Beisbol!

(From July 2019, Before the COVID)

A near-historic game tonight! Perfect game broken up by a clean single through the shift in the 9th.  Too bad there weren’t 2 out, because that would’ve been even more historic.

But there’s another story here that makes this game one we’ll talk about 20 years from now, if we were in the stadium, or watching on TV, and weren’t we all in the stadium that night 20 years ago?

Seems just a week ago, these same two teams played each other eleven hundred and some miles to the south.  That night, the score was almost reversed – 11- 0 tonight, 0-13 last week – and the team with 0 didn’t have any hits entering the top of the ninth in either game.

Last week, the game finished 13-0, and 0 didn’t get any hits the whole game!

And the team that got 13 was playing the game as a tribute to one of their own, now gone.

And the game was played on 7-13, and 7-13 was Now Gone’s birthday.

And . . . And 13 scored 7 runs in the first and 13 overall…7-13!

But 13 used 2 pitchers, so there’s either an asterisk or a separate listing in the record books.

So what’s so near-historic, you ask?

Last week’s pitcher, who got shelled for 7 in the 1st back then, is tonight’s pitcher who finished with a complete game 1-hit shutout, which is almost as rare as a no-hitter these days, and how’s that for proof there’s karma in baseball?

Beisbol!

Lemme tell you, once in the middle-60’s, I listened on my transistor radio to Vinny call one of Koufax’s complete game 1-hit shutouts.

What’s so historic about that, you ask?

It was the one he lost!

(Hey, everything I tell you about Koufax is true, even if it didn’t happen.)