This is a different kind of pain, a different type of agony.
Just over two weeks ago, I wrote about the end to the Washington Nationals' season — a gut-wrenching conclusion so unpredictable, so cruel in its execution that it left me, and thousands of others inside the ballpark on the night their season came crashing down, stunned, listless and, frankly, heartbroken. That's what happens when you're twice a strike away from advancing in the playoffs but end up losing, giving up a 6-0 lead.
Last night, the Detroit Tigers also relinquished a lead — except that it was the only lead they had during a 37-inning series. They went from being absolutely dominant and unbeatable against the freakin' New York Yankees — turning the great franchise into an embarrassment and relegating $100-million man Alex Rodriguez to a bit bench player — to lifeless against a San Francisco Giants team made up mostly of no-name overachievers. The Tigers went from outscoring the vaunted Yankees 19-6 to being dominated by the third-best regular-season team in the National League, 16-6.
Manager Jim Leyland didn't mince words, grunting, "(They) kicked our ass."
Leyland couldn't have lauded the Giants more after the final nail had been drilled into the Tigers' coffin. You lose four in a row, you're not the better team, he said. Still, he added, "I’m flabbergasted."
So am I. So is Tigers nation. Not even heartbroken, to be honest. Rather, stunned, shocked, appalled, and ... flabbergasted.
How does a team anchored by Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder hit .159 over the course of four games and score six runs — the third-lowest output by an American League team in World Series history?
How does that Cabrera-Fielder tandem go 4-for-27 (.148), with Fielder hitting 1-for-14 and hitting into two deflating double plays in each home game of the series?
“We never find our game,” Cabrera said. “We never play our best baseball. … It was not the right way to finish. WE try to. WE try hard. But we never find our game.”
That's the cruel truth about our nation's pastime (sorry, football). You can play your absolute hardest. You can put forth maximum effort. You can watch all the film in the world. You can tweak your lineup a thousand ways ... but sometimes, you just can't hit.
The Tigers picked the worst, most tear-jerking time to stop hitting.
Think about this — in what other sport, do the best teams so rarely end up winning the championship? You would think a 162-game season would mean something come the playoffs, but it doesn't. The Nationals had the best record in the Bigs and blew that lead against the Cardinals. The Reds had the second-best record and couldn't win a single home game in three tries against the Giants. This is more the norm than an anomaly.
Can you imagine the Miami Heat doing that? The baseball postseason is as unpredictable and nutty as the NFL playoffs, except consumed in multiple-game bites. So even nuttier.
There is no doubt that it's easier to get over a sweep than losing a Game 5 or Game 7 in the ninth inning. It's easier to chalk up to, "They were the better team. We stunk." As Leyland reiterated in the Game 4 aftermath, if the Tigers had lost in a rubber game on some fluky play, they could have lamented, "We were the better team." They could have spent days thinking, 'What if.'"
There are 'What ifs?' to take from this sweep, such as: A) What if Fielder doesn't try for home in Game 2 with none out in the second inning?; B) What if Cabrera doesn't pop out with the bases loaded — after Quintin Berry struck out with the bases loaded — in Game 3; C) What if Jhonny Peralta's Game 4 fly ball isn't pushed back and made catchable by the winds? But I find myself uninspired in typing these questions, knowing that this was still a four-game butt-whoopin'.
Still, it's hard to move on. It's difficult to fathom that just 10 days ago Tigers fans were on Cloud Nine, having put a hitting clinic together against Yankees ace C.C. Sabathia. If the Tigers could put up eight runs in a game started by the left-hander with the dominant postseason resume, surely they could score three or four against the Giants' solid but not dominant staff, right? I was more scared of the Cardinals and their penchant for the impossible — after last year's World Series and witnessing first-hand the improbable comeback at Nationals Park.
The sense of excitement only grew when the National League Championship Series extended to six, then seven games. While the Tigers' starting rotation was set, the winner of the NLCS winner would have to start their series with the lower end of their rotation. Advantage Tigers, right?
But then the Series finally started, Justin Verlander couldn't keep Pablo Sandoval in the park, and the Giants seized Game 1, 8-3 behind rejuvenated Barry Zito. The Tigers' bats became even more silent the next night, and the result was 2-0. The score didn't change two nights later despite the location and time zone change, as the Giants notched the first consecutive World Series shutouts since 1966.
