The Pecan Park Eagle

GAME 7: CHICAGO 2 - HOUSTON 0; SOX TAKE SERIES REPLAY, 4-3!

"SOMEWHERE, OVER THE RAINBOW, BLUEBIRDS FLY..."

“UN-BEE-FLUBBING-LIEVABLE!”

Fiction has superseded fact by the proverbial long shot as the Chicago White Sox rallied for the fourth game in a row to take The 2005 World Series Replay like the cruel-hearted actual baseball villains that we Houston fans have come to know them to be,

Once hanging from the cliff of an almost certain four game sweep loss to the Houston Astros, the Chicago WHite Sox used a 9th inning grand slam by Tadahito Iguchi off Brad Lidge to take a 7-6 win in Game 4 before adding two more tough-fight wins in Games 5 and 6 to reach the big stage that played out in Game 7 at US Cellular Field in Chicago tonight.

The Sox sent Freddie Garcia to the mound in this final game with all their hopes we might keep them close against Master Roger Clemens, the guy who tossed a no-hitter in Game 3 and then came into this oe storming the mound for more.

Clemens was great again tonight. If anything, he was better than he had been in his no-hit Game 3 gem. AT least through 7 and 1/3 innings he fared better. By the time Aron Rowand came to bat with one out in the bottom of the 8th, Clemens had posted 11 strikeouts in an overpowering  tour de force performance that seemed to be leading him and the Astros to their first World Series title and the greatest ever performance by any pitcher in any World Series.

Roger’s problems in the twilight of the game were quietly two: (1) Freddie Garcia of the Sox had not merely kept his close. He had kept them even in a scoreless tie through the top of the 8th. Garcia had allowed only six scattered singles, striking out 6 through 8; and (2) Clemon was tiring in subtle ways, losing a little of his speed and control over pitch location.

Juan Uribe: Game 7 Kill Joy.

What happened next struck with all the power and acceleration of a train wreck. In two consecutive softer, gone awry pitches, Roger “The Icon” Clemens yielded a sharp single to right by center field Aaron Rowand and then a parabolic homer to left by Sox shortstop Juan Uribe. All of a sudden, the no-hitter was gone, the Astros were down by two, and Houston had only one time at bat left to make amends or figuratively to die. Clemens then got Perez and Podsednik on harmless flies to right, but the damage had been done. CHICAGO 2 – HOUSTON 0 looked larger than anything still floating through the air as Houston World Series hope.

In the top of the 9th, a now recharged Freddie Garcia took the mound and quickly retired Lance Berkman on a line drive to Timo Perez in right. Perez  had been forced into action in Games 6 and 7 after starter Jerome Dye was lost to the Sox for the Series in Game 5 due to a beaning.

Garcia suddenly hit another level, He got both Jason Lane and Mike Lamb on hapless defensive strike three swings to up his final “K” total on the night to 8. Garcia (1-0) soon collapsed under the weight of all the running, laughing, joy-mauling White Sox teammates who descended upon him at the pile that now covered the pitching mound.

The Astros sat almost statue-like in their own dugout, too stunned to move, too hurt to cry.

Two late-in-the game pitches had lost the immortality of two consecutive no-hitters in a World Series, the game, and the World Series itself.

We won’t bother you this time with all the triviality of post-game quotes from the jubilant Chicago White Sox. They deserve their air time, but this is not their broadcast booth. As for manager Phil Garner and the Astros, their silence is their choice. There are no words to convey how a loss of this magnitude would “hurt so bad” in reality. The medicine we took in real-time back in 2005 was bad enough, but this defeat excruciated pain. A loss on this level of disappointment in reality would have taken Houston to a new level of doldrums and self doubt.

Statistically, the hitting in this Series was horrible. Houston batted .198 with 52 total hits and 4 homers. Astros pitchers posted a 1.90 ERA with 60 strikeouts in 71 innings. Mike Lamb led all players on both teams with a .250 batting average and 8 total hits.

The White Sox, who went scoreless over their first 42 innings, reaching the middle of Game 4, ended up hitting .140 with 17 runs, 34 hits, and 4 homers. Their team pitching ERA was 2.63 with 50 K’s in 72 innings pitched. Juan Uribe led “”The New Hitless Wonders” with a .217 mark over seven games.

We’ll go back to what passes for normal on The Pecan Park Eagle tomorrow. Thank you for indulging me on the week of time that this simulation replay consumed. All I can say in closing is that this replay series has been an exercise in painful redundancy, with one big difference.. Had this been the way things happened in reality back in 2005, the memory of our loss would have been infinitely more painful to bear, I think. To come this close – and then witness Brad Lidge become the hinge pin on a devastating collapse from the brink of a four-game sweep win – man alive – that would have been entirely too much art following life for my creaky old nervous system.

Now go in peace from this place. Have a nice day. And forget this ever happened. Because it never did.

Tags: 2005 World Series Replay

This entry was posted on July 14, 2011 at 2:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.