Houston – The final, lasting image was the empty seats and tears.
Even fans who had waited a lifetime for the World Series to arrive on Texas’ doorstep couldn’t take it anymore. The national pastime went past their bedtime. Many of those eyes that remained open early Wednesday at Minute Maid Park were red from exhaustion, wet with sadness.
At the end of the longest game in World Series history, there was no elasticity with either bench, either pitching staff, each manager stretched to the breaking point.
In 14 innings of ulcer distress camouflaged as a baseball game that started Tuesday night, the Chicago White Sox outlasted the Houston Astros 7-5, staggering to within one win of ending an 88-year run of futility.
Seldom-used, barely known infielder Geoff Blum produced the winning hit, driving an Ezequiel Astacio fastball into the right field seats for a two-out, solo home run. Game 2 starter Mark Buehrle, the 15th pitcher used, also a World Series record, got Adam Everett to pop up, bringing closure 5 hours and 41 minutes after the first pitch.
Blum arrived by trade from the San Diego Padres, thrilled to be playing for a contender. That those remarks came after he was traded by a first-place team were greeted with humor. His gut proved right as he rounded the bases, fist in the air.
It provided an exclamation point to a game that saw the Astros’ bullpen pitch 7 2/3 scoreless innings – and lose.
It provided a boot to the gut of Houston’s championship dreams, manager Phil Garner firing his chair down the dugout stairs as soon as Blum’s homer cleared the fence.
“I am really ticked off. I have lots of emotion. I am really ticked off,” Garner said. “We had some pretty poor hitting. It was amazing we were even in the ballgame.”
The park, not the players or time clocks, took center stage before the game, embroiled in a controversy. The Astros wanted the roof closed at Minute Maid Park, stressing the importance of noise in their home-field advantage. Baseball commissioner Bud Selig decided on a pulp-free environment, ordering the lid open based on the favorable weather conditions.
“This is the postseason,” explained Selig. “So while we don’t let clubs doctor up their outfields or do other things to give them a competitive edge, weather should be the sole criteria, and it has been here.”
While 10 Astros wore long sleeves and the train conductor, perched on the tracks above the left-field wall, required a coat, the open air was not a factor. Nor was fan passion a problem. The Astros raced to a 4-0 lead as the elbow- room-only crowd roared its approval.
In the fifth inning, the roof caved in on Astros starter Roy Oswalt. The White Sox sent 11 batters to the plate, pounded out six hits and scored five runs on 46 pitches. In his previous 25 1/3 innings in this year’s playoffs, Oswalt had surrendered just five runs.
White Sox third baseman Joe Crede delivered the first shot, ripping a solo home run. Catcher A.J. Pierzynski exacted the most damage, smashing a two- run double to center field that catapulted the White Sox ahead 5-4.
The advantage was simultaneously precarious and ominous. Chicago was 6-0 in the playoffs when leading after six innings. After squandering an opportunity in the seventh, Jason Lane, who had homered early, tied the score 5-5 with an eighth-inning double.
What played out over the next hour was a tease, with each team creeping toward victory before sneaking back into the dugout. In the ninth, Chicago’s Orlando Hernandez, cementing his “Legend of The Fall” reputation, wiggled out of a self-created mess. With the bases loaded, he struck out Morgan Ensberg on a 73 mph curveball before exiting with stiffness in his neck.
The White Sox threatened in the 11th, briefly wobbling a Houston bullpen that served as a life raft for Oswalt, allowing just one hit from the sixth through the 10th inning. It fizzled, setting the stage for Blum’s belated heroics.
“Nobody said this was going to be easy,” White Sox outfielder Aaron Rowand.
Making history never is.
Staff writer Troy E. Renck can be reached at 303-820-5447 or trenck@denverpost.com.
