Well, darn [1]. Hottest hitter on the club up, tie game just a worm-killer/little dunker/smash single/double/triple/home run/wild pitch/passed ball/balk away, and all for naught. As Joshua likes to say sagely, “That happens sometimes.” Wonder what tomorrow will bring — no closer is safe, that's for sure. Dan Kolb's meltdown was one of the more startling gag jobs I've seen in since…oh hell, since Looper on Opening Day. If Marcus Giles gets eaten up by that mean hop on Victor Diaz's shot to second, Kolb could easily have departed the loser with a big zero under IP. But he got two outs out of it, somehow, and we had too far to go, despite some pretty stirring heroism.
I see (OK, hear) lots of faults — most glaringly, Jose Reyes makes Ryan Thompson look like an OBA machine and Kaz Matsui seems to be hypnotized by any ground ball that arrives at more than a 1-degree angle — but you know what? I'm coming to really like this team of ours. You never know if they're going to do something brilliant, brave, boneheaded or bizarre, and everytime you assume any of the four is impossible, it happens. Or almost does.
So we clawed our way back to the summit, slipped on a patch of ice and fell off again, this time for keeps. So what. I can't believe it's 13 hours until we get another game. Get those guys back on the field and give us some more ball!
I was gonna tell a baseball-card story about Royce Ring and Rich Sauveur, but it'll wait.