[ad_1]
HOUSTON – What was lost there or what was gained in the air above Minute Maid Park's right field wall, entangled with bare hands and glove leather, is two races. What could have been legitimately won and taken by Jose Altuve, which was challenged as a fan interference call, which was reviewed in a loop, which could have landed in the Mookie Betts glove if the fans had not been there – that's equivalent to two rounds. Two points won or saved, right here at the bottom of the first leg of the fourth game of the American League series between the Houston Astros and the Boston Red Sox, could have meant anything, or nothing.
[ALCS Game 4 box score: Red Sox 8, Astros 6]
And about four hours later, when the Red Sox field player, Andrew Benintendi, escaped from the field, his capture with the goals loaded, which saves the games, saves the dive and dive, put a exclamation point on a long winding course. , dramatic phrase, basic game at a baseball game – everyone could watch the scoreboard one last time and see the margin of victory: two points.
"It was an interesting match," said Red Sox director Alex Cora, "for the least."
This 8-6 Red Sox win, in front of 43,277 bitter supporters, caused the collapse of the participants from both teams as they traveled to their respective clubs. He gave Boston a three-game lead against one in the best-of-seven series, with a chance to win the AL pennant and a trip to the World Series on Thursday night in the fifth game – in which they will send the left-handed David. Prize at the mound on a short rest against the Astros Justin Verlander.
[Astros fan denies interfering on would-be home run]
It's happened so much in 4 hours and 33 minutes – the second longest game of nine rounds in the history of the playoffs – that it makes sense to repeat it in the opposite direction, from the end, starting with the remarkable take of Benintendi, who, if he had missed it, would probably have brought the three points home and turned a win into a defeat.
Or with the fragile and shaky backup of Red Sox, Craig Kimbrel, who almost lost the ball, was almost completely sounded, on Alex Bregman's double-charged base left – the one Benintendi has somehow capture. Or the Lancer Betts, the right defensive player of the Red Sox, pitched the round earlier, in the eighth, to capture his childhood friend Tony Kemp, the fast defensive player of the Astros, who was trying to turn a singles into a double – a critical and inexcusable error.
"We think we have the best outdoor field in the big leagues," said Cora.
Or the first leg in the sixth game of Jackie Bradley Jr., who produced the eighth and ninth points in the series for the No. 9 Boston hitter and consolidated his position as the most valuable player in the series if the Red Sox wait.
[Dodgers ride Clayton Kershaw to 3-2 lead on Brewers in NLCS]
Or the intrepid effort of Boston's exhausted pitching staff, held together with duct tape and pieces of chewing gum, to replenish 27 outs against an Astros band that was playing with a growing sense of hopelessness. As the leader began to falter before finally getting closer to the defenders of the Red Sox, their well-maled pen succeeds in surpassing the most respected defenders, culminating Kimbrel, getting closer, securing the last six clashes with the tape and eraser about to miss.
Or really, the efforts of all the Red Sox players who saw the field on Wednesday night, in a building that became hostile quickly thanks to the events of the bottom of the first, but where Boston still progressed to 4-0 in games on the road this after-season. We do not know how they will succeed in the fifth match, but they did not seem to care too much about that.
[On Baseball: Red Sox-Astros sign-stealing flap highlights MLB’s tech issues]
But the only starting point is that of the beginning, with the first run, and the long right ball that allows Altuve to hit Rick Porcello, the starter of the Red Sox, who was then a two-point lead.
There was a man in an orange polo shirt and another in a navy t-shirt in the front row of the right bleachers, just behind a red public sign for State Farm, and there was Betts on the field below, which And all of a sudden, their hands converge, with the ball, to a point just above the yellow line that marks a circuit.
What happened next may have had the following consequences: a logic that was challenged, a questioning of the purpose of the Major League Baseball Replay-Replay system, a weighting of the score that has continued to evolve over the four hours or so with an imaginary plus two in the Astros Favors and, ultimately, provided the final margin for the Red Sox. Two races.
