Ladies and gentleman- he fields, he hits grand slams and now we know he can pitch a scoreless inning during a 20 inning marathon.
2. The longer a game lasts, the harder it is to leave:
I couldn't do anything else. Especially after the 11th inning. Not that I don't usually ignore things around me during Cards games, but this game left me alone in my house-in the dark-and refusing to communicate with anyone through anything more than a text.
3. The Mets really didn't want to win:
I know you're thinking, "But they won! The Cards lost!" Perhaps we should rewind to the ...18th inning (?), when LaRussa pretty much conceded the game by throwing utility guys Felipe Lopez, and in the two subsequent innings, Joe Mather, out on to the mound to play the role of pitcher. Why didn't the Mets score, like, eight runs?
Not to play "Mean Girl", but do they really like us or something? I know you will counter with the argument that the Cardinals didn't really seem to want to win either, but I have a theory. We'll get there. Just a few more...
4. Lopez and Mather take "utility" to a whole new level:
They will do anything. Let's see what else we can make them do!
5. Some people are too lazy to leave their nosebleed seats and move down to the luxury seats:
In one of the latter innings, the Fox camera was focused on one fan, then slowly panned out to show him sitting in the third upper deck all alone. Why are you so lazy and sad, drama queen?
6. McCarver becomes funny when the game gets too long:
I was annoyed with him in the beginning, as usual. He talked about Garcia's no-hitter from the third inning on. He kept saying things like, "This player NEVER..." and "This player ALWAYS..." as if to purposefully jinx them. Then, somewhere around the 14th inning, he became funny. Or maybe I got delirious.
7. We get geeky when they get human:
Nerd Alert! Every Cardinal fan I've talked to thus far cannot stop geeking-out over the inning Lopez pitched. We find it highly amusing and humorous that Lopez and other players (Like Wainwright! And Pujols!) were also cracking up at the situation. Call it infectious joy.
They usually spend a lot of time masking their emotions. It gets boring listening to the usual cliched remarks after every game. That was some real emotion in an unreal situation. And we loved it.
And how about a theory:
In the spirit of the final season of the epically awesome series Lost and Doc Jensen's lengthy, baffling, and "out-there" theories featured at ew.com, I couldn't help but come up with an explanation for this *illogical game.
*Illogical because we could not, for the life of us, score a run---even with our runners at second and third with NO OUTS in the 14th. Not a characteristic of a LaRussa team!
It may be crazy, but I couldn't shake the feeling that the Cardinals were stuck in a limbo world. It was almost like purgatory. It was as if the baseball powers were telling us,
"Big Mac as hitting coach? Not without a price! You must remain in this game against the only other team that will not score, the Mets (who are apparently on their way to Hell). Once you have suffered through the imposed penance and atoned for this sin, we will re-evaluate."
Yes. I was thinking this during the game. Hey, it was 20 innings long. Do you blame me?
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