Baseball is like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: you never know what you are going to get. In the case of Game One, you got a 2:28 express, with approximately two total sorta-cool things that happened.
In the case of Game 2, you got everything and nothing you’ve ever seen in a baseball game. It was bonkers. And we’re headed back to Houston tied 1-1. If you only watch baseball as a casual fan, please increase your dosage. Last night was another prime example why you can’t kill a sport that was born 178 years ago.
Here’s a summary list of things that happened last night.
Running list of the absolutely ridiculous things that happened in that game pic.twitter.com/58dq3ax967
— Chris Abshire (@ChrisAbshire) October 26, 2017
Now some of the visuals.
The Chris Taylor bounce is one of the most cray-cray-WHAAAAA? anyone has ever seen. The kind of karmic perfection needed to have the thin bill of your cap deflect a ball that would otherwise go to the wall for additional runs, and to re-direct it to a teammate? Cray-cray.
Then you had umpire Laz Diaz returning the karmic favor, when he found himself impossibly in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Laz Diaz saving the #Astros. pic.twitter.com/Pq6K6hgLAX
— Max Wildstein (@MaxWildstein) October 26, 2017
There was an idiot Dodger fan who thought jumping into the Astros bullpen was going to be a good idea. Hint: It wasn’t.
This dude jumped into the Astros bullpen and made it exactly zero feet @Starting9 pic.twitter.com/J7yIiLvPpo
— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) October 26, 2017
There was a bat-flip-palooza between Yasiel Puig and Carlos Correa, and nobody got their pants in a wad. “If they hit a homer, they’re going to flip over there, too,” Correa said. “So we’re going to go out there and play the way we play the game. We’ll play with a lot of swagger, and let them know we’re here.”
Puig had no problem with it: “I loved it,” Puig said. “It was a little bit higher than the bat flips I normally do; he was happy and that’s the way you should play in the World Series.”
The game ended up running 4:19, and finished well past 12:30 in the east last night. But if you want to see a more amazeballs baseball game on a huge stage than that, good luck. And I’m not even including the universally loved Vin Scully first pitch “skit/ceremony.”
From Vin Scully to Fernando Valenzuela. What a #WorldSeries moment. https://t.co/jX2iIZx26h
— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) October 26, 2017
Oh what a night, right Frankie Valli?
The Vin Scully skid was excruciating too watch.
Just introduce Yager and Fernando and spare Vin the embarrassment of portraying a D level actor.
Not much of a baseball fan anymore and didn’t watch the game but that 4+ minute Vin Scully skit instantly sent me back in time to my youth as soon as they sent out Fernando. Growing up in Wisconsin, me and all my neighborhood chums were Brewer fan, pretending to be Cecil Cooper, Ben Oglivie, Gorman Thomas, Rollie Fingers, Pete Vuckovich. One summer “Fernando-mania” struck and all of us tried to be him, switching from righty to leftie! Czabe, you’ve done it again…thanks for making my Friday and sending this 49 year old on a time machine, and maybe, just maybe forcing this guy to tune into a baseball game for the first time in years.
Another 49 y.o. here. I watched most of the game, but turned it off in the ninth. Derp! Missed the first pitch skit too, but man, that was pure perfection. Back then my Brewers were AL, but the Dodgers and Braves were my NL teams. Fernando, Yeager, Don Sutton, Ron Cey, Davey Lopes, Steve Sax, Steve Garvey, Kenny Landreaux, and THE announcer for the ages, Vin Scully.