Yordan's Game Winning Homer, and a Meditation on Why Hope Makes All the Anxiety and Dread Worth It
The dominant emotion of Game 1 was dread. The sense that a loss was coming, and that every bit of sliver of hope was quickly snuffed out. Until, with one swing, hope ruled.
Playoff baseball is known for tension and anxiety; the constant belief that disaster could be right around the corner. Maybe the dominant emotion we have while watching out team in the playoffs is pain. But a better word seems to be dread. And that dread is is constantly palpable when your team is losing.
Certainly, those were my emotions early in Game 1 of the ALDS. Justin Verlander gave up six earned runs and ten hits over just four innings. He had only given up six earned runs and ten hits on one other occasion this year, against these same Mariners on May 22.
And that performance brought dread. It put the Astros behind the Mariners 6-3 in the middle innings. They seemed likely to lose the game.
That dread intensified as the offense was unable to score. The Astros got a single from Kyle Tucker in the sixth, but couldn’t get a second hit. Then Eugenio Suarez took Cristian Javier deep in the top of the seventh and the Mariners’ lead and my dread as an Astros fan grew. Jose Altuve grounded into a double play to end the seventh and the dread grew even more.
The numbers say the Astros had a 3.1% of coming back at the moment. The vibes said it was much lower than that.
The tension and anxiety that make up playoff baseball exist because of hope. It is that hope that keeps us coming back to support our team.
In the darkest days of the Astros nadir a decade ago, we desperately were looking for any scraps of hope we could find; the hope that the misery would end one day. That maybe the new second basemen might play bigger than his height. That the pitcher we took in the first round would develop into a frontline starter.
The anxiety is worth it because of the hope.
In the bottom of the eighth, when Alex Bregman hit a two-run home run, that hope grew. Maybe, just maybe, that will spark something more. But then the dread returns. With a runner on base, Trey Mancini could only foul off a cement-mixer slider from Andres Munoz. Munoz recovered to throw a much better slider that struck Mancini out. The odds of winning the game were only 6.9%. It sure seemed like the Mariners’ day.
But hope sustains baseball fans. It provides us reason to want to live through the anxiety. Bad things may happen, but maybe something will work out.
The 2016 season was a frustrating one, as the Astros were not able to build on their shocking run to the playoffs in 2015. The team turned into a sellers at the deadline, sending a reliever to the contending Dodgers for an unknown prospect. Maybe he’ll turn into something one day. Maybe even a starter, or, this is unlikely, but he could be a star one day.
Christian Vazquez led off the 9th with a routine grounder to short. The odds of a win dropped to 4.1%. The dread returned.
But then, there was some hope. David Hensley was sent up to pinch hit for Mauricio Dubon, and he had a great at-bat, fouling off a pair of two-strike fastballs to stay alive. And it cracked Mariner reliever Paul Sewald, who hit Hensley to put him on first.
Hope built. Hope makes the anxiety worthwhile. Maybe the hope can overcome the dread. Like when down 1-0 in the World Series and down a run in the ninth inning and facing the best closer in baseball, maybe your seventh best hitter will have a wonder-swing that produces a game tying opposite field home run, propelling the team to an extra inning win.
Then Jose Altuve struck out. I mean, if anybody is going to be a postseason hero, it’s going to be Altuve, who has delivered in the postseason so many times before. But here, he struck out. The chances of winning were at 4.2%.
Dread built. Only one out away.
Jeremy Pena came to the plate. Everyone knows the scouting report on Pena. Spin it off the plate and he can’t lay off. Sewald did this on an 0-1 pitch, getting a whiff. His 0-2 pitch was too far away. But then his 1-2 pitch was bad and caught the plate. Pena could make contact with this slider. He singled.
Hope rose up and the dread receded. Maybe it would be like the Jeff Kent game in 2004, the Chris Burke game in 2005, the Carlos Correa opposite field shot in 2019, or the Altuve pennant winner later that series.
Maybe, just maybe things would change.
Mariners manager Scott Servais certainly thought maybe, just maybe, things would change. And he decided to do something about it. He marched to the mound to remove Sewald and bring in Robbie Ray, the 2021 AL Cy Young winner, and more importantly, a left-handed pitcher.
For Yordan Alvarez was coming to the plate. Servais wanted the platoon advantage. Astros fans just wanted one chance for a pitch to be down the middle. And Yordan missed it on the first pitch, fouling it back.
“Damn. You get one pitch per at bat and Yordan just missed it.”
Once again, dread.
Ray delivered again. It was again down the middle. This time, well, you know that Yordan didn’t miss.
There are lots of ways to watch sports and lots of ways to enjoy it. But for each of these approaches—no matter how analytical, historical, psychological, or communal—all share something in common. Hope. The idea that all the dread and all the anxiety and the tension will be relieved by a moment that will make it all worthwhile.
A reminder that all the dread and all the anxiety can go away…at least for fans of our team. There is hope that we will see something memorable that we will be talking about for ages. And something that will sustain us the next time the hope and dread returns, which in our case, will be on Thursday in Game 2.