I don't know, man.
It's easy to say that you had a feeling ex post facto. Because you have a lot of feelings of dread or hope during a baseball game. And on the rare occasion events play out exactly as you figured they would, you'll ignore all of the other times you were wrong.
But, holy crap, you had that feeling too, right? In the top of the seventh, when the Giants had a runner on third and no outs, yet failed to put the ball in play? Right when that happened, you had a feeling that was going to sting. You don't even need proof -- I believe you. Climb aboard. Take a swig of this. Let's chat for a while.
It was exactly one week ago that the Giants swept the Dodgers to move into a tie for first place. Oh, the endorphins of that series. If they could put that feeling into a designer drug, the world would shut down. Everyone would just dance in the streets, hugging each other and handing out burritos. And then when the hangover kicked in a week later, there'd be carnage. Total carnage. I don't want to make Jacob's Ladder GIFs, but I will if I have to. Pretty sure the drug's worth it for the first part, but, man. What a comedown.
You'll see the sea-change moments clearly after the season. It's easy to go back through 2010 and point to the day when Buster Posey was called up and Pat Burrell was signed, or in 2011, when the Giants couldn't get out of Cincinnati with a win. That kind of stuff is all clear in retrospect. But you can also see things in real-time, too. When Posey got hurt, for example. You knew.
You don't know if this is one of those easily identifiable plot points yet. But you do know that this was the Night the Giants Decided to Trade For a Closer. They might or might not have already decided, but I'll wager the front office was on the fence. There was the Derek Norris game, and then there was the Reds game. But they got out of the Reds game with a win. And Santiago Casilla did reach down and find something during that Reds game. He could have grabbed a blanket and started sucking his thumb, going full Linus on live TV. But he got out of it.
Nope. This was the game. This was the game that changed the life of some poor, unwitting soul in San Jose or Fresno. The Giants will make a deal for a closer this month. It might be Wilson Ramos for Matt Capps. It might be Jeff Bagwell for Larry Andersen. The odds are pretty good it will be John Bowker and Joe Martinez for Javier Lopez, so don't read too much into this. After tonight, I'm on board with a new closer. When this nice EMT -- what'd you say your name was? Chelsea? Hi. Sorry about this -- gets my foot out of the goddamned TV, maybe things will calm down, and I'll be afeared of a prospects-for-reliever trade, just like I always am.
That's the kind of game it was. And if you try to get your mind off it by looking for possible closer replacements -- you know, like looking through Craigslist job postings after you've had a crap day of work -- you'll wish you hadn't.
The Kansas City Royals have signaled to teams that they are willing to move closer Jonathan Broxton, major league sources told FOXSports.com.
ALERT. RAISE ALERT LEVEL TO MESACON 1. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
I KNOW LITTLE GUY. I FEEL THE SAME WAY. LET'S JUST FORGET ABOUT THIS GAME.
Picking out one goat, or one play is just stupid. There were so, so many. Pablo, with the bases loaded and one out, swung at a pitch that almost hit the right-field foul pole. That was after the Giants decided not to send Ryan Theriot on a base hit, where the left fielder's throw had a better chance of hitting Bryce Harper in the left ear than getting the runner out. Brandon Belt and Joaquin Arias put on a clinic of abominable situational hitting in the seventh. Brandon Crawford made a short throw at exactly the wrong time, and Belt couldn't scoop the ball out for one of the first times this year.
It was an arithmetic of bad that all added up to worse. Even blaming Casilla for everything isn't right. He did give up a two-strike double on a sloppy pitch, and he also made an error, but he should have been out of the inning. He almost replicated the Reds escape. Alas.
That one stung, alright. That one stung. And there's a gonna be changes 'round here. There will be a new closer, even if Casilla strikes out the next 15 batters he faces before the deadline. The Giants just got a glimpse of a shaky bullpen against a contending team, and it was a horror show. We'll look back at this game and realize it meant something. We just don't know what yet.
oh god stop that
Romo's still cool, and he gets one of these:
Because that's Romo on the moon and there's a Romo bobblehead and he's also on the moon and Romo's like,"That's what's up!" and then you wish you were on the moon where there was no cable so you didn't have to watch that crappy game.
dammit so much