He pointed. Obviously, he pointed.
This year’s baseball playoffs are straight from the darkest timeline, with the NLCS pitting The Team That Signed Trevor Bauer against the White Flight Tomahawk Chop All-Stars, and the American League being the Cheaters Always Prosper Showcase. No matter the timeline, no matter the universe, there’s always a twist of the knife for Mets fans, and apparently Wilmer Flores striking out against Max Scherzer on a bullshit call to end the last hope of a non-gross team (just kidding, Charles Johnson still owns the Giants) winning this year’s World Series wasn’t enough.
So, of course, when the Red Sox put Hansel Robles into a tied Game 1 of the ALCS on Friday night, the nightmares of Flushing past arrived in the present. Robles was best known on the Mets as the guy who would point up at the sky as if he’d just given up a pop fly, when in fact the ball was headed for a trip so long, they might as well have meal service and a movie on it.
Robles only gave up two homers in 25 innings after being traded from Minnesota to Boston this summer? Yeah, now he’s given up two homers in 2.2 innings in the playoffs. Carlos Correa’s solo shot in the seventh inning put Houston ahead to stay, en route to a 5-4 win that hopefully will be the start of the sweep — not as a matter of rooting for Houston, but for the horror of this postseason to be as quick and painless as possible.
Game 1 was… not that. Not that there wasn’t drama, right down to Kiké (DO NOT FORGET THE ACCENT) Hernandez going deep in the ninth inning for his second homer of the game to bring the Red Sox within a run. It was also a nine-inning game that took 4:07, with each team using eight (8) pitchers, and homers not only by cheating-ass Correa, but also a trademark José Altuve “buzzer beater” to tie the game in the sixth.
The Astros, of everyone remaining in the playoffs save for Bad Bitch Joc Pederson, are the only ones who seem capable of recognizing and playing into the kayfabe. Even Dusty Baker is in on it, comparing his home run hitters to Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski, which surely is just about them being championship teammates, but also there’s Deflategate, and also there’s the fact that the Astros are playing Boston, where they’re still sorting in their feelings about Brady’s departure and recruitment of his longtime tight end.
Still, that’s not an endorsement of the Astros, a franchise that should’ve been burned to the ground, but instead wound up with a better manager than they had before and zero consequences for getting caught stealing a World Series, let alone any of their other organizational misdeeds. But right now they’re the team that needs the fewest wins to send us into, let’s check the notes, an offseason of collective bargaining? OH COME ON!
There are two playoff games on Saturday. Do we have to?