Clarion Content

The Clarion has long believed that baseball highlights do a disservice to the game, splicing a tapestry into snapshots. Taking an irreducible whole that lasts nearly three hours and distilling into 45 seconds or a minute has never worked for baseball. But then, baseball was born long before television, let alone cable television, ESPN, SportsCenter and the hideous Baseball Tonight.

It was the highlight mentality that fed the steroid era because the home run is the closest thing baseball has to a good television highlight. Who wants to see a guy work a walk? Or hit behind the runner to move somebody over? Highlights kill nuance. Television has been beating the nuance out of American culture for some time. On TV bombast blows subtly away, witness the ever more obnoxious talking heads on the news networks, the descent from Cronkite to Jennings to Limbaugh to Lou Dobbs to Nancy Grace has been steep, precipitous and not helpful for those who believe reason requires nuance and subtly not just brute force and volume.

Baseball is a game from a different era. And baseball highlights suck. Never was there a game that better supported this postulate than the Boston Red Sox miraculous comeback for the ages last night over the Tampa Bay Rays. Baseball has to be sipped and savored, it can't be chugged. In a scintillating column this morning lifelong Red Sox fan, Bill Simmons, takes us through the notion that for real fans baseball is a season long experience. (Incidentally this is why those best of five series in the 1st round of the playoffs stink. Cubs fans follow their team from April to October; then it is over in three games?!? All baseball playoff series should be seven games. But that's a debate for another day.)

Last night the Red Sox looked done, lost, cooked. They trailed 7-0. Tampa's kids had been pounding the ball out of the yard again. One time Met prospect, Scott Kazmir was throwing a two hit shutout at them. Their postseason stalwart of curses broken and championships past, Manny, having found out he couldn't do it with out them, even if he hit .800 with runners in scoring position, had his feet up on the couch somewhere. They were done. It was "Get the golf clubs out boys, the season's over" time.

Then, inexplicably, Rays manager, Joe Maddon, who had pushed all the right buttons for his young club in the series to date, took out Kazmir. Kazmir who had just struck out Youk and mini-Manny, Jason Bay, in the 6th, was out before the start of the 7th. No big deal, the Rays had a seven run lead, and not since the 1929 Philadelphia A's had a team overcome a seven run deficit in the postseason. (Of course, that was against the perennially jinxed Cubs.) But the start of the home 7th, after the Fenway crowd had stretched, was auspicious. Jed Lowrie doubled, but no worries, the Rays new pitcher, an Aussie named Grant Balfour mowed down the Red Sox anemic 8th and 9th place hitters. Two out and a guy on second, 7-0, it was garbage time, right?

Not so fast. Coco Crisp singled. And then A.L. MVP candidate Dustin Pedroia came to the plate, the Fenway crowd refusing to give up hope, or possibly just in gratitude for a fantastic season, stood and cheered. And darn if the little man, 5'7" in lifts, didn't find a way to get a hit. The Red Sox were on the board. And that brought up Big Papi, David Ortiz. Nobody has missed Manny more. Ortiz was homerless and hitting .105 for the series, but in the crowd the Sox faithful were holding homemade "Boston believes" signs. They were rewarded. Ortiz stroked a three run bomb deep into the night, but still it was 7-4 Rays at the end of the inning. The Red Sox only had six more outs to score three more times, an unlikely proposition at best.

The Sox closer Jonathan Paplebon shut down the Rays, 1-2-3 in the visitors 8th. This was one of the things, of course, that didn't make the highlights, no time for that, but in the parlance of the week, it was a game changer. Before they even had an eyeblink to register it, the young Rays were back in the field, playing defense. The first Sox batter mini-Manny, Jason Bay, walked on four pitches. As we told you earlier, they don't put walks in the highlight reel, but to those watching the game in real time, the nervousness of that four pitch walk was obvious. J.D. Drew's home run that cut the Rays lead to a single run felt almost inevitable, and did make the video tape.

But then the most sublime moment of an amazing game. It came after two more outs, just when Rays fans had to think they might escape the wolf by the hair on their chinny, chin, chin. It came after number nine hitter Mark Kotsay doubled to deep center over the outstretched arms of the guy who had been chasing'em down all series, B.J. Upton. It came to the plate in the presence of light hitting, back-up centerfielder, Coco Crisp. In the sports bar one of our editors was stationed at, Red Sox fans were merely hoping Crisp could walk, or perhaps get hit by a pitch to bring up Pedroia with the tying run in scoring position. Crisp and Rays pitcher Dan Wheeler began an epic eleven pitch battle, exactly one pitch of which made the highlights. Crisp and Wheeler like gladiators or knights, single combat, mano a mano, pitch after pitch. Crisp kept fouling'em off, extending the at-bat, hanging in there, taking a pitch here or there, until finally the count was full.

This is the essence of baseball, the individual confrontation that separates it from other team sports. One guy standing on raised mound of dirt 60 feet six inches away from another guy who must decide in approx .13 seconds (faster than most grown folks can double click a stopwatch) whether the ball is going to hit him in the noggin', be just a bit outside or be over the plate. Crisp, needless to say, chose wisely. He swung, he hit it, lining a game tying single into right field. The comeback was complete.

The highlights showed only the last pitch, and continued on to Crisp getting thrown out at second trying to take the extra base on the throw (an utterly meaningless sequence after the tying run had scored.) Watching the highlights was like skipping all the foreplay, going straight to the wham, bam thank you ma'am, and then inexplicably (because there was no good place to cut the clip) filming the cigarette afterward, too.

The Red Sox prevailed in the ninth on an infield single by A.L. MVP candidate Kevin Youkilis, a wild throw by Rays rookie third baseman, Evan Longoria, and a two out hit off of the bat of J.D. Drew.

Baseball highlights suck. If you only saw the highlights, you missed a classic game, an emotional rollercoaster, a game emblematic of the greatness of baseball which extends from the macrocosmos of a 162 game regular season to the microcosmos of a one on one confrontation for eleven pitches with everything hanging in the balance.

Labels: baseball, sports, thought