In his August 26 New York Post Column, Kevin Kernan wrote: “MEMO to Jimmy Rollins: The best team won.
Yes, it’s still the dog days of August…but the NL East race is over…the Mets are merrily on their way to another October…Sure, there are magic numbers ahead and the official champagne clinching, but the Mets have no worries until October.”
What confuses me is neither the writer’s arrogance nor his lack of mathematical insight, but rather how a man with so little of the required knowledge and so little heart could find employment as a baseball essayist.
Surely a man whose job it is to write about baseball must be aware that what makes this sport stand apart from the other major American pastimes is its lack of a clock.
I’ve been following baseball since the Fab 50s, and I consequently know that you always have a chance in baseball—until the last batter deals with the last pitch of the last out in the last inning.
The mountain doesn’t matter; there’s always time to climb to the peak and pull yourself onto the summit. The only matters are those of talent, tenacity, and yes, fate.
This isn’t a football field, where you can “take a knee,” and figuratively cower while the armored opponent stands helplessly listening to a countdown, merely because he has used all his timeouts.
This isn’t a hardwood court, where you can play “hot potato” with the basketball, effectively “freezing” your foe’s ability take that one last shot—the one that might swing the game his way, even as the clock races toward zero.
This isn’t a hockey rink, where you can literally sling the puck to the other end of the playing surface, knowing the adversary can’t possibly bring it back in the time remaining.
Tick…tick…tick.
Yes, in baseball you can intentionally walk a better, or two, if you feel the need. Even three, without affecting the score.
But you can only do that just so often. Eventually, you have to pitch to someone; you have to give your opponent a chance—his innings!
Yogi was right: It ain’t over til it’s over. You ain’t out of it til you’re out of it.
You can come back from an 8-0 deficit in the bottom of the seventh inning. The Athletics did, by scoring 10 runs that inning against the Cubs in game 4 of the ’29 series.
You can have a 13½-game lead in the second week of August and still lose the pennant on the last day of the season. The ’51 Dodgers did.
You can blow a 6-game lead with only 12 left to play. The ’64 Phils did.
And you can lose your drive, your interest, your tenacity, and give fate that little kick in the face that turns it toward some other team—one that’s tougher, hungrier, more tenacious, more attuned to this game. You can lose a 7-game lead with three weeks left in the season, while your nearest rival wins 13 of their last 17.
Say hello to the post-season, Charley; enjoy the golf course, Willie.
Kernan should have known this.
Maybe he did, but to write that it was over when it wasn’t; that we were out of it before we were out of it—that was foolish.
Perhaps he knew it, but he just didn’t feel it. A real baseball man would have known it—and felt it, in his heart.
With baseball, as with many things in life, there’s always a chance.
The man obviously doesn’t have the heart for this game.
