Simply wow

As the late, great Mel Allen used to say, how about that?

Game 6 of the World Series take place in St. Louis last night, it lived up to the moniker of Fall Classic, and then some. 20 years and a day since Kirby Puckett sent me and 50,000 other Minnesota sports fans home from the Metrodome with the greatest sports memory of our lives, another game in a different city equaled the drama and reminded those of us watching why we started watching sports in the first place.

I watch a lot of games, some might say too many. Many are lousy, some great, very few stick in your memory past the season in which they were played. Last night’s contest, with its 5 blown leads, extra inning comeback and walk-off finish, was one that will endure. The Cardinals looked dead and buried multiple times, yet somehow came back to push it to tonight’s deciding 7th game.

Catching the last few innings with friends, it was amazing to watch the mood turn from indifference to pandemonium. When 30 people in a random bar hundreds of miles from the action are out of their seats cheering a game they barely cared about an hour earlier, you’ve got something special on your hands. You wait for games like that, you pray for games like that, you sift through endless amounts of garbage and BS for games like that. For all the negatives that sports have brought lately, there’s always that other side of a coin, the pure joy of watching improbable occurrences unfold in the most dramatic fashion. Just watching the faces of the fans in the stands, going from agony to ecstasy, back to agony and finally to a state of deliriously happy relief; well that’s been making me smile today every time it’s crossed my mind.

It seems like most of the talk about this Series has been about the lack of interest. The big markets and marquee teams are out, ratings are down, and baseball in general has taken a cultural backseat. That might all be true, but it makes no difference to me, if somebody wants to miss out on something amazing, that’s their problem. As George Carlin once said, “Just people some people are really f*cking stupid, that’s no reason we should adopt their standards.” This has been a great finale to the postseason, the best in years, and now we reach the end, with the dramatic finish everyone was hoping for.

As for tonight, I’m not foolish enough to expect anything approaching the rollercoaster that was Game 6. Lightning doesn’t strike twice, and games that are quite literally 1-in-a thousand don’t happen on back to back nights. But if it packs even half the drama, we are in for another big treat.

And by the way, for all the fans out there, particularly in Twins Territory, who had a problem with Joe Buck's final call, get a grip.  I'm no fan of the guy either, but considering the timing (almost 20 years to the day), the situation (Game 6 walk-off) and the fact it was his father's call, I have no problem with the "see you tomorrow night" paraphrase.  If it was anyone else saying it, if it had been uttered in the division series, these things would bother me.  As it is, the call fit perfectly, and the game itself was worthy of it's memory.

Play ball.