Final chapter written in memorable series
HOUSTON — Thank Stephen Strasburg, who is as close to a postseason modern-day Walter Johnson as you’re going to get. Thank Anthony Rendon for his “Ball Don’t Lie” home run that will become instant World Series pay-back-the-umps lore. And thank Juan Soto and Adam Eaton for a pair of crucial solo blasts.
Thank them all for giving baseball a Game 7 in this World Series, which is suddenly a madhouse, on Wednesday night after Washington’s thrilling, controversy- and anger-filled 7-2 victory over the cocky Houston Astros, who now have a big problem.
The Astros won 107 games in the regular season. They were supposed to win this World Series. If they don’t win Game 7, they will be piling all their “Take It Back” pins, trinkets and assorted other sundries to garage sales in the greater Houston area this winter.
Also, thank Max Scherzer, who threw in the outfield before Game 6, said, “I’m good,” then loosened up in the bullpen during the game. For Game 7, Nats Manager Dave Martinez made it simple, and electric: “Max will start.”
Suddenly, the awful luck of Scherzer’s stiff neck preventing him from a Game 5 start may be a major good break, not a bad one. Instead of facing Gerrit Cole at his best, he’ll face Zack Greinke, who has been mediocre in the postseason his whole career and this October, too. Next question: How good can Max be 72 hours after a cortisone shot to get his neck out of spasm and with seven days of rest since his start in Game 1?
Get ready Aníbal Sánchez – who’d be on his normal day to start – and Patrick Corbin who, on three days rest, should be good for a couple of innings if needed. Also, Sean Doolittle, who got the last two outs Tuesday night, and Daniel Hudson are all in that long Nats line of pitchers.
Now, suddenly, it is the Astros who have burned their two aces - Verlander, who threw 93 pitches in Game 6 and, to a degree, Cole who’d have two days of rest.
Is this all getting magnificently nuts enough for you! Washington waits 86 years for a World Series, then endures three straight defeats in Nationals Park in which Washington scores a total of three runs.
Then what happens!? One of the great Game 6s arrives in a sport where “Game 6” grabs your attention instantly for its long, fabulous controversial history. This one fits right in with the best of them. Baseball and D.C., shake hands. This is the real deal. This is what it feels like. One game, one title.
Let’s not hurry because there are more important people to thank - especially Astros third baseman Alex Bregman, whose blatant show-’emup hot-dogging, carrying his bat around first base on his first-inning home run trot, before finally dropping his club on his way to second base, became a classic don’t-wakethe-sleeping-dogs moment.
“We didn’t like it, “Martinez in what amounts to a filibuster for him.
If the Astros had won this game, Bregman would simply have added the latest tiny increment in mankind’s trek toward the day that a hitter celebrates himself and his home run by twirling his bat like a baton all the way around the bases while also juggling his shoes.
But now, after the Nats’ silent anger at Bregman, and their comeback after he’d insulted them, the Astros will have an additional problem – perhaps their best player this year, and one of the game’s most-liked and brightest ambassadors, has – if the Astros lose – put a dunce cap on his own head that will linger for years.
From that Bregman instant, every Nats at-bat felt like a personal battle - an affront being repaid - as the Nats drove future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander out of the game after just five innings. An Eaton homer off the 300-strikeout man tied the game at 2. But it was a Soto homer a moment later, into the second deck, that proved what was motivating these
Nats.
As Soto ran to first, with the Nats in the lead 3-2, he duplicated all of Bregman’s actions – carrying the bat, extending it toward the first base coach. But, unlike Bregman, who never executed his baton-pass handoff to his coach, and ended up carrying his bat 15 more feet toward second base, Soto pointedly dropped his bat before he got to first base – the general custom since 1868, rarely broken until Bregman added his attention-on-me twist.
“I didn’t like that either,” said Martinez of the payback show up. “I’ll speak to Juan about it. We like to keep our celebrating in our dugout.”
Astros manager A.J. Hinch summarized the game simply - too simply and conveniently - but a synopsis nonetheless: “They hit the ball out of the ballpark multiple times. And we ran into Strasburg . . . He’s an incredible pitcher . . . He’s got a slow heartbeat out there.”
Does Hinch
want
Bregman carrying his bat past first base? “He shouldn’t carry his bat past first base,” said Hinch. “But Soto shouldn’t carry his bat to first base either.”
That’s probably true. But who did it first? Somebody find a second-grade teacher to adjudicate this one.
All of these moments, in traditional analysis of a World Series game, would encapsulate the heart of the story. Then you would add that Rendon’s home run was a huge, monumental tension-lifter, giving the Nats a three-run lead in the top of the seventh with nine outs to go.
But this was no normal home run. Two batters previously, Gary Cederstrom’s umpiring crew made a call that defied common sense, enraged the Nats, eventually led to Manager Dave Martinez ejection and precipitated a 4-minute 32-second discussion about the play. In the end, the call stood. Instead of Nats at second and third with no outs in a one-run game, Trea Turner had been called out for interference with the Astros first baseman and the Nats had only one man on base – first.
On that controversial play, the Astros did everything wrong and were rewarded spectacularly. With Yan Gomes on first, Turner hit a dribbler that pitcher Brad Peacock threw to the inside of first base. A dozen replays showed that Turner would have beaten the play to first by about a foot and that at the time the off-target throw arrived first baseman Yuli Gurriel was being pulled into Turner’s path to reach for the ball. The throw hit Turner in the right leg just as Gurriel’s glove collided with Turner’s left leg.
The umpires ruled that Turner had interfered with Gurriel’s attempt at a catch. Turner went berserk. The Houston press box was filled with scribes trying to remember if a team had ever done so much incorrectly and been rewarded so richly. When Eaton made the second out, it appeared that - even if a thousand rules debates decided the call could not be reviewed or a dozen other whatnots - that the sense of the play, any sense of a fair resolution, what been blown up.