Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments by Joe Posnanski

Author:Joe Posnanski [Posnanski, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

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Rain delayed Game 6 of the 2011 World Series by a day. That gave the Cardinals’ players time to reflect on how they were blowing the series. The Cardinals had lost a ninth-inning lead in Game 2. Their bats failed to show up in Game 4. And in Game 5, they squandered another lead and then failed to come through in the biggest moment.

Specifically: David Freese failed to come through. In the seventh inning, with the score tied, Freese came up with the bases loaded. On the first pitch, he lofted an easy fly ball to end the threat.

“If he sees a good pitch, it’s his job to swing at it,” Cardinals’ manager Tony La Russa insisted. “He needs to keep swinging.”

Foreshadowing.

Game 6 of the 2011 World Series was a freewheeling carnival of a game, one of the wildest and weirdest and funnest in baseball history. Was it a great game? Maybe not. It was more like the description film critic Pauline Kael had for Star Wars: “A box of Cracker Jack which is all prizes.”

Top of the first inning, the Rangers took a 1–0 lead.

Bottom of the first, St. Louis took the lead themselves.

Top of the second, Texas tied the game.

The Cardinals committed a brutal error in the fourth and Texas took the lead 3–2.

The Rangers committed a brutal error, and the score was once again tied.

The Cardinals committed another error—this time it was David Freese dropping an easy pop-up—and Texas had the lead again.

Texas committed an error in the sixth, and the score was tied.

Finally in the seventh inning, the Rangers seemed to put an end to the nonsense. Third baseman Adrián Beltré launched a long home run to right field. Nelson Cruz followed with an upper deck shot of his own.

And the Rangers carried a two-run lead into the ninth. They sent in one of the hardest throwers in baseball, Neftalí Feliz, to clinch the game and a Rangers championship. Feliz gave up a double to Albert Pujols and walked Lance Berkman.

David Freese came up with two outs and two runners on.

Neftalí Feliz threw a 98-mph fastball on the outside half of the plate. David Freese poked it to right field.

What strikes me about the moment now, looking back, is that when the ball left the bat, nobody knew how it would turn out. Freese hit it well but not too well. When he hit it, the ball had a chance to be anything—a home run, a routine fly out, a double, a triple, a fantastic catch . . .

All any of us could do was watch.

Texas right fielder Nelson Cruz drifted back on the ball. He seemed to have a play. But something about the trajectory of the ball fooled him. He reached up, but the ball carried over his glove and crashed into the wall, ricocheting back to the infield. By the time the Rangers chased it down, the Cardinals had scored the tying run. And David Freese stood on third base.

He’d already lived his biggest dreams.

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