A CLASSIC FALL
THE MOST representative person of a modern sports world that makes no sense is, of all people, Vin Scully, who will be 90, next month.
Everyone admires Scully as the best for all the right reasons: He made simple and smart sound which elegant. He allowed baseball’s moments to dictate his calls, nothing forced, no gimmickry, no statistical immersions to fill time. He was always good on the central nervous system.
So then why do so few try to be anything like him?
And with Scully in mind, I gave it until Friday afternoon. But nothing changed.
Wednesday night’s Game 2 of the World Series, prefaced by an on-field salute to Scully, was widely reported to have been an “epic,” a Fall Classic classic that will never be forgotten and had to be seen to be believed.
So how come, throughout Thursday and deep into Friday, no one I ran into or spoke with on the phone even mentioned it?
The 11-inning, 7-6 Astros win over the Dodgers began to more than half the nation’s population at 8:10 p.m. and ended at 12:30 a.m., thus those who missed it to sleep were left, if they cared, to take the other side of the country’s word for it.
That it began at 5:10 in Los Angeles meant it could have begun at 4 p.m. in Los Angeles, giving all of North America a reasonable shot at it.
It’s the same old follow-the-money story: TV, in this case FOX, tells MLB what to do. The national pastime and Fall Classic are now both mere sinecures, honorary tributes, thanksfor-the-memories titles, no power, authority or useful meaning behind them.
Game 2 was an edge of the chair — couch, bed — classic, provided one applies modern standards. Both managers took turns inviting the other team to win by removing effective pitchers for no other reason than that they believe in make-believe, scripted, pregame plans, thus this “epic” was predicated on a senseless fad.
Consider: In a 13-run game, three relievers were relieved after not allowing a base runner.
Astros manager A.J. Hinch removed his latest “seventh-inning man,” Will Harris, for his latest “eighth-inning man,” Joe Musgrove. Harris made one, two three with two strikeouts. Musgrove made one, two, three on nine pitches.
It didn’t matter. Hinch is another who summons his “closer,” no matter what. So in came Ken Giles, an unreliable closer with a telltale 1-3 record, who then allowed two earned runs. Lucky to have consecutively had two strong relievers, Hinch went for a third.
Friday in Game 3, his bullpen depleted, Hinch successfully rode reliever Brad Peacock for 32/3 in a 5-3 Astros win.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts worked off the same spreadsheet of improbable probabilities. Kenta Maeda started 25 games, this season; he went 13-6. He relieved starter Rich Hill in the fifth, retired four of the five he faced — he allowed a single — then was pulled as if he were incapable of or unaccustomed to pitching more than 1¹/3 innings.
As classic World Series games go, this one was caused by twosided, preordained madness.
New York’s teams this season, under Joe Girardi and Terry Collins, were managed no differently. Both regularly threw away aces to try to draw straights.
As for Girardi, my guess is that his irreconcilable differences with GM Brian Cashman were cemented — the last straw — on Oct. 17, when in Game 4 of the ALCS, Girardi pulled Sonny Gray after five innings of one-hit pitching.
Cashman acquired Gray as the final and expensive piece in a puzzle, a good-to-very-good starter, not as a five-inning setup man for Girardi’s wish-based bullpen formula.
Girardi’s removal of CC Sabathia with one out in the sixth and an 8-3 lead in Game 2 of the ALDS — Sabathia had allowed just three hits — seemed similarly foolish even if that move hadn’t been preface to Cleveland’s 9-8 win.
Then again, today Vin Scully wouldn’t make it past his first audition. Everything everyone admired him for — no self-promoting gimmicks, no silly substitute expressions, no misleading statistical excess, and his unspoken credit to viewers for not needing him to explain the who, why, how and what of what they just clearly saw — would be deemed unacceptable.