The Last Out

Lo and behold: last night I felt the presence of the supernatural.

Since it was Rosh Hashanah -- the eve of the Jewish New Year -- naive readers might be justified in assuming that this revelation manifested itself during the ninety restless minutes I spent in congregational confinement in the sanctuary of the Agudath Sholom Synagogue. Others more cynical may recall my jaundiced view of organized religion and my professed skepticism as to the existence of an omnipresent deity -- which I have previously documented on this web site -- and wonder what I was doing there in the first place.

Loath to be branded a hypocrite, I innocently plead that my attendance was motivated by some stubborn combination of insurgent ethnic guilt, a fleeting yearning to reconnect to a timeless tradition, and a curious desire to reacquaint myself with some old faces (like my own). Having become viciously addicted to the Droid smart phone which I smugly disparaged for so long, I also freely confess that my attention was hardly focused on the liturgy, and instead drawn to the progress of several Major League baseball games, the scores of which I could now check with numbing regularity.

Any casual fan knows what is at stake: the Wild Cards for both the American and National League playoffs.

In each case, the leaders have suffered unprecedented meltdowns; in less than thirty days, the Boston Red Sox and the Atlanta Braves have squandered seemingly insurmountable nine and eight-and-a-half game leads to their frantic pursuers, the Tampa Bay Rays and the St. Louis Cardinals respectively.

Baseball aficionados revel in the protracted nature of the game, and even a fan not invested in any of the four teams involved can appreciate the emotional ebb and flow of watching the scoreboard post first joyful and then dispiriting results while gauging the durability of each day's games-behind number.

The American League race is the most compelling. The Red Sox are media darlings and the Yankees' arch rival, boast a national fan base, field a line-up of all-stars at a $164 million payroll, and were preseason favorites to challenge the Philadelphia Phillies as the sport's best team. For anyone who loves an underdog, the aspiring Rays are the perfect candidate -- constrained by a payroll one-third of the above, stripped of franchise talent by a ruthless free agent market, dependent upon a completely rebuilt bullpen, and unappreciated by a hometown that rarely turns out more than 15,000 for a game.

Their pluckiness is personified by their buoyant manager, Joe Maddon, whose fair-haired ducktail and black-framed eyeglasses remind me of an aging rock star. "We're still in it," he preaches to his precocious predators, and when they sweep a mid-month three-game home series from their quarry, the doubters sit up and take notice. A week later they take three of four in Fenway Park, and, despite a few missteps, welcome New York to Tropicana Field for the final three games of the season only one behind -- thanks to both the Yankees and the last-place Orioles, who pummel the Sox as they stagger to the finish line.

When the Orioles defeat the Red Sox once again, and the Rays win, the twenty-five-day chase is consummated; the two are in a dead heat. That this is a team of destiny becomes evident the next day when, already leading 3-2, the Yankees load the bases in the sixth inning with nobody out; Russell Martin smokes a sizzling ground ball directly at Rays' third baseman Evan Longoria, who picks it cleanly and steps on the bag to start 5-4-3 triple play. Six outs later Mike Joyce hits a three-run homer to give his team a 5-3 victory and enable it to keep pace with the Red Sox, who eke out an 8-7 win in Baltimore.

But has it all been for naught? Because by the time I exit the Synagogue the following evening -- the last of the regular season -- the Yankees (or rather the Yankee fillers, Manager Joe Girardi having benched most of his heralded starters) have amassed an imposing 7-0 lead, while the Red Sox are clinging to their own 3-2 advantage over the Orioles. There doesn't seem to be any point in watching an anticlimactic conclusion to what has been an enthralling month-long spectacle.

But baseball is a game of patience, of periods of inertia interrupted by sudden explosions of energy: the batter waits for the pitch; the fielder waits for the struck ball; the audience waits for the unexpected or sensational play amidst an abundance of the mundane. To lose one's patience is to risk seeing something remarkable; yet I settle into my burgundy La-Z-Boy and click the remote more out of disgust and despair than with any real hope for a Rays resuscitation.

But after two hits, two walks, two hit batsmen, a strikeout, and a sacrifice fly, it's 7-3, and up steps the Rays boyish Evan Longoria -- their principal power threat and only legitimate super star; he promptly launches a home run to left field, bringing the Rays to within one tantalizing run.

