My wrap up from yesterday.
8AM alarm goes off, time to get up and head downtown to scalp tickets.
Get downtown around 9:30 AM, get a nice parking spot on the Street, at Capitol and LaBranch, for free. Nice. We go up to the first scalper we see, he offers us two tickets in 420, Row 4, for 50 a piece. Done. Instantly I feel relieved, we have tickets, in a good section, not to high up, and at a reasonable rate?.and my girlfriend bought them, Nice Nice.
We proceed to call a friend who is tailgating in front of George R Brown. Free beers at 10 am. Nice Oh, and the weather is absolutely perfect.
Tailgate till noon, with our friends and some guys from Lake Jackson area who 45 going on 16. These guys are blaring ACDC, screaming at all the passer Byers, playing air guitar to, ?To Those About to Rock.? This would have been the highlight of any other game, and I could write 6 paragraphs on it, but it kinda loses its luster after THAT game.
Noon shows up, time to march to the stadium. People are fairly subdued, I think it is the early start.
Once inside he juciebox, there is much more of a buzz with people chanting in concourse, the smell of 7 dollar beers and Sheriff Blaylocks nachos. Now I have the playoff feeling.
We make our way to our seats. They are dead even with third base in the upper tank. We are in the 4th row, and there is an empty seat next to me. All and all, seems like a really nice spot to watch the game. Key word on Seems.
Well, the lady to the right of The GF is basically an over the top annoying combo of Susan Saradon?s ?Annie? character from Bull Durham and Dell Griffith from Planes Trains and automobiles. To say she had an inane mostly inaccurate comment about every play would be wrong, this Chatty Cathy had something to say about every PITCH. I kid you not. I am pretty sure I have a strained orbital socket from rolling my eyes for about 5 hours straight.
We do notice that the aisle seats in the row in front of us are open, we plan to wait another inning and move.
So the game is underway, we have beers in hand and are on the edge of the seat. Backe sets them down 1-2-3 in the top of the first. Visions of Game 5 of the NLCS last year are dancing in my head. Bottom half we go down quietly, same goes for the next 2 innings
Nobody shows up to claim the aisle seats, so we move out of direct talking range of Annie Griffith. You can still hear her, but it is easier to block it out. It seemed like a genius move on our part, until the 17th time we and to get up for the people sitting in the middle of our new row. It was a group of 4 guys and 3 girls. I am pretty sure they all sold their bladders to buy tickets. I have never seen people have to get up so much. 1 of the guys went to the bathroom no less than 15 times. I am not making that up either. By the end of the game, I could empathize with Ausmus, since I was up and down as much as he was.
Back to the game. They load the bases on the back of no hits, then LaDouche hits a salami. Awesome. There was a braves fan in our general vicinity who started celebrating like he just won the Powerball Lotto. The guy was a dead ringer for the nerdy guy in the glasses, Cadet Douglas Fackler, from the Police Academy movie. He was adorned with an uber gaudy Braves hat, defiantly a free bowl of soup hat, he also had a jersey tucked into his JORTS. To say I wanted to murder him when he stood up, arms extended and let out a tarazan-esque scream, wouldn?t do my rage justice. I felt like morphing into to the BK Killer and dragging him down Larry?s Big Bamboo and disemboweling him.
As soon as that ball cleared the fence, and we all sat with dropped mouths listening to Cadet Douglas Fackler hoop and holler, it was time to head to the concourse to load up on beers.
We got back to the seats, and I commented our only chance was to get to the crappy Braves bullpen. It?s the middle 5th now, and Hudson had only thrown like 10 pitches. Crap.
Bottom o? five rolls around we finally get some runners on, and come away with 1. While it was only 1, it was really sparked the crowd. Up till then it seemed like we were going to go down without a fight and get shutout again. People were discussing plans for the Monday night game even.
Next three innings are up and down, with both teams getting runners on and pitching out of jams. Until the 8th when this years Little League World Series MVP McCann takes Wandy deep. Double Crap.
Then it started getting fun.
Ausmus walks to lead off the 8th. I am now openly chanting and daring and pleading for Bobby Cox to take Hudson out of the game. Bruntlett singles. Runners at first and second nooooo-body out. Then from the dugout emerges COX. I am high fivin? people and genuinely starting to think we have a chance.
Then, like a Phoenix rising from Arizona, out from the bullpen appears Kyle Farnsworth. Well you know what happened the rest of the inning.
When Berkman sent that pitch to the Crawford boxes it was really ON. High fives and the remainder of my last beer everywhere. I even high fived that annoying lady and the bladderless dude sitting next to me. Oh, and I turned up to look for Braves Fan, Cadet Douglas Fackler, and he is absolutely getting crucified by two huge Mexican dudes who are jumping up and down and pointing in his face. I am sure Cadet Douglas Fackler wanted to take a swing, but he would have gotten a Rodney King style beat down. It was enough to make your cockles swell with Houston pride.
