The somber looks on the faces of the Reds in the dugout prior to The Pitch said it all. They knew what was going to happen. You could just feel it. In a game when the Reds should have lost anyway, what with Badroyo showing up again and the Fish giving the Reds a few lucky runs, the ending to this titanic struggle was not at all surprising.
But it was stunning. Stunning like the tasers once used on Marlins starter Scott Olsen in a drunken conflict with police. Yes, it hurt. Yes, the fire that had blazed through the later half of the game spread by the bats of Andy Phillips, Adam Dunn, and yes, one Jay Bruce, was snuffed out with one lead off double. A game of inches, indeed. Jorge proved that he Can hit, and my, oh my, while we have a man standing in the dugout looking like he had just lost his favorite toy receiving more than three million dollars, a man who couldn't hit a freaking beach ball with a whiffle bat, our garbage started a rally that would crush this would be victory, he of less than a million dollars. The garbage just piled on the runs, another sending a burning white sphere into the wet Miami night, just another outfielder we could have had instead of Snory Freaking Patterson.
Blame not the closer, so often more hero than goat. No, the real goat, my friends, is Snory. Though he did not play, he has carried with him the curse of the goat from Chicago, where now they win. Oh woe!
What a night it was for the hundred or so Marlins fans that exist. What a nightmare the 2008 season has turned out to be for the Cincinnati Reds.
This is the despondent righthander rounding third and getting thrown out at the plate. Good night everybody.
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