No matter what happens we’ll always have that baseball classic in the cold autumn mist. We’ll always have the memory of two teams that didn’t quit and that final unpredictable bolt of brilliance when Scott Podsednik sent a home run into the Chicago night, and sent the White Sox to a 2-0 lead against the Houston Astros in the World Series.
It wasn’t a perfect game by any means. Too many mistakes, an umpire’s blown call, a couple of closers who couldn’t close. But baseball is at its best when players defy expectations, and there was the unlikely slugger, Podsednik, 0-for-the-regular-season in home runs, putting the ball in the seats in the ninth inning. The White Sox won 7-6 to move halfway to a title.
Maybe the Astros will rally now that they’re back home Tuesday night playing in their ballpark in front of fans savoring the first World Series in Houston. But the hunch here is that that Podsednik swing, rescuing his team after it had blown a two-run lead in the ninth, will be remembered as the key that made the Sox champs.
The national TV ratings are a bit lower this year, there being no Boston or New York team to watch. That’s a shame for the folks who are missing a World Series that reminds us of baseball’s essence, a game with a unique rhythm choreographed by the labor of its players, not the ticking of a clock. No matter how many cameras and computer gizmos are trained on the field, the games, thankfully, are still determined by the very human traits of ability, reflex and heart.
And error. Baseball is not football. It does not go to the videotape to overturn a referee’s decision, offer a reprieve and right a clear wrong. Jermaine Dye wasn’t really hit by a pitch in the seventh inning Sunday night. Yet that’s the way umpire Jeff Nelson saw it, ordering Dye to first base, loading the bases, even though the replay showed the pitch hit Dye’s bat barrel.
Astros manager Phil Garner argued briefly. He’s a baseball man, after all, accepting of the game’s human qualities and failings, an acceptance built over a career of 162-game seasons. The ump blew the call. Get over it. Had this been football, the officials would have huddled around a television monitor, while players and fans shivered and waited. Fairness, whatever that is in the course of a game or a season, might have been served, but at what cost? The drama, as well as the humanity, would have been lost.
We’re delighted that baseball leaves the replays to football. In baseball, the umps still rule. They may miss a call, but they miss it honestly, ruling on what they see and hear with their own eyes and ears, not relying on some mechanical eye in the sky.
The game moved on. Paul Konerko hit a grand slam, another remarkable turn in a series to store for a lifetime.
We don’t know how this series will end, who will succeed and who will fail. But we are witness to a drama that in some ways is more potent than a classic on the theatrical boards. This is life played out on a field, players gathered for a season and a series, stars and castoffs, their strengths and frailties on display game after game. Is it too early to start to hope we can do this again next year?