Baseball teams don't normally come back from a seven-run deficit, especially in the eighth inning, nor do they often rally with two outs in the ninth; but when they do, it is glorious to behold, and one more invigorating testimonial to the wonder of the game and to its most pitiless rule: it's not over until the last out.

Which is the situation when in one final act of desperation Maddon reaches into the depths of his dugout for pinch-hitter Dan Johnson, an early-season designated hitter whose .100 batting average and lone April home run relegated him to the far end of the bench. Like a flashing comet destined for one moment of glory (he will not even make the Rays' post-season roster), he ties the game with a line shot into the right field stands, and sends it into extra innings.

Meanwhile, back in Baltimore, an hour-and-a-half rain delay -- surely an otherworldly intrusion into these bizarre proceedings -- has reset the Red Sox-Orioles timeline into a perfect pitch-by-pitch alignment with this nail-biter -- although one can only stare in imaginative suspense at the 3-2 score flickering in the upper right-hand corner of the television screen, since the game is not being broadcast, at least on my cable menu.

For the Yankees, of course, this game means nothing. It doesn't take a mind-reader to decipher the glazed look in Girardi's eyes as he parades eleven pitchers to the mound and sends one scrub after another to the plate. "What the heck am I doing here?" it silently screams, like a caged lion.

The Rays dodge a couple of bullets when the Yankees put two men on base in the tenth and twelfth innings. And then, in an instant, like dual lightening strikes, it ends, with both a whimper and a bang.

My jaw drops when I see that Oriole two miraculously transformed into first a three and then, with brutal finality, a four. The Red Sox, savoring the triumph that will dispel the rumors of their premature demise, needing only the last out in the bottom of the ninth, amazingly surrender three straight hits -- two doubles and a single -- and two runs; the unlikely victors storm the field as if they have won the pennant, while the shell-shocked vanquished, and their valiant, tobacco-swilling manager, Terry Francona -- soon to be canned despite two World Series rings -- can only stare in vacant disbelief.

Three minutes later, as if by intelligent design, the coolheaded Longoria deposits another long ball in the short left field porch in Tampa, completing two incredible comebacks, nine games and seven runs, and snatching the Wild Card from a heavily-stacked deck. In a stunning reversal of fortune, the Rays are in and the Bostonians are out; even the most ardent, and disappointed, patriots of the Red Sox Nation will have to concede that this is baseball at its finest and most unpredictable.

But wait; there's more. Over on ESPN2, the National League theater of the absurd is playing to its own curtain call. America's other team, the Atlanta Braves, victims of a parallel September swoon, losers of four straight -- including two to the upstart Nationals -- are battling for their playoff lives against the front-running Phillies. Their steady stalkers, the St. Louis Cardinals, have finally drawn abreast on the penultimate day of the season. Of the four critical games tonight, theirs started last; yet, in this weird time warp, they finish first, routing the hapless Astros, 8-0, and tightening the noose on the choking Braves.

I'm not really intrigued by either of these teams. The Braves have some nice young players, including three stellar relievers -- who apparently succumbed to too many appearances -- but I never thought they had much staying power. The Cardinals are led by three veteran sluggers -- Albert Pujols, Matt Holliday, and the resurgent Lance Berkman -- but it's their manager, Tony LaRussa, and their pitching coach, Dave Duncan, both the best in baseball, who have kept them in contention.

The Braves can't hold a 2-0 lead, nor can they get the last out in the top of the ninth, allowing the Phillies to tie the game. I'm not watching any of this, but, considering their dismal record the past twenty-seven days (9-17) and their exhausted bullpen, one would be foolish to wager even a ballpark hot dog on the Braves escaping with their scalps intact.

They don't; after the Phillies push across a run in the top of the thirteenth, they expire meekly in the bottom of the inning when Freddie Freeman grounds into a double play. Their only consolation is that, since the mighty Red Sox have also fallen, their own embarrassing elimination comes almost as an afterthought.

While other teams have suffered precipitous late-season collapses (1964 Phillies, 1978 Red Sox) and other pennant races have gone down to the wire, this mystical confluence of baseball events on Rosh Hashanah eve is surely one for the ages -- unequaled in its own annals and inconceivable on any other field.

Sports reporting is replete with hyperbole, but I believe it's no exaggeration to assert that what we have just witnessed is the most memorable regular season day of baseball in the 150-year history of the game.