I didn't give up hope, though. Mainly because I had seen the Tigers finish off the A's in a must-win Game 5 and then seen them play so well against the Yankees, I tricked myself into thinking the first-ever World Series comeback from down 3-0 was possible. After all, "momentum" isn't as strong in baseball as it is in, say, basketball. One fluky play here, one dropped ball there, and a series can change instantly. One win would mean another start for Verlander, who you could tell was itching to get another shot at Pablo and the Giants. A Verlander outing like his Game 5 Oakland performance would return the series to San Francisco. And from there, you never know. Home-field advantage in baseball isn't much of a deal.
Late Saturday night, I wrote on my Facebook wall: "I know I'll sound redic, but I actually think the Tigers will come back to win four straight (yes, I'm insane)." Surprisingly, two friends responded. One even punched out this scenario: "max (Scherzer) throws 15ks tonight. verlander. furious after his last outing, dominates. fister does his thing ... and we're back in it" before adding, "yeah, i'm probably delusional too."
But that's the power of sports. It allows you to believe. It gives you hope that incredible things are possible. This belief, this hope, comes from the games, the series, the moments we've seen. If the St. Louis Cardinals could make that incredible, gut-wrenching comeback against the Nationals, why couldn't the Tigers make this a series?
In the end, my hope — our hope — ran up against a solid, brick wall exemplified by the Giants' defense. In the postseason, a misplay in the field can make the difference, and while the Tigers weren't bad defensively, they failed to make plays. Cabrera was handcuffed by a roller down the line. Austin Jackson let a ball roll past him in Game 3. The Giants, meanwhile, made every single play. When a ball bounced off pitcher Matt Cain's glove Sunday night, shortstop Brandon Crawford didn't miss a beat in bare-handing it and firing the ball to beat a sliding Berry at first base.
The Giants, as a team, were perfect on defense, were dominant from the pitching mound, and provided timely hitting. The Tigers were not.
That truth makes the outcome sting just a little bit less, not that it won't linger.
I will never forget last night.
Just like I will never forget the afternoon of Saturday, Sept. 1, 2007. Yes, Michigan fans, that was the afternoon when a small college from the North Carolina mountains whose pronunciation couldn't be agreed upon — you say "Appal-A-chian," I say "Appal-atch-ian" — came into the "Big House" and, in front of 100,000-plus decked out in Maize and Blue, stunned the mighty Michigan Wolverines.
The deathly silence that overtook Michigan Stadium — save for that tiny swath of screaming, incredulous fans of the small school — is forever entrenched in my sports memory bank.
And until last night, the 12th of October, 2012, it was the most salient memory, the most vivid — and heartbreaking — game I'd ever sat, or stood, in a sporting arena or stadium for.
The 2012 St. Louis Cardinals, winners of 11 World Series — the most by any team if you're excluding the Damn Yankees — are a little more well known than the '07 App State Mountaineers, although I'd argue that the average casual baseball fan probably had no clue who Pete Kozma was before these playoffs.
Last night, these Cardinals tore the hearts out of most of the Nationals Park attendance record of 45,966 patrons, almost all clad in red, waving red Nats towels, cheering their hearts out, standing up for every single two-strike pitch, for every Nationals batter with a runner on base.
By now, I'm sure, you know the numbers, you know the historical significance of the night, such as that:
— Down 6-0 in the fourth inning, the Cardinals' comeback for a 9-7 win was the largest EVER in a winner-take-all playoff game. Baseball has been around a LONG time.
— The Cardinals had two batters down to their final strike of the season. They saw five pitches. They both, somehow, were able to hold off from swinging. They both drew walks.
I sat in Section 136, row DD, seat 20. For more than three hours, the hometown Nationals had held the lead, had been in position to win their first playoff series since moving to the District from Montreal in 2005, had been poised for another champagne celebration — this time just four wins from the World freakin' series.
In the third inning, after Michael Morse, "Beat Mode," crushed the Nats' third home run of the game, the home team led 6-0, the Cardinals' playoff maestro Adam Wainwright was heading for the showers, and I took the opportunity to escape my seat and skip up the aisle, taking two stairs at a time, headed for the bathroom. On the concourse, everyone was delirious. Forget that it was the third inning, that the Cardinals still had 18 outs to spare — there was, simply, no way this wasn't going to be the greatest night of baseball in the nation's capital since, what, 1933? I ran into my friend Stefan and we, instinctively, bear-hugged. This was awesome! Incredible! Amazing! We ran out of superlatives and parted ways.
