HOUSTON – Oh, yes, you remember this, right? You remember what Game 7 of the American League Championship Series feels like, looks like, tastes like, because even now it takes so little to carry you back 13 years, 14 years, to what those games were like, what those days were like.
Yes, in those years it was the Red Sox, and there was all that blood and gore and history and hate splashing all around it but in the end what mattered was the baseball, glorious baseball (one year) and torturous baseball (the next), because when Championship Series go the limit, everything is spilled on the field, right to the final out.
And so there will be a Game 7 in this series, Saturday night, Minute Maid Park, the Yankees against the Astros, nobody’s idea of an ancient rivalry since the Astros joined thee league about 15 minutes ago but that little matters. They are the two best teams left in the league because they are the left standing.
And now, one must fall.
“Honestly,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said, “I think it’s only just we get to a Game 7.”
“We still have a shot,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said, “do what we want to do [Saturday].”
The Astros rose from the canvas to stagger the Yankees 7-1 Friday night behind another brilliant outing from Justin Verlander, seven shutout innings, eight strikeouts. He had to wiggle free of trouble his last two innings, wasn’t as dominant as his tour-de-force in Game 2, but he was good enough to keep the Yankees quiet until his teammates could put a few runs on the board.When that happened – a run-scoring double by ex-Yankee Brian McCann, a clutch two-out single by Jose Altuve – it came against Luis Severino after the young ace had been virtually unhittable for four innings. In an instant, the crowd of 43,179 transformed from nervous buzz to joyous hum.
And when the Astros answered an absurdity of an eighth-inning Aaron Judge home run (that might’ve travelled halfway to El Paso if it hadn’t first collided with one of the ballparks outer walls) with a 4-spot of their own in their half, that was replaced by a Texas-sized rumble of thunder. All of them could sniff a Game 7 now.
And when you can sniff it, you have to have it.
“We’re going to give everything we have,” Altuve promised.
“It’s going to be exciting, the opportunity to go to the World Series,” said CC Sabathia, who one more time will trudge to a mound carrying a massive load on his massive shoulders, this time the entirety of a season. “One game. I’m excited.”
It is remarkable to remember that it was just two years ago when Sabathia had to miss the wild-card game because he’d left the team to seek treatment for a drinking problem. His career seemed as if it were limping toward the gloaming after a 6-10 slog at age 35. Now, at 37, he is again what he has always craved. The horse.
“You never take these opportunities for granted,” he said.
The Yankees would’ve preferred the breathing room a Game 6 victory would’ve offered; instead they’ll negotiate the rarefied air of an LCS Game 7. We have seen the Yankees at their best all October when the stakes were highest and the consequences most dire, and they have little choice but to do that now.
“You know, we’ve won all kind of different games,” Girardi said. “We won some high-scoring games, we won one 1-0. It’s a situation these guys have been in a lot.”Of course, if you remember 2003, and ’04, you remember how breathtaking each pitch given the nature of the LCS, how fast the pulse quickens. Just getting to the doorstep of the World Series is a hard consolation prize. You get that close, you can see it just on the other side of the threshold, you have to get there. In some ways, what comes after is anti-climax.
The Yankees learned that in 2003 when Aaron Boone vaulted them into a World Series with the Marlins in which they seemed a half-step slow from the jump, and wound up losing in six. Of course, that’s something to worry about when it’s something to worry about.
For now, it’s a Game 7, it’s Saturday night, one game for a trip to Hollywood. Let’s go. Let’s get there already.