.jpg)
| The Greatest Game Ever Played | ||||
|
|
On Sunday, August 2nd, 2009, Rajiv Nathan and his friend Andrew decided to play a game of MVP Baseball 2005 on Playstation 2. They had no idea what they were getting themselves into: a 40-inning game. The following chronicles the events of that afternoon Sunday, August 2, 2009: I woke up around 10:45 A.M. to the sounds of my friend, who had spent the night on the couch, playing Mariokart 64 in the other room. Bowser was all growls as my friend struggled to hold down the “R” button while frantically toggling the control stick left and right in an effort to master the art of the Mariokart drift. After watching for about an hour and sneaking in a play at Star Cup in the Mario Grand Prix (I didn’t finish on the podium…but I won’t get into those details) my other friend, Andrew, had his shoes on and was ready to take the train home, saying he would catch the 12:40 to Geneva. I told him to hang around for a while, it was Sunday, after all; a day reserved for lounging. His response was, “well let’s play MVP.” With those four words, an afternoon of greatness would commence. My roommate, Connor, has spent the entire summer updating rosters for MVP Baseball 2005 for Playstation 2. You know, the one with Manny on the front and the song “Tessie” by Dropkick Murphy’s at the menu screen. He has put in some painstaking hours, but let me say, it is well worth it when you see that Sam Fuld has been created and put on the Cubs roster. Let’s be honest, MVP is the best baseball video game ever created--and it’s five years outdated. To play with current rosters is taking it to a whole new level. With that being said, I must thank you, Connor, for putting in the time to make the rosters relevant because if different players had played in this game, it might have been just another day at the park. We have this rule amongst our friends when we play MVP, Madden, et al. that each player must choose a team via the random select feature. You are granted up to three “randoms”, but once you pass on a team you may not go back and choose them. Andrew struck gold on the first random with the Dodgers (the number one ranked team). I landed first on the Pirates, then on the Rockies. I didn’t want to play with Ubaldo Jimenez and company, so I took my third random. It was the White Sox. Being a Cubs fan myself, I wasn’t very pleased. But, I love everything about Gordon Beckham so I turned a negative into a positive. Andrew picked home team so Chavez Ravine was the location for what would become history. I threw the 1980 road alternate jerseys on my virtual players, and he went with the 1944 home look. We edited our lineups, and embarked on a journey that would change us forever. As announcer Duane Kiper described it during the game’s introductions, it was a “beautiful day for baseball.” A classic NL West pitcher’s dual between former Padres ace Jake Peavy and rising Dodgers star Chad Billingsley (or as the game permits for created players, “Chad Billingsle”, due to letter restrictions). The top of the first went fairly quickly, with Billingsle requiring maybe eight or nine pitches to retire the side. It had been awhile since the last time I had played, so my timing was off; and no, we do not play with Hitter’s Eye. Peavy’s first frame in a White Sox uniform was much the same story. A quick, 1-2-3 inning retired the side easy. The game was fairly normal through the first seven innings. Billingsle pitched the whole way, allowing just one run in the process. The top of the eighth is when things got crazy. With Jermaine Dye on first and two outs, Chris Getz stepped up to the plate and lined one in the right-center gap. Matt Kemp tracked the ball down and threw it to the cutoff man as Dye chugged around third and headed home. The relay throw was on target and Dye barreled into catcher Russell Martin (I held “up” on the analog stick and was very surprised that Dye didn’t just do a headfirst slide like the players normally do). Martin tumbled over, kept the ball in his glove, and even showed it to umpire Eric Cooper (it only makes sense that it would be him for this classic, considering he has officiated Buehrle’s no-hitter and perfect game). But Cooper made a blunder and called Dye safe at home-- a clear glitch in the game that put me up 2-1. Hey, I’ll take a glitch run whenever I can get it, right? Andrew was furious. Each run in MVP is crucial because it is so hard to score in that game. A one-run glitch lead with just six outs remaining changed the tide for