Another thing of note about that inning. Much like getting that first run awoke the crowd, as soon as Hudson got yanked, the crowd cranked it up several notches, nobody sat, and people were cheering on every pitch. I have never been to a MLB game that I saw the pitcher get openly affected by the crowd. I see it on occasion at the college level, but rarely in the majors. You could see Farnsworth getting rattled and the crowd got louder and louder after every pitch he threw.
So we head to the bottom of 9, Lane, the Viz, and Ausmus due up. I am praying they leave Farnsturd in to pitch a second inning. He is back out, and I give us a 50/50 chance to win or tie it up. Well, 2 up 2 down. Up strides Ausmus, with the game on the line. ?Uh, hey Garner, how about putting someone in with a chance to it???!!!??? As soon as those words are out of mouth Ausmus lifts a drive to deep left. Place is going nuts. My eyes went straight to Andruw Jones. I saw Andruw moving at good clip towards the wall and knew there was a chance it would get over his head. The thought of a homer never even crossed my mind though. Next thing I see is Andruw go up, the ball disappears for a split second leading me to think it has been caught. Then the ball comes flying back into play off the wall. YES!!! We still got a chance at this thing. I hurriedly look down to pick up Ausmus to see if he has a chance to get to third. I notice him slowing up, I think, oh well it is double? then I noticed the 2nd base ump, hand over head motioning homerun. Uh?. what the heck just happened? It takes a half second to register that Bradley F?ing Ausmus just hit a 2 out bottom of the ninth homer in the playoff to tie the game up. I immediately start jumping up and down high fiving and hugging everyone in my general vicinity.
I look for Cadet Douglas Fackler but the crowd is going so crazy you cant even see him, I was secretly hoping he was being pile drived into one of the seats, or at least crying.
Well, the next full game basically went like this. Oh crap, here comes player XYZ up to bat. Hopefully we can hold on for just ONE more inning, not give up a run and then win the game in the bottom of the X. This went on for 3 hours. That and getting up for the bladderless crew to go to the bathroom.
After Wheelers 2nd inning when he was at 30 something pitches, I commented to The GF, ?Clemens is going to have to come in, he is all that is left? Annie Griffith hears me and starts babbling how he cant pitch tonight? 2 minutes later he is up in the pen.
Wheeler gets out of another jam, then Clemens appears from the bullpen, place goes insane. 3 more innings of PRAYING to get out of the opt half of the inning, only to get completely deflated when we couldn?t score in the bottom half.
18th inning, Clemens leading off. I tell The GF, if he hits a homer here, I have officially seen everything in baseball. Strike three. W T F is going on, the Braves BULLPEN sans Farnsworth has completely shut us down for going on 9 innings now.
At this point we are all so tired and emotionally drained you start getting delusional. I was so utterly thirsty and tired, I was near insane. By this point I have become friends with the bladderless boys and Annie Griffith. My hands are literally bleeding from clapping so much. I have tried every possible good luck charm, clapping during pitches, not clapping during pitches, rubbing hands together, sitting, standing, not watching the pitch, hands in front pockets, hands in back pockets, hands on head, hands over face, etc?
I figure Roger has 1 maybe two innings left in him at this point. Your mind starts drifting to Monday, smoltz vs Pettitte and our bullpen being completely over worked. We would need to get at least 8 innings from APe and pray that we learn how to hit Smoltz.
Then Burke lines one to left, it is tracking RIGHT towards the top of the wall, LF backs up to play the careen off the Crawford boxes? it slips into the first row. A combination of exhilaration and utter relieve sweeps over everyone. I am back to jumping around and acting like a 10 year old. I settle down just in time to see Burke rounding third and heading towards his teammates who are waiting to mob him at home. Simply an amazing amazing experience. Crowd stays on its feet cheering for no less than 10 minutes.
Post game beers never tasted so good. The BUS was packed wall to wall, but that first sip of beer after sweating for 4 hours without a drink was possibly the finest miller lite ever produced. Sweet mother of Jesus what a day. 10 hours after scalping tickets we had won the NLDS on the backs of 3 dramatic homers, we saw the longest playoff off game in 100+ years of baseball history and the first ever post season clinching game at home for the Astros.
On the way home listening to 740AM post game show, they had a montage of Astros highlights from Ash and Milos call of the game. It was set to the song Beautiful Day by U2. It was the flipping sweetest thing I have ever hear. As much as Milo gets on my nerves now, hearing his GONE GONE GONE call of Burkes homer in the 18th, while Bono is crooning ?BEAUTIFUL DAY, Don?t Let it Get a way,? Darn near brought tears to the eyes?.
