Just plain zany, and incredible
Astros’ 13-12 win one of the greatest in baseball history
HOUSTON — The flatbed cart hauling the equipment bags of the Los Angeles Dodgers zipped sharply through the field-level corridors of Minute Maid Park early Monday. The driver was in a hurry, and why not? The Dodgers had just blown three leads to the Houston Astros in one of the most frenzied games in World Series history. Home never looked so inviting.
In his haste, though, the driver plowed right into an armchair jutting out near a lobby, in full view of Jim Crane, the Astros’ owner. This could be trouble.
“That’s all right,” said Crane, who made his fortune in the freight business and understands the hazards. “We can buy some new furniture.”
Crane was in a forgiving mood. He bought the Astros in 2011, when they were the worst team in the major leagues. Now they are one win away from a championship, after surviving — there is no other word — a 13-12 odyssey in Game 5. The two sides bashed seven home runs and needed five hours and 17 minutes to finish in 10 innings.
“Listen, you never expect a game like that,” Crane said. “That was just an incredible game. I had people texting me: ‘Jim, whoever wins, this is the best game I’ve ever seen!’ You want to be on top, of course. But it’s just incredible for the fans and the city.”
In the 657 World Series games that came before, only one had more total runs.
Only one had more homers. Only one lasted longer. And none, perhaps, served onlookers with such a dizzying cocktail of enchantment and debauchery.
The Astros and their fans have yearned for a moment like this. Founded in 1962, the franchise has not won the World Series and had made it only once before, in 2005, to the final when it was host to a five-hour, 41-minute, 14-inning loss to the Chicago White Sox that was part of a four-game sweep. Twice in the 1980s, the Astros lost the final game of the National League Championship Series at home, in extra innings, as the visitors left town with a pennant.
Now, it seems, the Astros have learned to play the modern game better than anyone else. In a Major League Baseball season that included more homers than ever, the Astros led all teams in slugging percentage — while also having the fewest strikeouts.
In that way, Game 5 was their masterpiece. The Astros got homers from Yuli Gurriel, Jose Altuve, George Springer, Carlos Correa and Brian McCann, and fanned just six times in their 47 trips to the plate.
The final swing was a two-out single to left by Alex Bregman off of Dodgers’ Kenley Jansen. Derek Fisher, a rookie pinch-runner, had been inserted just before that pitch for the first time in the Series. He dashed home from second, slid his orange spikes cross the plate ahead of the throw and popped up to embrace McCann, the veteran who had told him he would do something special.
“You never know when your time’s going to be, but you’re going to have a time,” Fisher said McCann promised him. “And it’s going to be an important time.”
For the winning run to score on such a play — a first-pitch line drive, a two-base sprint and a smooth final slide — was oddly reassuring. Most of what came before was another home run derby, the second of the series. In Game 2 in L.A. last week, the teams combined for a record eight homers in a comeback victory for the Astros, 7-6 in 11 innings.
“I didn’t think that would ever be topped,” said Bregman, who debuted in the majors last year. “I thought that would be the best game I ever played in my career. Who knows where this one ranks? Right up there with that game.”
The teams have combined for 22 homers in five games, breaking the World Series record of 21 set in seven games in 2002, the last year before baseball began testing for steroids. One theory for the new power surge is that hitters have learned to tailor their swings to launch more fly balls, reasoning that fly balls produce more runs than grounders.
Many pitchers suspect the balls are juiced because baseball wants more offence, as the Astros’ Dallas Keuchel asserted after the Game 2 slugfest. Before Sunday, another Astros pitcher, Justin Verlander, told reporters that the balls for this World Series were slicker, making them harder to grip and leading to erratic location.
McCann — who hit last in the Astros’ lineup Sunday, despite 12 seasons as one of the best slugging catchers in baseball — gave a more nuanced explanation.
“Neither team was swinging out of the strike zone,” McCann said. “It’s really impressive. Both teams are having amazing at-bats. You play a team for seven games, you start seeing tendencies back and forth.”
Clayton Kershaw had held the Astros to one run in seven innings of the Series opener, striking out 11 with no walks. This time, after facing the minimum number of batters through three innings, he lost command and the 4-0 lead his hitters had built against Keuchel. He could not complete the fifth.
“I don’t really pay attention to it,” Kershaw said when asked about a possible change in the baseballs. “I just assume that both sides are dealing with it, so I’m not going to worry about it.”
Jansen, who blew the save in Game 2, allowed a homer in Game 4 and lost Game 5, was similarly cagey when asked about the ball.
“Something funny with it,” he said. “This is my eighth season in big leagues. I have my thoughts; I’ll keep them to myself.”
Major League officials, naturally, insist the balls conform to specifications, and that the only difference is the gold colour of the printing stamped to them.
“All these hitters are so good, it’s just amazing,” Crane said. “Any guy who gets up can hit it out of the ballpark, on either team, almost.”
It was not over until Bregman hit the game’s 25th run, a total matched in a 1997 Series game, but eclipsed only in Game 4 in 1993, when Toronto beat Philadelphia, 15-14. That game, at least, had a late oasis of shutdown pitching by Toronto relievers. Here, nearly all of the 14 pitchers seemed helpless.
“I’m sure everybody’s pretty exhausted after that,” Kershaw said. “Emotionally, physically.”
That’s true, said Cody Bellinger, 22, the Dodgers’ rookie first baseman, who homered and tripled in Game 5.
“That was pure entertainment,” he said. “Anything can happen. That’s why sports are so great, the unexpected. I don’t think anybody expected this.”
In a way, the spirit of that comment echoed the one Cincinnati’s Pete Rose made to Carlton Fisk at Fenway Park in Boston during Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. When he came to bat in the 11th inning, Rose told Fisk, the Red Sox catcher: “Isn’t this the most exciting game you ever played in?” The next inning, Fisk homered to win it for the Red Sox, who survived to play a Game 7 —— won by the Reds on a single in the ninth inning.
In the 1975 Series, considered the finest ever, the home team won games 1, 3 and 5, while losing games 2 and 4. That precise pattern has held up in only one other World Series in history: this one.
With a championship in reach Tuesday, the Astros will send Verlander to the mound at Dodger Stadium for Game 6.
“This is not going to be finished Tuesday,” the Dodgers’ Yasiel Puig vowed. “There’s going to be a Game 7.” For a series this intoxicating, we should all be so lucky.