From that moment on, the Park calmed down, but only a little. Sure, Nationals Cy Young candidate Gio Gonzalez struggled with his control, the Cardinals chipped away, and the Nationals failed to create any more offense. But I couldn't lose the feeling that this game's conclusion was inevitable, that before the clock struck midnight I would be hugging and high-fiving the group of fans around me in a euphoric moment. I pictured the last pitch, the last out, the crowd's reaction. Even as the Cardinals inched closer, gaining a run on Edwin Jackson in the seventh and Tyler Clippard in the eighth, I pictured that final out and the celebration to follow.
Not once did I believe the Cardinals would actually come all the way back. Was it possible? Of course. Crazier things had happened. Shoot, just a year ago many of these same Birds had pulled off the most improbable of World Series comebacks. David Freese, the unforgettable hero of that night in St. Louis, was in the lineup. Even as all the fans around me, myself included, asked why, oh why, wouldn't Davey Johnson pinch hit for the struggling Danny Espinosa with the sure-contact hitter Steve Lombardozzi in the bottom of the eighth with runners on first and third and one out and Espinosa, sure enough, proceeded to pop out ... even as that happened, I was looking ahead, anticipating three more outs.
When Kurt Suzuki poked a two-out RBI single to give the Nationals that proverbial insurance run, the ballpark erupted for what seemed like the millionth time of the night. Hands were slapped. Fists were pounded. Everybody was on their feet. The woman to the left of my friend Jeremy and me showed us her phone. It read "47 degrees." But nobody was cold. Too much excitement, too much anticipation, warmed the late-night air. This was the night the Nationals had played 162 regular-season games, 98 of them wins, for. At least until the pending NLCS, of course.
Minutes later, Drew Storen jogged to the mound from the right-field bullpen, right in front of us, his eyes bearing a steely focus, staring straight ahead. Not a soul in any section around us was sitting. Storen had been rock-solid of late, as fresh as anyone on the Nationals roster because his season hadn't begun until July 19 following elbow surgery. Down the stretch of the regular season, he had reclaimed his role as closer from Clippard. In the Nats' Game 1 win, he shut down the Cardinals 1-2-3. In the win-or-go-home Game 4, he pitched the scoreless ninth that preceded Jayson Werth's memorable, 13-pitch-at-bat walkoff bomb.
There was no reason to believe Storen wouldn't put the finishing touches on this magical night in DC, wouldn't send the defending world champions home and book the flight to the District for the Giants, the NLCS opponent in waiting.
Carlos Beltran led off with a double to center field. Anxiety showed on the faces of everyone around me. Still, there was no lack of belief, there was no doomsday talk — especially after Matt Holliday weakly grounded Storen's next pitch to the Nationals' longest tenured player, sure-handed third baseman Ryan Zimmerman.
The crowd roared. Two fingers shot up in the cool, crisp air all around me. Two outs to go.
Storen worked the count on cleanup hitter Allen Craig to 2-2. Craig wasn't in the Cardinals' lineup a year ago. His spot was occupied by the great Albert Pujols. Now that guy's presence might have frightened me, might have made fans cross their fingers. But not Craig's. He whiffed at a nasty, signature Storen slider in the dirt. Strike three.
The crowd around me erupted, waving those red towels almost violently, sensing the kill, ready for that moment they'd come to the park more than three hours ago hoping for. Single fingers were pointed toward the sky. No, there wasn't a shooting star. No, there wasn't a full moon. Just as good, this team, this franchise mired in losing for so long, was on the brink.
The bandbox only got louder after a foul ball made the count 2-2 on Yadier Molina. One. More. Strike. The Cardinals' big-hitting catcher almost — almost — committed to the next pitch low and away. How he held up, in that situation, is an incredible feat in itself. It's why he's one of the best hitters in the game today. And then he watched another pitch just miss — this time a tad high.
"Not Freese," I said to the loquacious man decked out in red a row below me. Before the inning, we had discussed the possibility of the situation. Freese, the man as clutch as they come, in the batter's box with the game on the line. My voice had expressed nervousness, but I still inwardly couldn't comprehend anything other than the end result I had expected ever since that three-run barrage on Wainwright's first seven pitches of the game, and especially following Bryce Harper's crush job to the right field seats in the third followed by Morse's bomb to left.
