Viva Las VegA’s?

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The Sphere

Oakland A’s fans may not be the only ones hoping this blast around Las Vegas’s Sphere proves to be baseball’s version of Dewey Defeats Truman.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Las Vegas Athletics of Oakland. At least, they will be as of 2028, now that baseball’s owners voted unanimously to allow John Fisher to hijack the A’s from a city who loved them but whose leaders, for assorted reasons, refused to let Fisher strongarm them into a new development with a ballpark thrown in for good measure.

I write as a baseball analyst and as a lifelong fan. Would I love to see major league baseball in Las Vegas, where I’ve lived since 2007? You might as well ask if I’d love to discover a million tax free dollars at my front door. But I’m hard pressed for now to know which about the A’s situation is worse.

Is it Fisher discovering not every Oakland muckety-muck had turnips for brains and wouldn’t just build him that development and hand it to him on a platinum serving tray? Is it that the A’s now get to turture Oakland a few more years before they’re actually ready and able make the move?

Is it Las Vegas’s and Nevada’s powers that be jumping eyes wide shut into handing Fisher $380 million worth of the funding for a projected billion dollar-plus ballpark adjacent to The Strip, funding that’s liable to hike when the usual unanticipated cost overruns cost Nevada taxpayers more than the billion the A’s are “expected to arrange?”

The only thing possibly standing in the way of finishing the Fisher hijack is a Nevada pollitical action committee whose interest is public education forcing Nevada’s $380 million to a public November 2024 vote. “Were that to happen,” write The Athletic‘s Evan Drellich and Melissa Lockard, “and were the public to subsequently vote against providing the money, the move could be, at the least, delayed.”

Dare to dream. Well, the Oakland fan group the Last Dive Bar does. “So what’s to say this Vegas [move] is going to be this glaring success?” asked Last Dive Bar member Bryan Johansen of Lockard—right before answering.

They have what they didn’t have all those times (in previous attempts to move) in that they have the support of the commissioner to move and they have a city that just says, yeah, do whatever you want here. But it’s still Fisher and he still has to do that work, and he still has to put a shovel in the ground. And to today, he hasn’t been able to accomplish that, so there’s still a glimmer of hope that he’s not going to be successful and will be forced to either sell or work something out in Oakland.

The A’s have been in Oakland three years longer than they spent in their native Philadelphia. RingCentral Coliseum, the home they’ve known since moving there from Kansas City in 1968, has been a living, neglected wreck for what now seems eons. And Oakland was willing to give a $375 million commitment to a new A’s stadium if only Fisher and his trained parrot David Kaval left things at that.

But Fisher and Kaval insisted on pushing the $12 billion Howard Terminal development project with a ballpark thrown in for good measure. Oops. Now the A’s, which have been allowed to devolve into the American League’s first among known basket cases, stand likely to be turned into a game-wide hate object thanks to an owner about whom decriptions as ten-thumbed might be polite.

“But what could have worked better?” asks Deadspin‘s Sam Fels, who answers almost promptly:

The tiniest ballpark in the tiniest market in a climate inhospitable for getting to the park or sitting outside? Or a gleaming new [Oakland] park right downtown that included far more of a footprint for Fisher and revenue streams in the nation’s tenth biggest market, in one of the wealthiest areas in the country? Isn’t it just possible, with all of that, that the A’s might have become the big market team that the Bay Area suggests they should be? Well, not under Fisher’s ditch-focused guidance, but under someone with a few neurons that fire at the same time? Did anyone think the Giants were a big market team before they moved into their palace in downtown San Francisco?

The alleged Las Vegas plan is to build a retractable roof ballpark where the Tropicana now sits. That still counts on that which cannot always be counted upon, travelers silly enough to hit Vegas at the peak of summer’s notoriously dry roasting heat, to see a team in which they normally have no rooting interest.