certain. The side was retired the following batter. In the bottom half of the eighth I held Andrew and the Dodgers scoreless. Peavy was relieved after 7 2/3 innings of one-run ball—a stellar debut in a White Sox jersey. In the top of the ninth I could not muster a hit and needed three outs to win the game. At this point, Andrew had plans to catch a 2:40 train back home. It was only around 1:15 at this point, and it takes about 30 or so minutes to get to the train station, so he was doing well on time. Matt Thornton came out of the ‘pen for the final out in the eighth so I decided to leave him out there for the ninth. Truthfully, I had forgotten to warm up Bobby Jenks while I was hitting so I figured I would have him start throwing and would use him if Thornton ran into trouble. The first two outs came easy. Then Casey Blake came to bat and represented the game’s final out. I had Andrew/Casey down 0-2. The next pitch he took for a ball. The following pitch was also low and away. With a 2-2 count I threw a fastball up and in. Casey Blake hit a 469-foot home run. The game was tied. We went to extra innings and nothing spectacular happened through the 15th. Jenks relieved Thornton in the 10th and pitched for two innings. In the top of the 10th I pinch-hit Jim Thome for Thornton. In the 13th Paul Konerko singled and I pinch-ran for him with Mark Kotsay (86 speed). Outside of a couple scattered hits by Andrew and I, there were no real scoring threats. In the bottom of the 16th Andrew put a runner on third with two outs. Naturally, I intentionally walked Manny Ramirez and James Loney to load the bases for a force-out anywhere. After Loney, it was Casey at the bat. Casey hit a hard grounder to Gordon Beckham at third and I threw home. The runner was out by a mile, but mental lapses like that would frequent the next 24 innings of play. After 18 innings we took note that we had played two full games; we thought that was cool. Little did we know how much longer we would play. I texted my brother in the 24th and told him how far we had gotten; his record was 36. Andrew had long missed his train by this time. It was 2:40-ish in the 18th. Over the course of the next 15 innings (to the 34th) we each had probably five or six really good scoring opportunities. I made the mental mistake of the century in the 30th. Scott Podsednik led off with a gapper that rolled to the wall in left-center. Manny threw to the cutoff man and I pressed “R1” to make Podsednik return to second. I didn’t want to risk breaking a cardinal rule of baseball and make the first out of an inning at third base. Apparently Podsednik had not even gotten to second base, and by pressing “R1” I sent him back to first two steps before he was at second. Rafael Furcal relayed it to first and Loney tagged him out easily. I let out a big “NOOOOOOOOO!” when I realized what I had done. I could have won the game in that inning were it not for the “R1 Wonder”, as it is now known. Gordon Beckham grounded to the right side the next play that would have advanced Podsednik to third, and Carlos Quentin hit one up the middle that would have scored him. But careless mistakes like that base-running gaffe are what make a classic a classic. We even managed the game as a real manager would—refusing to pinch-hit with our backup catchers on the off chance that our starting catchers might suffer an injury. Speaking of injury, Scott Linebrink had to be removed in the 27th after taking a line drive off the face and suffering what the MVP trainers dubbed a “mild concussion”. He is currently recovering at the UCLA medical facilities. Dodgers pitcher Guillermo Mota wound up in the neighboring hospital bed when he took a liner off his foot in the 33rd From the 16th through 36th inning Andrew had at least one runner in scoring position with two outs maybe seven times. It was probably two runners most of the time because each time he got someone to third, I would intentionally walk the next two batters to set up the force at any base. In each of those situations, the third out involved Alexei Ramirez in some way. Be it by pop-up or groundball, the ball was getting hit his direction. And each time that happened I put on my best Hawk Harrelson accent and exclaimed as Ramirez made the play, “ALEXEI…YIIES! YIIES! YIIES! YIIES!” as Hawk did at the end of Buehrle’s perfect game just a short while ago. Andrew was pretty annoyed. When the top of the 37th began I texted my brother to tell him the record had been broken. How much farther would we go was the question? Amidst