This is objectively great and I hate it.
That’s it, right? That’s how to put that? The Giants are playing the Dodgers in a winner-take-all playoff game, and it’s as dramatic as that sounds, and the eyes of the baseball world will be on this game and this game only and it’s terrible and I hate it so, so much. What if the Giants crap the bed like they did in Game 2 and Game 4?
What if the Dodgers get to Logan Webb and Julio Urias is untouchable again and the Dodgers get to the NLCS, where, let’s be honest here, they’ll just sail through against the Braves, and then they get to the World Series where they play some cheating asshole team — it doesn’t matter which! — and then by any objective measure they’ll be the good guys but we’re not objective no we have hardened hearts no we will fight tooth and nail no no no and it’s October 1993 again when I was a boy at Dodger Stadium and I put the cap on my head like the San Francisco boys used or should I put a uniform on and Piazza was homering no and Mondesi was homering no and Piazza was homering again no no no and no I said no I won’t no-
Oh man, just barely managed to snap myself out of that. I was a hair’s breadth from writing Ulysses 2. Close call!
Yes, there are also extremely good outcomes. Maybe Webb shuts the Dodgers down again. Maybe Mike Yastrzemski finally hits one of those rockets fair, maybe in the late innings of a close game to give the Giants a lead they don’t relinquish. Maybe Camilo Doval makes the Dodgers look silly. Maybe Gavin Lux stands befuddled on the field again as the Giants celebrate all around him. There are plenty of great things that could happen tonight.
But mostly, I’m nervous about the other possibility. I’m terrified of the other possibility. I have heard Dodger fans at work this week — THIS WEEK — say that the Giants don’t belong on the same field as them, that the Dodgers are obviously better, that they are looking forward to this game. Looking forward to it! As if baseball is not a Rube Goldberg machine invented solely to ferret out and punish hubris. And they call themselves fans.
If I know anything about the baseball gods, they would punish me for making that statement, but they might show mercy to others. I am in no sense worthy to question their ways, and I leave the higher mysteries in their capable hands.
The Giants offense is due. One could say that #TheyreDue, and then use that hashtag on Twitter in an attempt to get it trending like a modern day #RallyZito, if one were so inclined. But even without that — it was #TheyreDue — this coaching staff has been excellent all year. They have done a phenomenal job of getting their players ready for the game, of planning for the pitcher they’re facing, of mixing and matching and platooning until they get the best matchups they can. They’re entirely capable of coming up with a plan to beat Urias, of getting LaMonte Wade in the game late against a righty when they need a hit. They can do this. It’s entirely likely the team will be set up for success.
But as to whether they’ll succeed, well, who knows? The Dodgers are very good. The Giants are also very good, and one very good team will have to lose, because this is how it works. It’s both unfair and brutally fair; you win or you don’t, and that’s all there is to it. Maybe one game shouldn’t define your season, but something has to, so why not this one game?
This is what I have to remind myself of, and I’l remind you too: Breathe in. Breathe out. It’s going to be okay.
Maybe not in a baseball sense, but in a cosmic one. You’re still gonna die one day, and eventually no one on Earth will remember you or how your favorite sports team did in a sports game, so hopefully that’ll cheer you up. Always good to have perspective!
The Giants were one game better than the Dodgers all year. Now they have to be one game better than the Dodgers in this series. Like Jessie Spano, I’m so excited and I’m so scared. It’s what we desperately wanted to avoid. It’s how it had to be. I believe they can win. I believe they can lose.
It was always going to come to this. I wish it wouldn’t have.