Las Vegas without such travelers has sports fans to burn. (No pun intended.) Baseball fans are more numerous than outsiders might suspect. They could in theory jam the future ballpark and still not do it enough—not with a ballpark said to be planned for 30,000-35,000 seats—to compel Fisher to do anything much more than entertain thoughts of selling the team.

But they might have done it for a new expansion team. Oops. Commissioner Pepperwinkle and his minions seem to believe Vegas needs an “established” team—whether or not it’s the (ahem) white elephant into which Fisher turned the A’s—instead of something splashy new. Never mind that Vegas has lived as much and maybe a little more on the splashy new as the tried and true.

Thoughts of Fisher selling the team have been prime on A’s fans for about as long as Fisher’s owned them. This past season merely amplified those thoughts with the prominent and rousing “Sell the Team!” chants among those A’s fans who still refused to let RingCentral’s wreckage deter them. The very thought of Fisher selling to one who cares about the team may have been what Disney legend Annette Funicello called the dream that’s a wish the heart makes.

Whether the buyer will be someone who actually believes a baseball team should be built to compete and win as best as possible to win is impossible to predict for now. So is whether such a buyer will be willing to take the A’s as far off the larger revenue sharing teat as possible, considering Fisher having to keep them on it isn’t really going to make him true friends among the owners who approved his hijack.

This is not Walter O’Malley being squeezed out of Brooklyn by a capricious, tyrannical city and state building czar determined never again to allow privately owned sports facilities built on New York land. This is the latest in a long run of baseball owners with the wherewithal but not the will to build entirely out of their own pockets without one. thin. dime. of public money factoring in.

It’s also the latest in a long run of municipalities who think there’s nothing wrong with fleecing their constituencies on behalf of creating or luring major league sports teams that don’t always prove to be saviours of local economies without the locals or the visitors paying through their noses, bellies, and any other passages possible.

Not to mention the latest in a too-long run of the A’s looking to get out of their dilapidated digs but finding the wrong ways to do it, or the wrong opponents to cross. Wanting to escape that was one thing. Going deliberately into the tank after the pan-damn-ic season while still trying to fleece their home city was something else entirely.

As The Soul of Baseball author Joe Posnanski writes in Esquire, “They seemed on their way to San Jose at one point—the city wanted the team so badly that they actually sued Major League Baseball—but the Giants’ said that San Jose belongs to them and blocked the move. After that, the city of Oakland and the State of California put almost $800 million on the table in infrastructure, tax kickbacks, and various other goodies.

“This hasn’t proven to be enough . . . Fisher believes he can get more, that he needs more, that he deserves more.”

The Sphere, that big, $2.3 billion dollar Las Vegas ball of animated light on the outside and overpriced concert and other event seating on the inside, which may be liable to lure more people watching the outside than listening and watching on the inside, couldn’t wait to blast the news on the outside.

A’s fans in Oakland, who have suffered two lifetimes’ betrayals and refuse to surrender without a fight, may not be the only ones hoping that’ll end up equaling Dewey Defeats Truman.

Underhanded Counselling?

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Craig Counsell

No, the Cubs did not poach Counsell from the Brewers. What they did to David Ross, however . . .

Would you blame David Ross if you discover he feels like the husband who was thrown over with little to no warning because the wife decided something better was available? OK, that’s not really a fair analogy. Grandpa Rossy is seven years younger than Craig Counsell. But considering the Cubs’ treatment, he might as well be seven years older.

But something isn’t passing the proverbial smell test about Counsell’s hiring and Ross’s firing.

First, let’s clear this one at once. The Cubs didn’t poach Counsell. Not from the Brewers or from anyone else. Counsell’s contract expired first. He didn’t exactly lack for interest once it became known he intended to test his own managerial market. But test it he did, as a proper free agent.

Now, that said, the manner in which the Ross firing and Counsell hiring were done was a weak look. Team president Jed Hoyer had a deal done with Counsell before flying to Ross’s Florida home to meet and execute Ross, the guy from whom Hoyer said he wasn’t really looking to move on. The headline on The Athletic‘s Patrick Mooney’s take said it with jarring simplicity: “David Ross’s downfall as Cubs manager? He isn’t Craig Counsell.”

