Copyright Chicago Tribune
Baseball was the proverbial game without a clock, at least until officials decided to speed things up with a pitch clock a few years ago to keep Millennial and Gen Z fans from tuning out. But it still can go on forever and ever, as evidenced by Game 3 of the World Series, a classic 18-inning affair that ended with the Los Angeles Dodgers beating the Toronto Blue Jays 6-5 on Freddie Freeman’s walk-off home run. Everything imaginable happened, from Shohei Ohtani heroics to Clayton Kershaw’s cameo in relief to another “you’ve gotta be bleeping me” moment in umpire Mark Wegner’s career, albeit without the memorable Hawk Harrelson call. It was as good an advertisement for October baseball as we’ve seen since the epic Game 7 of the 2016 World Series. Due to a work conflict, I was forced to follow Game 3 on my phone and laptop while covering the Chicago Bulls’ 128-123 win over the Atlanta Hawks at the United Center. But that’s the life of modern-day sports writers, multitasking for work and pleasure. One eye on the game at hand, the other on a baseball game thousands of miles away. Thanks to a kind Bulls employee, the team tuned one of the media-room TVs to the game, allowing the baseball fans in attendance to keep tabs during halftime and after the Bulls game ended. While waiting for some of the Bulls players to talk afterward in the locker room, Bulls.com reporter Sam Smith and I discussed Ohtani’s postseason brilliance as though we were in the press box at Dodger Stadium. After speeding home from the United Center while listening to Boog Sciambi’s call on the radio, I got back in time for the 11th inning and settled in to watch the ending. Sometime around 1 a.m. Tuesday, I received a text from K.C. Johnson, the Chicago Sports Network’s Bulls reporter. “I’m out,” Johnson wrote. “Made it thru 15.” Hours earlier, after covering the Bulls win, we hung around in the media room to see if Ohtani would end it in his ninth-inning at-bat. Johnson had predicted Blue Jays manager John Schneider would intentionally walk Ohtani with no one on base after he’d gone 4-for-4 with two home runs coming into the at-bat. As the alleged baseball expert, I told him only Barry Bonds would get that kind of treatment, and I couldn’t imagine Schneider putting the winning run on base in the ninth inning of a World Series game. But Johnson was correct and boasted: “I know baseball.” After Ohtani was thrown out trying to steal second, we decided to leave together for the parking lot. But then we stopped in the hallway and watched Mookie Betts’ at-bat. Game 3 was a magnet, pulling us back in with a force neither of us could resist. I resist texting married friends late at night because they’re usually asleep way before me. But after Schneider issued Ohtani a second intentional walk with the bases empty, I texted Johnson a @SlangsOnSports tweet that revealed the only other time it happened in a World Series was to Albert Pujols in Game 5 in 2011. That began a long text conversation in which we both tried to guess the manager’s next move, lauded the call by Fox Sports’ Joe Davis and tried to stay awake. When Johnson cashed out after the 15th, I was on my own. But soon afterward, the phone pinged again. “I rallied,” Johnson texted, pointing to the dugout report from Fox’s Ken Rosenthal that Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was considering using a position player on the mound with reliever Will Klein tiring in his third inning of work. That led to a conversation on which position player should pitch in one of the greatest World Series games ever. I was imagining how cool it would have been to have had iPhones during Game 6 of the 1975 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and Cincinnati Reds, when Carlton Fisk hit a walk-off home run and waved it fair to end another game we never wanted to see end. The texting and speculating about what would happen next kept us awake long enough to see Freeman’s walk-off home run. I sent a “phew” emoji. Johnson replied: “Sports, man!” These marathon games are almost extinct in the regular season since MLB decided to keep the ghost runner in extra innings — a pandemic-created rule meant to shorten games during the 2020 season for health and safety protocols. It has worked out well for managers who don’t like blowing out their bullpens, for fans who get tired after watching neither team score for several innings and for baseball reporters on deadline. During the Cubs postseason run this year, a few writers debated the rule with manager Craig Counsell, who said the ghost runner is necessary in this day and age because bullpen usage is so different from the past. Some of us felt putting a runner on second base to start an inning is an insult to the creators of the game. But Counsell admitted he likes the old-school ways of not having ghost runners in the postseason and said he was glued to the 15-inning game between the Seattle Mariners and Detroit Tigers in Game 5 of the American League Division Series, which sent the Mariners to the AL Championship Series. “That’s the best baseball has to offer,” Counsell said. And that was before Game 3 on Monday, a game Blue Jays starter Max Scherzer called “crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy.” He could’ve added a few more “crazies” and still underplayed it. The game without a clock, kind of, lasted until almost 2 a.m. in Chicago. If you managed to hang in until the end, give yourself a gold star. Hopefully you got some rest before Game 4 on Tuesday night, the much-anticipated debut of Ohtani on the mound in a World Series game. Sports, man!
