Grant Brisbee does some fantastic baseball writing over at SBNation. Previously, his column was inside-jokily-named “Grant Land”. Now, it has the equally insider-and-stupid-but-amusing name of “This Week in Dumb, Beautiful Baseball”. Brisbee does an admirable job of exploring why fans love the game, while also pointing out its many absurdities.

Today, he examined last night’s game pitting my hometown Red Sox against the New York Yankees. Brisbee’s summary of the Yankees’ near-comeback is the closest thing to being there I’ve yet read. An excerpt:

[crowd noise intensifies]

Now the tying run is on first and the winning run is at the plate.

[crowd noise is mostly barfing at this point, just extremely violent retching]

The first pitch from Kimbrel hits Neil Walker. Now the tying run is on second and the winning run is on first.

[there is no crowd noise. there is only the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth]

I was in the Bronx last night, and that bottom of the ninth is easily the most nervous I’ve ever been at a ballgame. Side note, did you know that Yankee Stadium tends to attract a lot of Yankees fans, and they get extremely loud when their team starts coming back?

It was 14 minutes of perfect, hilarious, dumb baseball, unless you cared about the Yankees or Red Sox, in which case it was the worst 14 minutes of your life.

That’s just about right. But when it was over, man did it feel good.

Victory, Relief
[Photo courtesy of P. Kafasis]