Storen worked two Freese foul balls sandwiched around a ball, and, again, we were one strike away. One freakin' strike. Again, towels were waved ferociously. The cheerleader guy who was working his 84th home game of the season ran back and forth yelling and waving 30 rows below us, exhorting the fans to, somehow, reach a new decibel level.
Ball three.
Ball four.
The stadium gasped, but quickly caught its breath. The Nationals were still ahead.
But before I could even process the situation and assure myself that this ending would just make the Nationals' playoff run that more memorable — who remembers a 6-0 game? — David Descalso laced Storen's first offering up the middle. Ian Desmond, Washington's best player in these playoffs and arguably the top shortstop in the National League after a stellar season, got a glove on the searing ball but couldn't stop it from rolling into center field. Cardinals pinch runner Adron Chambers easily followed Beltran home.
The unthinkable had happened. The game was tied. And 45,966 were stunned, but not silent. After all, we had the bottom of the ninth. And we had that Werth guy coming up, followed by that Harper guy, then that Zimmerman guy. They'd each hit a home run over the previous nine innings. Yeah, this is crazy, but how un-freakin'-forgettable would back-to-back walk-off wins be for this team new to the playoffs, new to the big stage, be?
And that's when the dagger was inserted into us, when the stadium went deathly, disturbingly silent. Kozma, the no-name, fill-in shortstop for the injured Rafael Furcal had punched a shallow line drive to right field in front of the charging Werth. Two runs had scored. The 'board in center field read 9-7. There was no looking away.
For seemingly forever, I had never doubted the game's result. Sure, these were the never-die-easily Cardinals — now winners of six consecutive elimination games — but they were facing a team that had overcome plenty of odds itself, a team that had dealt with so many injuries, a team that had taken the ball from its ace — the right move, by the way — in September and taken heat from all corners of the universe for it. And still won a Major League-best 98 games.
Shock was the only feeling that could be felt. Not anger, no. Not sadness, no. Shock. Utter shock.
What had just happened? And why? Why were sports so cruel?
The game wasn't over, but it was. The balloon had been mercilessly popped. Werth flied out to right field on the third pitch of his at bat. Harper looked like a 19-year-old for the first time of the night, striking out on three pitches. Zimmerman provided a little more resistance against flame-throwing Cardinals closer Jason Motte, but on the sixth pitch of the at bat hit a morbid popout to the shallow right-field grass not far from our seats.
And that, just like that, was it. The three middle-aged guys to my right who had walked in front of us at least nine times to make beer runs couldn't have been more sober. It was the ultimate sobering moment, the moment when you, as a baseball fan — as someone who has closely followed a team since February, since pitchers and catchers reported — realize that it's all over. That there will be no more games, no next round.
The sports world moves so fast these days. It's always onto the next game, the next season. One day, a championship is won; the next, preseason rankings for the following year are out. Moments are quickly forgotten. Questions are asked prematurely. Blame is placed too soon.
As 1 a.m. approached, it didn't feel right to leave the stadium, to make a quick exit among the hordes of angry, sad, shellshocked patrons. It didn't feel right to move onto an activity other than watching a baseball game. Much the same way as I had sat on the bench in Michigan Stadium a little over five years prior, I found a seat — this one in Section 138 — and stared at the empty seats. The only noise came from across the field, where maybe 50 Cardinals fans behind the visitor's dugout were serenading their heroes with raucous applause.
Full disclosure: I am not a "die-hard" Nationals fan. This isn't my team. I'm from Michigan and will always be a Detroit Tigers fan. So I had a game to look forward to in 19 hours. The Tigers would be taking on those Damn Yanks in Game 1 of the ALCS. But at that moment, and still a day later, I didn't want to move on, I couldn't. Living in DC, I had closely followed the Nationals for the better part of two seasons. With the Washington Post's and Associated Press' excellent sports coverage combined with attending more than a dozen regular-season games, I knew this team as well as I know the Tigers. So I would closely watch every pitch — until, of course, they played Detroit in the World Series. That was the hope, and I thought it would be just eight wins from fruition.
For that, I — and everyone else who followed and was enamored by this resilient bunch — will have to wait until 2013. And while there will be a new focus come the spring, a refreshed excitement about a baseball season anew, this night will never be forgotten by those of us who witnessed it.
For better. And then, ultimately, for worse.
