Please inject this Padres-Brewers series directly into my bloodstream. It has been riveting. It has been electrifying. It has been baffling. It has been simultaneously soaring and heartbreaking. This series is what makes baseball the very best game on Planet Earth.
Of course, I wish it meant more … I wish the winner of this series would go directly to the World Series, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Frankly, I wish this series was a best-of-21, with the winner getting a World Series trophy the size of the Trevi Fountain. But, as we used to tell our daughters, you get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit, and we should be thankful for every Padre-Brewer moment.
Game 1 was bananas. You already know the big finish: The Brewers led 3-2 in the top of the ninth, and the game had been tense and wonderful — San Diego found a way to score two runs off The Miz, the Brewers came back when the fabulous Jackson Chourio mashed a home run, the Padres threatened, the Brewers threatened, the Padres loaded the bases, the Brewers’ William Contreras hit the go-ahead homer; it was more than baseball. It was a Broadway show. It was an Avengers movie.
And then in the ninth, with Milwaukee closer Trevor Megill on the mound, San Diego’s Dustin Harris managed a single, and then Ty France blasted a high, super-high, absurdly high fly ball to left. The exit velocity was 105 mph, which is home-run power. The launch angle was 49 degrees, which is not.
“Too high,” the fan shouts in “Major League.”
This felt too high. Or was it? Statcast™ projects that it would have been a home run in Daikin Park, which, well, yeah, I had to look it up; that’s Enron Park/Minute Maid Park in Houston. How long have they been calling it Daikin Park? What is a Daikin? Anyway, you probably know all about that short porch in left in Houston. The Crawford Boxes are only 315 feet away from home plate. I’ll admit I’m surprised it would not be projected as a home run at Fenway Park, but Statcast™ knows more about this stuff than I do.
Anyway, Milwaukee has one of the deepest left-field walls in baseball at 342 feet, so Statcast™ would definitely have it falling short of the wall.
But at the same time, it LOOKED like it was going to be a home run. From every camera angle, the ball seemed to be heading way out.
And then it hit the roof.
Baseball has ground rules about balls that hit the roof … they’re established and agreed upon and, in this case, in my humble opinion, they’re dumb. The ground rule here is that if the ball hits the roof in fair territory, it’s “in play.” I have no idea what that means. Is this Calvin Ball? The ball hit the roof, and it kindly dropped down into Chourio’s glove. How can that be an out? The ball HIT something. He caught it on a ricochet. How can that be an out? If a ball bounces off the Green Monster and is caught on the fly, it’s not an out.
But these are the rules, and France was called out, and the Brewers won Game 1.
Game 2, in many ways, was even zanier.
