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October 20, 2009

Prospectus Hit and Run

Double-Barreled Disappointment

by Jay Jaffe

The late Bart Giamatti famously observed that baseball is designed to break your heart, but the former Commissioner was notably silent about its ability to strangle you with your own entrails. That's how I felt on Monday, watching two teams near and dear fritter away late-inning leads and ultimately suffer walk-off losses.

Last Friday had me aglow. For the first time since October 9, 2004 and just the second time in my entire adult life, the Dodgers and Yankees both won playoff games. These are the two teams at the heart of what I've long referred to as my Bicoastal Disorder, a complicated set of rooting interests borne of blood and geography. My dream of a World Series which would replicate the formative matchups of my youth was intact. The drop from that high point to Monday's action was dizzying, to say the least.

I offer that introduction not as a plea for sympathy. Indeed, the inherent contradictions of this life I've chosen have been the fuel for nearly a decade of writing beyond the decimals and differentials that make up so much of my work here, and I'm hardly ungrateful for this playoff bounty, particularly in the face of an angry mob of Tigers/Cardinals/Twins/Your-Team-Here fans. Nonetheless, Monday's twin killing will have to suffice as an excuse for the rather disjointed account that follows. As a fan, I feel as though I've been run over by a Mack truck. As an analyst... yep, Mack Truck again.

By far the more glancing of the two blows from Monday's action came in the ALCS, where the Yankees squandered a 3-0 lead thanks to a curious set of decisions by Yankees (over)manager Joe Girardi, all of which blew up in his face in spectacular fashion à la Wile E. Coyote. I'll leave that postmortem to others except to note that the Yankees still hold a two games to one lead in the series. Suffice it to say that my forehead was sufficiently tenderized for the nightcap.

As with the rest of the NLCS, Game Four continued to defy the percentages. Randy Wolf yielded a homer to a lefty hitter, Ryan Howard. The league's best bullpen and the league's best closer, Jonathan Broxton, faltered, while the shakier Phillies bullpen and their historically awful closer, Brad Lidge, held their ground. It happens.