dropped fly balls, throws to the wrong bases, and swinging and missing at pitches that are so far out of the strike zone that the yellow circle with the “x” through it saying “Don’t swing at me! It’s going to be a ball!” shows up, we made it to the 40th inning. With one out and Eric Milton on the hill, I took to the plate with A.J. Pierzynski. He hit one down the line in left that caromed off the wall, resulting in a double. The pitcher, Tony Pena, struck out on the next play. It was Podsednik’s turn for the 16th time in the game. Let me preface this at-bat by saying that in Podsednik’s previous eight at-bats, I had tried drag-bunting each time. I was successful three of those times. This at-bat I decided to swing for a real hit since a runner was on and in scoring position. Podsednik hit one into center field; A.J. rounded third and chugged toward the plate. Matt Kemp fired home to Russell Martin. We were going to have a play at home. Just like that eighth inning so long ago, I held up on the control stick and began screaming an “AHHHHHHH!” sound while sweat that probably had traces of Busch Light due to events from the night before dripped down my forehead as Pierzynski collided with Martin. The Ball popped out! For real this time! Safe! I scored! It was 3-2! Andrew yelled out cuss words not fit for this column and I danced liked Jerry, George, and Kramer do in “The Trip: Part 2” episode of Seinfeld when the L.A.P.D. release Kramer because “the murderer struck again!". It had to be A.J. that was in that position. When you think of highly emotional moments in important situations in recent White Sox memory, you think of him. It was A.J. who ran to first on the dropped-third strike by Josh Paul in the 2005 ALCS. It was A.J. who collided with Michael Barrett that started a fistfight in 2006. It was A.J. who took it to Russell Martin in the top of the 40th inning in 2009. No one else on my team could have pulled off what he did at 3:16 P.M. on Sunday, August 2nd, 2009. The inning ended with no more runs scored and I retired the side in order in the bottom of the 40th inning. I won. Three hours and 16 minutes later, I had won. It was more relief than jubilation that it was finally over. I sat with a smile on my face and Andrew simply had his head down in disbelief. The marathon was done. 40 innings of baseball. I hadn’t eaten all day. The game lasted so long that I went from starving, to my stomach just giving up and accepting that food was not going to happen, and back to starving. The final box score featured multiple players with 15 and 16 at-bats. Jim Thome, who pinch-hit in the 10th, only had that one at-bat the entire game. He was not happy and was spotted leaving the clubhouse in street clothes in the 22nd. Mark Kotsay, who pinch-ran for Konerko in the 10th, ended up playing 30 innings. Octavio Dotel threw 6 2/3 innings of relief. Guillermo Mota threw seven. Jason Schmidt and D.J. Carrasco pitched 11 and 12 1/3 innings, respectively! Tony Pena received the win and Eric Milton was handed the loss. I don’t know if I can fathom how Andrew must have felt losing a 40-inning game. It must be the most discouraging thing in the world…of videogames. I don’t know what I would have done had I lost, but I must give props to Andrew for losing with dignity and not storming out in a fury. Imagine if he had decided he didn’t want to play with Los Angeles and used up his second or third random, or I had been the Pirates or Rockies. Or what if, in the eighth, that glitch run didn’t happen. Andrew sent his skipper out to argue, and had he tapped “triangle” two more times, the meter would have hit red and he the umpire would have tossed him. He would have had no control the rest of the way over his roster. If any of these things happened, the game probably would have lasted nine innings, like normal games. But we picked the Dodgers and White Sox, the glitch run DID happen, and both of us had control of our rosters the whole way. Every element had to be perfect and imperfect at the same time, as the errors and mistakes proved. And in true A.J. Pierzysnki fashion, he rammed into Russell Martin to score the winning run. Dodgers Stadium played host to a 40-inning spectacular. 8/2 will forever go down, at least in Andrew’s, Connor’s, and my mind as “The Game”. Andrew and I, as far as my knowledge goes, have the record. It was the greatest game ever played.
Set as favorite
Bookmark
Email This
Trackback(0)
Comments (0)
 Write comment
|
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
