Sports.

A blast. And a moment of gratitude.

Number 5. Game 1. L-R. LFG.

I wasn’t even sure I cared who won.

There’s a certain comfort for me in settling in for Appointment Sports without a dog in the fight. There are times I still have a rooting interest (let’s go, NotAstros), but more often than not I end up taking my own temperature as the game unfolds. I know I’ll eventually be able to tap into the visceral feeling that bubbles up on a close two-strike call or a fly to the fence or a contested three or a fourth-and-inches; I figure out pretty easily who I’m pulling for in those moments.

It’s not the ideal, obviously. I much prefer the alternative.

But, still. Sports.

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I’d looked forward all week to this iconic clash, one that I don’t think any of the other major sports in this country can truly match. Celtics-Lakers? Cowboys-Steelers? Michigan-Ohio State? Sorry. Yankees-Dodgers is the pinnacle.

Still, for some reason I wasn’t all that geared up for the first pitch. I missed the player intros, without regret. I’d watched some of the pregame but then didn’t come back until the third inning. Maybe there’s a little deep-seated fatigue from the disappointing Rangers season that didn’t offer a fraction of what last year’s edition did. I don’t know.

A bit of a saddening thought did occur to me, as I turned the game back on — that I can’t imagine what my lazy engagement for Game One suggests non-Rangers and non-Diamondbacks fans were thinking and how they behaved last year as the World Series got rolling. Not exactly Yankees-Dodgers gravitas. Not that it matters.

Seven innings later, though, another thought crept in, a recurring one for me, especially as I’ve gotten older and been able to experience baseball in new ways through fatherhood. A thought that wavers between condolence and self-importance.

I sort of feel bad for people who don’t love baseball.

I mean, there’s no reason I should. It’s not the key to an enriching life, even if it has been for me. There are other things that can fill the role. Plus, it’s not something that truly, deeply matters, at least for most who don’t have a uniform on. But it allows us to get to highs and lows, escape and attachment and emotion, that aren’t as taxing and urgent and truly divisive like so much else can be.

It also allows people like me to have written bumptious crap like this:

And this:

But after the moment that ended Los Angeles (NL) 6, New York (AL) 3 last night, all those thoughts came rushing back. I feel a little bad for people whose lives weren’t momentarily made so much more awesome — or, to be sure, so fleetingly heartbreaking (let’s get ‘em tomorrow) — by the savage charge that Freddie Freeman put into that Nestor Cortes fastball, one that millions will never forget.

Baseball, man. The one where the seconds don’t tick down, where there’s no need for strategic timeouts (and brutally long commercial breaks) to halt that crawl. 

As Cortes, who’d entered just one game in relief — playoffs or otherwise — since 2021 and who hadn’t pitched at all in 37 days, was summoned to face Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freeman, asked to lock down a 3-2 Yankees win with one out and two on, baseball churned up questions:

Why not Tim Hill instead?

Could this epic game last another hour? 

Or one pitch?

It lasted two.

After Cortes grooved a 92-mph fastball but got Ohtani to fly out on it — courtesy of a spectacular Alex Verdugo catch in short left that, if he’d managed to keep his body from clearing the wall, would have led to Cortes pitching to Betts with two outs — he instead had to face Freeman, as the Yankees pointed Betts to first with the other two runners having been awarded 90 feet each as Verdugo landed out of play.

Then, Cortes’s second pitch of the night. Another 92-mph fastball, actually located better than the one to Ohtani.

A perfect swing.

And maybe the most perfect call ever, packing in a perfect tribute, somehow all in one, all in three words.

All that was missing was the Gibby lawnmower pull as Freeman rounded first. 

No other sport immortalizes calls like baseball does. I mean, there was a really fantastic one 44 years ago in an Olympic hockey game, and I guess boxing has offered a few, but if I’m being too territorial suggesting 80 percent of the best calls in sports are authored in baseball, you’ll have to convince me of that.

How many Hall of Fame-level broadcasters can you name in sports? How many are not in baseball?

Same goes for sportswriters. Baseball offers the best of the best. Always has.

For whatever reasons, the sport lends itself to spirited, beautiful writing like this: 

I love that I love baseball.

Freeman’s blast was just the second walk-off grand slam in a playoff game in Major League Baseball’s history. The first was this one:

I miss that night. But not as much as the one in last year’s World Series opener, when the Rangers’ own left-hitting, right-throwing, 5-wearing hitting machine staved off a Game 1 loss at home with one majestic, unforgettable obliteration of a first-pitch 93-mph fastball on the inner half.

My sports-emotions last October and early November hit heights and depths that they won’t this time around. But I’m grateful all the same for this version.

It’s beautiful, all of it.