CLEVELAND — The baseball gods work in the shadows, scripting moments and matchups and sequences that we couldn’t begin to fathom.
Take, for instance, the night of June 26, when Matthew Boyd just so happened to flip on a Cleveland Guardians game to gauge the pulse of the team desperate for his services.
That evening, a rookie sculpted like he should be muscling past offensive tackles walloped a home run to center field at Camden Yards in his first career at-bat.
Fast-forward four months. Boyd, with a rejuvenated left elbow, has become Cleveland’s most consistent postseason starter, and he delivered another sterling effort in Game 3 of the ALCS. And that hulking rookie that Boyd has followed from the beginning, Jhonkensy Noel, saved their season with a seismic blast halfway up the left-field bleachers.
Take, for instance, the vantage point of Noel’s father, Rafael. He had never visited the U.S. until October, but he’s along for the Guardians’ ride through October.
Noel and his dad like to talk hitting, but the conversation often sputters when Rafael asks why he did or didn’t offer at a particular pitch. Noel counters by suggesting his dad step in and attempt to whack a 90 mph slider that’s spinning toward his cleats.
Rafael won’t have any constructive criticism about Noel’s moonshot that, with two outs in the ninth, rescued Cleveland from an insurmountable series deficit. Noel said he sought any pitch on the inner part of the plate; an 88 mph changeup over the middle sufficed.
Rafael witnessed a moment Clevelanders won’t forget, as fans chanted the “Big Christmas” nickname manager Stephen Vogt bestowed upon his son. (Noel said he loves the moniker.) This is a city, after all, that will host Ryan Merritt for a ceremonial first pitch before Game 5 on Saturday night. Merritt totaled 31 2/3 innings as a big-leaguer, but he blanked the Blue Jays for four frames in this round in 2016 to land Cleveland an American League pennant. Sometimes, there’s no better vacation spot than Cleveland in October.
Take, for instance, the showdown of a soon-to-be two-time MVP winner versus the closer who registered one of the best relief seasons in the history of the sport. Emmanuel Clase has craved the encounter since he was forced to issue an intentional walk to Aaron Judge at Yankee Stadium in late August. Judge socked a 99 mph cutter to right field for a tying, crowd-silencing home run. The Guardians’ blueprint — Boyd for five innings, an early lead, Cade Smith, Tim Herrin and Hunter Gaddis blazing a trail for a well-rested Clase — burst into flames.
“As a baseball fan, it was really cool,” Vogt said. “As the opposing manager, it was not.”
Three minutes later, Giancarlo Stanton launched a slider over the center-field fence … and that Yankees power display became a footnote in a New York minute.
David Fry, acquired 2 1/2 years ago as a player to be named later, has bloomed into a postseason savant at the plate. He was an All-Star this season, thanks to a torrid first two months that had him jockeying with Judge and Shohei Ohtani atop the OPS leaderboard. But in late June, shortly before Noel arrived, he suffered an elbow injury that the Guardians have kept discreet. Fry stopped playing the field, which has hampered the club’s flexibility (though Fry, who has caught an occasional bullpen session to stay sharp, told The Athletic he could enter on defense in a pinch).
He didn’t hit a home run in June or July, which prompted his dad to regularly text him about how much his elbow must be bothering him.
“I’m like, ‘No, I’m just not hitting well, Dad,’” Fry said.
No one in Cleveland will remember his second-half slump. They’ll toast to his game-winning homer in Detroit that prevented an early exit in the ALDS and to his walk-off shot Thursday night.
“I blacked out,” Fry said. “I remember being like halfway down the first-base line, looking back at the dugout and saying, ‘All right, I just have to make sure I touch all four bases.’”
Once in a while, the baseball gods spoil us with a whole bunch of zaniness in one night, when the swing of emotions prompts your Apple Watch to ask if you’re OK, when fans are muttering “It’s over” one second and “We’re so back” the next, when those on their living-room sofas grab the remote so they can jam their thumb into the power button the instant the 27th out is recorded only to fling the device onto the couch when Noel flung his black-and-white Louisville Slugger into the grass.
This was the baseball gods working overtime to deliver us October goodness, a beautiful blend of tangled storylines and jaw-dropping momentum shifts.
“If there’s an emotion,” Vogt said, “we all felt it on both sides.”
(Top photo of David Fry and the Guardians celebrating his Game 3 walk-off home run: Lauren Leigh Bacho / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
