke kept them from a final three at bats. But the truth is that sometimes happens in baseball and in life. And it's a jolt of reality to witness how much each at bat means in both.
– By Zak Hudak
Photo courtesy of Flickr, Keith Allison
