A Well-Intended Mystery

Last night I was switching between the Mariners’ broadcast and the Pirates.  In the top of the ninth, Pittsburgh was tied with Atlanta 6 to 6.  The Pirate broadcasters — I think they were Greg Brown and  Steve Blass (back row in the picture, Brown is on the left and Blass is next to him),  — were trying to gin up some good omens for the Pirates.  Brown noted that Josh Bell wears number 55, while the Braves’ pitcher wears 77.  He was convinced this was a wonderful sign for the Pirates, pointing out to Blass, his extremely skeptical color man, that 5 + 7 = 12; the two teams were tied at 6; 6 + 6 = 12;  but the Braves had 13 hits, while the Pirates had only 12; and the best way to bring everything into balance would be for Bell to hit a homer to even the hits at 13, and bring the total runs to 13.

All that took three pitches to explain.  On the fourth pitch, Bell homered. For the first time since May 29.

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I immediately wrote down the above two paragraphs, consuming the rest of the top of the ninth and the commercial break, and the first four pitches to the Braves’ leadoff hitter.  I turned my attention back to the game, discovering the Wolverines’ new slugger Austin Riley was up with a 3-1 count.  On the next pitch HE hit a homer.

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By the time I checked back on the Mariners, the M’s were ahead 9-6.  Twins defenders had been infected with marineritis and were throwing baseballs all over.  Miguel Sano made the most damaging error, allowing two runs to score.  And the M’s  won the game, a miracle in itself given the state of its bullpen.

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So I switched back to the Pirates/Braves game, where the Braves had the winning run on… but the Pirates got the third out to send it to the 10th.  Unfortunately for the Pirates, the Braves did not get sloppy  with the baseball, and the Braves eventually won with no further Riley heroics.

So the evening ended prosaically, as prosaic as it can get when the M’s inexplicably pull out a win.  But for a few minutes there Greg Brown seemed to have opened a window into a world where magic happens when you conjure homers and comebacks to find patterns and portents in seemingly random numbers.

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