What you saw during those few fateful seconds, as the ball went down to the wall, depended on your alignment with the team in white, the team in gray or maybe the isolated silhouette in black heading towards the landing zone.
"I saw a ball cross the fence," said Carlos Correa, player at the Astros stop. "In my eyes, it's a homerun."
"I'm 100% positive," said Betts, "I was going to be able to catch him … I really felt that someone was pushing my glove away."
What the referee Joe West saw, as he was heading to that spot from his position along the straight line of the field, about halfway between the first goal bag and the Fault pole, did one or both of these supporters move towards the playing field and interfere with those of Betts ability to capture. Betts's glove closed without the ball, which squirted between all these hands and found itself on the warning track. West almost immediately raised his fist to indicate external interference.
While Betts "jumped to try his luck," West told a pool reporter, after the match, "a fan interfered on the pitch, which is why I called spectator interference When asked if he felt the call was clear in his mind, West replied "Yes".
Then, chaos. Altuve looked in disbelief. The players of both teams stopped and waited. The referees huddled together, then headed for the video replay station. The crowd agitates with anxiety. The train driver at the top of the left field wall was standing up, ready to party on the rails. And when it was announced that the call was suspended – an exit – the crowd broke out with indignant hoots. George Springer, the early Astros runner, threw his helmet on the ground with disgust. The conductor threw him to neutral.
Rule 6.01 (e) of the Official Rules of Baseball states: "No interference shall be allowed when a defensive player passes over a fence." . . catch a ball. He does it at his own risk. The question was whether the fan or fans had hit the wall to interfere with Betts. On closer inspection, it seemed no. But without a definitive angle of view along the wall, there was no compelling evidence to reverse West's call – which had been launched remotely in real time – and it was so.
"The head of the retransmission said that I was right," said West.
Instead of a home run for Altuve, it was an out. Instead of a draw, it was 2-0, Boston. When Betts found his canoe at the end of the round, he was greeted by a line of high-fives, celebrating the most beautiful catch he had ever made. The two innings mattered little when the Astros took 4-3 and 5-4 in the center of the innings – before Bradley's man gave the Red Sox a lead in advance – but became more and more more threatening while they were trying, unsuccessfully, to push home the equalization runs.
"It's convenient to think that way," Astros Manager A.J. Hinch said of the final margin. ". . . It would have been nice to tie [in the first]. But [at that point] there is still a lot of play. No, I will not go. "
The Red Sox were heading to a critical point with their pitching staff. Chris Sale, southpaw ace, their designated pitcher for the fifth game, was scraped off and postponed to sixth game due to a stomach ailment. While Price is now aligned for the Match 5 mission, the Red Sox were on the brink of despair Wednesday night.
But the attitude of the Red Sox could be summarized as: win the fourth game and worry about the match 5 tomorrow. After Porcello qualified for fifth place, the following nine outs were collected: three from Joe Kelly, five from Ryan Brasier and one from Matt Barnes.
When the door of the Red Sox enclosure opened one last time, in the middle of the eighth, it was Kimbrel who entered. There were six outs, two more than he had gotten all season, the Red Sox protecting what was at that point a three point lead. Once the Prime Minister is closer to his generation, he has not appeared himself recently. Wednesday night, he had nothing to fend off the Astros, but he still shot.
The last outing, Bregman's left laser, Benintendi's brilliant shot, arrived at 1:00 pm Central Standard Time on Kimbrel's 35th field. Kimbrel allowed six hits, five walks and five earned runs over five innings lost over the past season, but was able to convert four backup opportunities four times out of four.
"We trust our guy," said Cora. "I know it does not look pretty, but we had 27 outs."
These Red Sox have won 108 games this season and have added six more so far this October. This is one more victory of the World Series and five more to have consolidated their place among the best teams in history. If they succeed, they will surely deserve all the glory that comes their way.
But here, at least, they will always wonder what would have happened if Altuve had had one more foot, or if West's hand, in the heat of the moment, had signaled departure outside.
[ad_2]
Source link
