The Cubs and the White Sox finished play with both of their managers expecting to be elsewhere next year. Nothing could have brought the baseball season to a more definite conclusion–at least as far as a Chicagoan was concerned–and I planned to leave the sport behind as soon as possible this fall. It didn’t turn out that way, however. Instead, baseball loaded its playoffs with the most likable set of four teams ever to take part in the league championship series. When the true test came, a week ago Thursday, with the Bears and the National League playoffs battling side by side on adjacent television sets in a friend’s living room, I spent most of the night watching baseball–and didn’t regret it a bit.
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Rescue 911. If there was ever a pair of playoff series that both needed and deserved an overture–an introduction to the players and the teams–it was these two, because this has been a postseason for the baseball connoisseur.
In the National League, the Pirates, too, battled both their reputation and their opponents, the Atlanta Braves. Both teams relied on pitching, although the Pirates had the stronger lineup and were expected to advance without much trouble this year after losing to the Cincinnati Reds last year. What happened, however, was that in a series that went the full seven games–the last last Thursday, opposite the Bears–four games ended in shutouts, three of those by a 1-0 score. This was baseball at its highest level, where each pitch followed strategically out of the one before it and led into the one after it. When the Braves’ Alejandro Pena (their newly acquired bull pen stopper, who has found new life in Atlanta by throwing nothing but fastballs, one inning an outing) ended the 1-0 sixth game by striking out Andy Van Slyke with a runner at third base–on a change-up!–it was one of the great moments in the 23-year history of the playoffs. CBS executives, however, had already written the series off; fair-weather fans ran to their remote controls.
To top it all off, there was an abundance of empty seats at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium, so much of an abundance that thousands of Braves fans had flown into Pittsburgh that day, knowing there would be seats available, and there were still empty seats. “‘The Chuck Noll Show’ must be on TV tonight,” said one friend. “Or maybe Mario Lemieux’s making an appearance at a big shopping mall,” said another. Whatever the case, it was an embarrassment for Pittsburgh, making for a citywide choke.
