Rangers Destroy Houston, Punch Ticket to World Series

Was last night the last night of the Astros' dynasty?

Adolis Garcia encouraging the Houston crowd to boo louder after he crushed them with two homers to end their season. (Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)

First of all, y’all are absolute maniacs for lighting up our game chat yesterday with 1200+ comments. Yes, we all had a blast, Yes, we all need to get lives. No, I do not want to think about what we will do when baseball ends, but we’ve got a week to figure it out.

The best part of The Long Game is the community we have built, and the best way to find that connection with likeminded souls is by joining our chats. There’s no cursing or bullying or other lowest-common-denominator behavior that has ruined social media. People are kind and fun and funny and respectful. They share dessert and cocktail recipes while talking ball. (Yesterday I even learned what a Dollarita was. No, I will not be trying it!)

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I spent a good chunk of last Friday’s newsletter writing about why some guys are good in October and some stink. I did this because the Astros’ Cristian Javier, an unremarkable regular-season pitcher, had allowed just 5 hits and 2 runs in his last 22.1 postseason innings and it made no sense to me, a person who has watched baseball every day for most of her adult life.

During Javier’s fabulous Game 3 outing during the ALCS last Wednesday, the Hall of Fame pitcher-turned-television-analyst John Smoltz tried to convince me and other viewers that Javier’s October magic was anything but luck:

Smoltz, bless him, tried to explain the different gear Javier uses in the postseason and why, but it sounded like gibberish to me. I’m guessing if Javier could, he would pitch like Pedro Martinez all the time. If you had the ability to be the best pitcher in MLB, wouldn’t you do it year-round?

I don’t write this to use Smoltz as a punching bag, which has become another American pastime every October. I sympathize with him trying to make sense of Javier’s playoff brilliance when it never made any sense at all, because he’s paid by Fox to explain the inexplicable. Saying “there’s no explanation for this” would mean that anyone could make millions to do his job.

As humans, we search for order and meaning in everything we do and see. It’s hard for us to accept that after enduring largely predictable 162-game seasons each year where the best teams almost always come out on top, October baseball is played by a series of chaos agents. When things don’t make sense, we get scared.

I think this is why the MLB playoffs are so exhilarating and frustrating.

Javier took the ball last night in a winner-take-all Game 7 vs. the Rangers, and I’m guessing Houston players and fans went into the game thinking there was no pitcher on the roster they’d rather have on the mound. Javier entered the game with a reputation as an October monster. He had the Will to Win. He had some other gear, some mental toughness that chokers lack… A coolness that made him better than someone with a reputation for (fairly or not) cracking under pressure because they care too much, like Clayton Kershaw.

Last night, it took only four pitches for that narrative to collapse.