Now pinch hitting for number 13....

After the end of the regular season, in all major sports, come the playoffs. In the playoffs, we are often given the impression that there is more pressure to perform. Certainly, the eyes of baseball fan everywhere focus more closely on the teams that graduated from the regular season into the exclusive playoff level. Every few days, another team is weeded out, forced to make plans for next year, and there are more baseball watching eyeballs focused on fewer and fewer teams.

Players must know this. They must see the crowds arriving earlier to their seats, filling in every last row in the stadium. More reporters hang around the clubhouse, more cameras and microphones shadow them in their daily routine. Friends and family who may have been indifferent to their occupation, suddenly want tickets. All those kids from AAA teams who were suited up in big league colours for the last month, eager and bright eyed? Those kids are gone, watching at home. Only the real big leaguers remain. They playoffs aren't any more complicated when the umpire shouts 'Play ball!' every night, but the feeling has to be different. There is something at stake every night. There is an awareness of all these little changes, turning up the pressure one more notch.

People remember what you do in October. That's the way of the baseball world. Dave Winfield waited 11 years to shake the label 'Mr. May'. Bill Buckner only exists in the casual fan's mind for one fateful October moment. Joe Carter hit 396 home runs in the regular season. You can only find one picture of him running the bases in your memory bank. Fisk waving one fair in game six, 1975. Bucky effing Dent. October remembers.

Maybe I know why he's having trouble.

This story has a great, and a goat. Both of them know what October can do to you. Alex Rodriguez has seen baseball in October 11 different years. He knows how it feels to be the great, in 2009 he hit 6 home runs in the post-season. He batted .365/.500/.808 for the month of October, and he got his World Series ring. He is 37 years old, and very well paid. This year, in October, he has not been great. He has been beyond bad. Joe Girardi has batted him third four times. His best efforts have resulted in a line of .125/.222/.125 so far. There is to be no twist in his fate. A-Rod is our goat.

Which means Raul Ibanez is our somewhat unlikely great. He's been to the post-season 5 times himself. In fact, he was in the opposite dugout in 2009 when A-Rod had his big coming out party in New York. He has no ring with the World Series logo on it. Yet.

One minute in the 16th inning

260 pitches. 

J.P. Arencibia had caught 260 pitches in the five hours since the start of the Cleveland Indians' home opener. He had squatted 260 times and put down fingers, trying to guide his pitchers through the long early innings. He continued to do the same through the long, late innings. The ball hit his glove over two hundred times in those five hours. When it missed his glove, it hit his body, because that's what has to happen to a catcher when his pitcher misses the glove. He had thrown out a runner at second, and dove and tagged a runner out sliding into home plate. Right on his spikes. Some parts of J.P. Arencibia's body had to be hurting after five hours of that kind of punishment. Most likely, many parts of his body were hurting, more than he would care to admit.

And none of that effort mattered at all in this one minute. One minute in the top of the 16th inning. The only opening day 16th inning in Major Legue history. The mask and pads were sitting in the dugout. He had a bat in his hands, and a helmet on his head. He had a different job to do.

Courtesy of Daylife

Catchers who can hit well are a valuable commodity in the realm of Major League Baseball. The punishment doled out from being behind the plate, being involved in every pitch, takes its toll on the mind and body. When it comes time to grab the bat, catchers have already thrown more, moved around more, and had to think about defence more than anyone else on the diamond. It's harder to hit with sore hands. It's harder to generate power with sore knees. It's harder to focus when you've already set up for 250 pitches, trying to figure out a way to keep ahead of the opposing batter's adjustments.

Perhaps some of those factors can help explain why Arencibia looked down at his third base coach and saw a bunt sign that wasn't there. J.P. is not often called upon to bunt, which might be why he asked to see the signs again. Again, he saw a bunt sign that wasn't there. He has never sacrifice bunted successfully in his major league career. To noone's surprise, the bunt attempt resulted in another failure, in the form of a foul ball. The count was one ball, two strikes. J.P. Arencibia's career average with the count 1-2 was .134. Everybody in the park knew J.P. was in a horrible situation, and unlikely to be the hero. His odds of helping his team win were very long, indeed.

But baseball is magic.

The next pitch delivered by Jairo Asencio was the one labelled #4 in the following graphic.

Coutesy Brooks Baseball

A pitch which Arencibia punished, in exactly the way a flat slider down the heart of the plate should be punished. Three run homer. Nail in the Clevelan Indian's coffin. Celebration in the dugout.

Big shout out to Bluejaysbits for this one

In the long course of the 162 game baseball season, there will be a lot of moments, some predictable, some depressing, some amazing. This website exists so that we can all have a place to go to remember the moments that contain a little magic.