You want to know pain, Philadelphia
fans? Here's pain. It's extra innings at home, so all your
team has to do is score one run.
One run, the game's over, and the pressure is on the other contending
teams. Your team has seven innings
in which to do this. They don't
need a big hit. They don't even
need a hit. All they need to get
that run in, most of the time, is to avoid striking out or popping up. Just put the bat decently on the
ball. And they can't do it.
While they seem to be able to do
everything else. The Reds'
pitchers, Maloney, Ellis, and Tsitouris, hold the Pirates scoreless for fifteen
innings. The fielders back them up
beautifully. League-leaders, as
both pitchers and fielders, playing their expected game. But what is it when they bat?
Here's our catcher, Don Pavletich,
up in the bottom of the eleventh.
Two singles and a perfect sacrifice bunt have put men on second and
third. He strikes out. Here's our shortstop, Leo Cardenas, up
in the bottom of the thirteenth with the bases loaded and one out. He pops up. Finally here's Deron Johnson, our cleanup hitter, our RBI
leader, up in the last of the fourteenth with the bags loaded again with one out. He strikes out.
And we wouldn't even have been in
this position if we had taken advantage of so many good chances in the
regulation nine innings. Fourth
inning. Chico Ruiz leads off with
a single. Bunted over to
second. Steals third! That Chico. Here we go.
Maloney's in his groove — and oh man when Maloney is in his groove you
are not going to touch him. Not on
that night. (Five one-hitters and
two no-hitters he's going to pitch in his career.) All he's going to need is a run. One run. Our
Musial, our Mays, our Ruth, Frank
Robinson, is at the plate. He pops
up. Now it will take a hit, not
too unlikely with Deron Johnson stepping in. He strikes out.
That is the way it's going to
go. Eighteen men are going to be
stranded on the bases, fourteen of them in scoring position. By the end of the game, after midnight,
we will, counting the preceding day's shutout and the last eight innings of the
last game against the Mets, have gone 33
straight innings without scoring a run. In the last 25 of those innings we will leave 29 men on
base, 25 of whom will have been in scoring position.
That gives you an idea of the pain
in Cincinnati. For the pain in the
surrounding area, out beyond a hundred miles, add in the pain of waiting —
while the static clears, while Hoyt pulls himself together, while the over-ride
for station identification runs its course. Then, after the wait, in how many
living rooms: "God Almighty, that runner didn't score!" Twenty-five different times in two
nights you would hear that.
Pain is unreliably recorded, as
physicians who try to get their patients to self-report their pain on a 1-10
scale well know. But provocations
to pain, like pressure on a nerve, being measurable, are reliably recorded. Here our latter-day statisticians tell
us, through their Leverage Index (how much pressure is on the player at bat —
which reads out as anxiety in the fan, and his eventual pain), that in the
bottom of the ninth, the Reds' first chance to end the game, the LI number for
each successive batter went 2.22, 3.22, 2.88, 4.32. When Don Pavletich came up with two outs and men still on
first and third it went to 4.90.
In the eleventh it went from 3.34 to 6.38, the runners dying at second
and third. Pretty much the same in
the thirteenth and fourteenth innings, with a 5.80 in there.
The graph of Philadelphia pain
shows no single game at all comparable to this. The closest one, the 1-0 game where Ruiz stole home, did
have a higher LI in it (7.02 when Ruben Amaro came to bat in the ninth) but
nothing like the repetition here, the pounding on the sore spot. Amaro struck out and their game was
over; our man struck out and we had to go through it three more times.
Maybe it's not until you add in
the season pressure that you'll see Cincinnati pulling away. The Reds are given a second
chance. St. Louis miraculously
loses two to the Mets while we win one.
Tie again. Only now there
are only two games left. Each game
is so crucial. Our ∆POFF number, showing the
difference the game will make in our season — is 44.6. Way beyond anything Philadelphia has
seen.
You've got pain possibility of the
highest magnitude here, only now it's going to be pain with irony. We're playing Philadelphia. The
great losers. They're out of it
now, mangled, on their way from the emergency room to their beds. The last guys in the world you'd expect
to put up a fight.
Well, it's still living drama for
us, and here we go, a run in the first and two more in the sixth and, with Jim
O'Toole in his groove it looks like
we've got it. We enter the eighth
with a win expectation (WE, see http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/)
of 94%.
What we Cincinnati fans need is a
pain gauge on our arms. Like a
blood pressure cuff. Something the
pain umpire could see. Thomas,
single. Rojas, walk. Taylor, single. Callison comes up and the LI is up to
3.42. Add that to our game
anxiety, the base for every batter, and you get 47.88. Off the charts. Acting manager Sisler brings in Billy
McCool, our Billy, our savior down the stretch. He strikes out Callison! Billy McCool.
Billy McCool. We roll the
name with love. One more out now,
Billy. Richie Allen. FAI still up there, at 47.33.
Well, why drag it out. Allen triples, Johnson doubles, and
Philadelphia, that mangled snake, leads 4-3.
Our ninth inning was made for
those whose universe has a place for malice. There could not have been arranged, in the rotation of
batsmen, a combination of names more likely to raise our hopes than
"Pinson," "Robinson," and "Johnson." Or set us up for three deeper jabs of
pain. Pinson grounds out, Robinson
grounds out, and Johnson strikes out.
Just when we thought we had had all the downers we could bear the fates
— gods, the universe — lift us up so we can be dashed to the ground again.
Where this leaves us in the pain
competition I frankly am not sure.
I don't want to claim too much.
I admit that Philadelphia suffered longer. But I think that Cincinnati suffered so intensely in those
last few days that the total, the area under the curve, must be close.
Try picturing the graph. Remember that Joe Morgan, in the eyes
of Bill James (the father of the new baseball statistics), beat out all the
other second basemen by having just two years, 1975 and 1976, way beyond
anybody else's years. The Reds'
1964 graph will look like Morgan's graph.
Two tremendous peaks put him on top.
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