Each year as we pass through October I enjoy the memories that pop up in my Facebook feed from Octobers past. Specifically the Octobers of 2014 and 2015, when the Royals were keeping me up late so many nights as they won two-straight American League pennants.
Then there were the memories from years after the R’s run, when I joked about not thinking I would still stay up late to watch baseball when, in fact, I was staying up until 1:00 watching more crazy, extra-inning games.
Not this year, though. I have been casually watching games over the past week. But I generally check out around 11:00/11:30 regardless of the state of the game. I don’t have enough invested in any team this year plus I’m a few years older and have a harder time justifying being miserable the next day for a game that I don’t really care about.
The bitch of that is the meds that the good doc put me on to fight my poison ivy rash keep me from sleeping for more than two hours at a time at night. So I’ve been waking up around 1:30 or so, coming downstairs to read for awhile as my body resets, and checking the scores.
When I did that Thursday morning I was shocked to see that the Dodgers blew their lead and the Washington Nationals had advanced to the NLCS with a dramatic, extra inning win. I was not shocked to see that Clayton Kershaw was responsible for the Dodgers giving up their lead.
Although he’s had a few amazing post season performances, there is no doubt that he is now the biggest postseason…I’m struggling for the right word here…failure/frustration/goat/disappointment of his generation. One of the three or four best pitchers of his era and he consistently comes up short in the biggest moments of October. Of course, playing for the Dodgers he may still have four or five more chances to finally win a World Series even as his skills are slowly fading. That leaves him with, at best, a chance to have a John Elway-like career in terms of postseason success. It’s going to be hard to wipe away all those failures, though.
Good for Howie Kendrick for hitting the 10th inning grand slam that sent the Nats through. Seems like he’s been a very solid, but never great, player forever. I like that he has such a big moment to cap his career.
I also missed yesterday’s other game 5, the one in Atlanta between the Cardinals and Braves. L wanted me to pitch to her so we spent half an hour in the front yard hitting before I remembered that the game had started. I checked the score between pitches, saw the Cards were up 10–0, and knew I didn’t even have to turn it on.
I was pleased that this was finally the year that the Twins-Yankees matchup turned out differently. Oh, wait, it didn’t.
My World Series champ pick has been Houston. So I’m a little surprised they are facing a game five against Tampa today. Which also bums me out because that series going long means their rotation won’t be aligned ideally to face the Yankees should they advance. If things open up for the Yankees, I’ll probably dive back into the Netflix queue for the rest of the month.