Negative 9 things.
Nine things:
1. Adrian Beltre, after the game: “I’m going home. I’m not ready to go home. I can’t process it yet that I’m going home.”
Me either.
I wasn’t ready to write this one.
Still not.
2. It was a terrible finish to the most unbelievable Texas Rangers season ever. An exceptionally great season.
That’s the takeaway that’s working right now to shove out the dark and consuming sports-feels, and ultimately that’s what 2015 has been about. Not about the bottom of the seventh.
No, it’s about everything that led to October 14th. Unforgettably great.
I’m not going to watch baseball the rest of the month, because I can’t. Not sure how soon I will sit down to write the next report, the one packing this awesome season back up and zipping the bag. Give me a few days to let this thaw, please.
3. The Blue Jays are very good. They are very good at talent acquisition and at baseball. There’s no shame in the paper outcome.
4. Jeff Banister said this to Eric Nadel on the season’s final pre-game manager’s show — in a game of this magnitude, especially on the road, you have to stay within yourself and stay in the moment, and slow the heart rate down. Get fast and you tend to make mistakes.
He said that before Game Five.
5. Ryan Goins and Kevin Pillar and Russell Martin were among several Blue Jays who managed to slow the heart rate down defensively yesterday.
I can’t really finish the thought right now. Next time. Maybe.
6. The Rangers hadn’t lost an ALDS road game since the ’90s. They’d won seven straight. One more and they’d have tied a Major League record. One more.
7. It’s not helpful, at least this soon, to reflect on what was one of the most dramatic, tense, intense, wild baseball games ever. And it may never be OK to reflect on, just as with Game Six in St. Louis, until Texas is the final team standing.
That’s a shame, because, man, what a game.
But I get it, and I’m right there with you.
8.
9. I’m close to physically ill, still. I can’t imagine how much it hurts for the players and the coaches and the trainers and the front office and the scouts and everyone else who kills it all year to get to a moment like yesterday’s, because it has to be 100 times more painful than it is for me, and mine’s as agonizing as I can imagine on a sports level.
But I’m at peace.
I’m a believer in writing while it’s raw, and for me that’s usually the play.
But occasionally it’s not, like now.
In spite of the title, this isn’t really a negative entry.
Actually, it’s not at all. Losses suck. Especially final ones. But 2015 was awesome. Awesome.
I’m really proud that the Texas Rangers are my team. That Jon Daniels is in charge of one facet, and Jeff Banister another. That they battle the way they do, that they overcome the way they do, that they embrace being underestimated. If your thought right now is that 2015 was a failure, well, I suppose every baseball season is a failure for 29 teams, by the strictest definition. But that’s a terrible way to look at this, I think.
I’m really proud that the Texas Rangers are my team.