Astros face tough odds after loss
Astros lose heratbreaker at bitter end
As this city cried about a roof controversy that rightfully had Selig squirming, the Sox simply played ball. They never were prouder than they were in the fifth, when they had every reason to surrender but decided instead to have fun in the open-air breezes. Joe Crede — who else? — started with a home run to cut the Sox deficit to 4-1. Juan Uribe singled. Then Scott Podsednik singled. And Tad Iguchi. And Jermaine Dye, sending runners around the bases like a too-easy video game. Was that the great Oswalt out there? And why did he look physically ill when A.J. Pierzynski ripped a ball that bounced on the warning track about 410 feet away, then skipped up the quirky, 10-degree, grass-covered incline in center field that so many Sox fans were worried about?
- Jay Mariotti
Geoff $)%#(@$ Blum…. When he played for the Astros, he was Adam’s favorite player, and he still has a lot of friends in the Astros’ clubhouse. How fitting, then, that a beloved ex-Astro utility player hits the winning home run in the top of the 14th inning, leading to a 7-5 White Sox win and giving Chicago a 3-0 lead in the World Series?
It’s not as if the Astros didn’t have their chances. Bottom of the ninth inning, bases loaded, two out. game tied at five runs apiece. All Morgan Ensberg had to do was to get a ball into the outfield on the ground. Houston wins 6-5, cuts Chicago’s in the Series to 2-1, and more than 40,000 fans go home happy. Unfortunately, Ensberg was a shining example of just how anemic the Astros’ offense has been in the clutch this season, swinging through strike three, and opening the doors for the White Sox.
Fourteen innings. Five hours and 41 minutes. I stayed up until 1.30am…and for what? Man, there isn’t enough coffee in this world to wake me up this morning. I feel as if I’ve been hit by a bus…and if the Astros had managed to win, my fatigue wouldn’t be an issue in the slightest. A win, and I could have pulled an all-nighter without even caring. Now, though, I’m fried, both emotionally and physically. My only goal is to get through today as best I can so I can collapse when I get home this afternoon.
HOUSTON — Geoff Blum. Who else would end Bud Selig’s slumber party, the longest game in World Series history, but a former Houston Astro who hasn’t been heard from in weeks? Geoff Blum is one of the ”Group 4” guys, the reserves who aren’t prioritized in batting practice. But the other day, Blum and the Group 4 guys had something to say to Ozzie Guillen.
“We know this is our time. We were even saying to him on the bus: ‘You can’t hide Group 4 anymore,”’ Blum said. “We’ve mostly been hiding out in the cage and in the clubhouse, killing the [food] spread. The other night, we got lobster and crab legs.”
When he returns to Chicago, Blum can eat for free in any White Sox-friendly place for the rest of his life. In the top of the 14th inning, well into the fifth hour, he lined a solo home run into the right-field seats at Minute Maid Park. If Soxdom can wait 88 years, I assume you can wait through a five-hour, 41-minute victory, assuming it leads to the parade and the sirens. And I think it’s safe to assume it will.
This wasn’t the kind of history anyone wanted to see, and if the commissioner wants kids to enjoy his annual showcase spectacle, he might want to make the starting times earlier and have more afternoon games, damn the networks. As we wondered if the game ever would end, tensions rose. Earlier, Carl Everett jawed at Astros manager Phil Garner in a dugout-to-dugout verbal shootout. Later, a Houston baseball writer wheeled around in his seat and confronted two Sox public-relations officials, telling them, “This is a working press box. This isn’t a party.” But in the end, there was Blum, the only midseason acquisition, the guy who was barbecued in Detroit late in the season, the guy who was offended when a radio reporter referred to the reserves as “scrubs” — becoming a South Side hero for the ages….
Lucky? No, droopy-eyed souls, this was about patience, perseverance, surviving after midnight, a victory that would have happened under the moon, the sun or, if closed, the steel-and-glass retractable roof of the Orange Juice Dome. They’ll say the Sox got another lucky break from a ball-strike call or two, part of a month of breaks involving umpiring snafus and injuries to opposing pitching aces. But in my mind, I’ll remember Game 3 for how they didn’t break in the marathon. And how they broke Roy Oswalt, who hasn’t been pummeled this mercilessly in months. And how in the process, they’ve just about broken the Astros in the October of a Sox lifetime, in a World Series that very quickly and tidily is purging 87 years of haunting memories on a quivering South Side.
It appears that, like Boston last year, Chicago is about to erase a lifetime of bad baseball memories. It was 86 years for the Red Sox, and if the White Sox can pull it off, and it appears likely that they will, it will erase 88 years. Just of where the world was in 1917 and where it is now. Yeah, though I hate to admit to the growing possibility that the Astros will not win this World Series, the White Sox ARE one hell of a story.
Some folks here in Houston are talking about the Astros choking, but I’m not certain that’s a fair accusation. In all honesty, the Astros have no business being here in the first place, but to their credit they did beat a far superior St. Louis team to get here. The Astros are simply doing what they did (or in this case, didn’t do) during the regular season. Leaving men on base, failing to take advantage of opportunities…yep, that’s the Astros we saw for 162 regular season games. When you have an offense as anemic as the Astros, you cannot be surprised when they are true to their character with a championship on the line. This is not a “failure” to be laid on any one individual. It would be easy to question Phil Garner for sticking with Roy Oswalt when he was getting hammered in the top of the fifth. Or Morgan Ensberg striking out in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded. This was a team effort- or lack of same, depending on your perspective, and it should be viewed as such.
Game Four is tonight. I hope the Astros can put off the seemingly inevitable. Until Chicago wins their fourth game, Houston isn’t dead, but being down 3-0 means that the team’s pulse is weak and thready. How many teams have come back from beind down 3-0 in the World Series? I don’t know the answer, but I can tell you that there haven’t been many.
Then again, that’s why they play one game at a time, eh??
