CLEVELAND, Ohio – Don’t you love the playoffs? Don’t you love the Guardians?
How about Brayan Rocchio?
He hit a clutch home run … AGAIN!
Final score: Guardians 6, Detroit 1.
The Guardians live on. The playoffs are on to Game 3 of these best-of-three Wild Card Series on Thursday at Progressive Field.
Both teams will know this: One team will win. One team will go home.
Do you feel what I feel?
That maybe, just maybe … This season will go on for the Guardians into the next round of the playoffs.
Still shocked
As I write this at Progressive Field, I can’t quite believe what I’m writing.
Just a few moments ago, it was the bottom of the eighth inning. One out. The score was 1-1.
The Guardians had exactly two hits in 7⅓ innings.
Then … boom.
Make that … BOOM!!!
Rocchio hammered a home run into the right field seats. The Detroit Tigers looked stunned.
Suddenly, it was like someone turned on the faucet. The win-or-go-home pressure the Guardians were feeling was let loose.
Rocchio’s homer set the Guardians free. The 26,659 fans were screaming, stomping and roaring.
THEY … COULD … FEEL … IT.
That fear the Tigers have experienced for two months of maybe blowing a spot in the playoffs …
That frustration of dealing with the Guardians, who have now defeated them in 6 of 8 games in the last three weeks …
It all came back to haunt Detroit.
Here come the Guardians
After Rocchio’s homer rocked the stadium, Cleveland’s bats came alive.
Forget sitting on a 2-1 lead — time to bury Detroit.
Steven Kwan followed Rocchio’s homer with a whap of a double down the right-field line.
Next up, Daniel Schneemann doubled down on Kwan’s double … with his own double to right field.
Just like that, it was 3-1.
Cleveland kept hitting. Bo Naylor crushed his own homer to right field – a three-run shot.
Within about five minutes, a 1-1 game was 6-1 in favor of the Guardians.
The bottom of the ninth wasn’t easy. Closer Cade Smith had to pitch out of a bases-loaded jam to put an exclamation point on yet another remarkable and improbable Guardians victory.
It’s not over yet
I came into this game with a bit of baseball fear and trepidation.
I wondered if the Guardians had any magic left. The needle of their emotional gas gauge had to be on empty.
They have played so many big games for so long to steal the Central Division away from Tigers … I keep thinking about how Detroit had a 12½-game lead on Cleveland only five weeks ago.
But when it comes to the Guardians, I often think wrong.
When I thought they were finished as a playoff contender during their 10-game losing streak in July … I was wrong.
When I was sure they were done in terms of the playoffs when they lost 9 of 10 in August … I was wrong.
When they lost the opener of the Wild Card series 2-1, then seemed lost at bat in this Game 2 … I had that same sad sinking feeling.
Then …. Boom!
Then … Rocchio!
Then … the onslaught. Double after double, the three-run Bo Naylor home run.
Then … the season isn’t over. Not with how this team plays.
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