Just like Rick Renteria wasn’t Joe Maddon. Just like, as things turned out, Maddon—on whom the Cubs “soured” almost too swiftly when they faded from World Series drought busters to also rans—wasn’t Ross, who’d been one of his more valuable role players for that almost surrealistic 2016 World Series run but received a front-office grooming for the bridge to follow after his retirement.

Maddon also proved not to be Counsell. It was Counsell’s Brewers who chased Maddon’s Cubs down in 2018, possibly putting Maddon onto a very warm seat the heat from which swelled a year later—when the Cubs fell from contention, had a chance to knock the Cardinals out of the races, but got swept by the Cardinals in Wrigley Field in their final home set of the year.

Hopefully, someone in the Cubs’ orbit has tipped Counsell to watch his back in case the Cubs’ administration decides, somewhere along the road, no matter what success that administration allows him to have, that he’s not whomever they’d like to romance and marry in due course.

Especially if, as they did with Ross, the Cubs announce he’s their guy in public only to romance a purported upgrade behind closed doors. Especially if they announce Counsell’s their guy despite a season being ended at the hands of Counsell’s now-former team. With the way the Cubs are administered, nothing’s impossible, including infamy.

This isn’t the single most suspicious fire-and-hire I’ve seen in a lifetime of baseball watching. Nothing compares to the shameful Yankee double switch of 1964. They canned an undermined Yogi Berra the day after the Cardinals beat his Yankees in the World Series. Then, they hired Johnny Keane, the skipper who’d just beaten him in that Series.

We learned only later that then-Yankee GM Ralph Houk had every intention of dumping Yogi after the season, no matter what, even backchanneling during the season to gauge Keane’s interest in the Yankee job, if the Cardinals were ready to let him go before their own pennant race comeback and triumph.

At least Ross didn’t get it the way the Mets once dumped an embattled Willie Randolph, either. Feeling fire under his hindquarters over the Mets’ blowing a seven-game National League East lead in September 2007, Randolph and his Mets opened 2008 34-35 and he was fired—after managing a doubleheader split in New York, then flying coast-to-coast to Anaheim to manage a win over the Angels, and getting fired . . . at 3:11 a.m.

As a manager, Ross was better than some, perhaps not as good as others. He earned his players’ trust even as the Cubs administration allowed a championship team to dissipate and a seeming team of also-rans to replace it. Yet he steered them deftly through the 2020 pan-damn-ic and into that surrealistic postseason. And his Cubs played hard in 2022, especially after the All-Star break, and despite the front office fire-selling at that year’s trade deadline.

In 2023, a Cubs team not supposed to compete competed. They pulled themselves to .500 by 27 July, then to 78-67 on 11 September. But from there they collapsed to going 5-12 to finish the season. They’d ended August taking two of three from Counsell’s Brewers but ended the season losing two of three to them.

Counsell’s NL Central-winning Brewers returned to first in the NL Central to stay on 3 August and probably secured it with a nine-game winning streak during that month’s second half, though going 8-4 to finish the regular season didn’t hurt. Then they got swept right out of the wild card series by the eventual NL pennant-winning Diamondbacks.

Except for pan-damn-ically short 2020, Counsell had only one losing season on the Brewers’ bridge. They reached nine postseasons and one National League Championship Series under his command. And Counsell earned respect for managing those runs despite the Brewers not exactly being or behaving like more than a small-market team.

When his contract with the Brewers expired, many were the speculative stories sending Counsell to a very different Mets organisation, under still-new ownership and now administered by the man who hired him in Milwaukee in the first place, David Stearns. Counsell built a reputation as a communicative players’ manager in tune with the game’s analytic side and in synch with the human side.

David Ross

So much for being “their guy” . . .

I saw some speculation that Counsell leveraged the apparent Mets interest in him to carve a large contract out of whomever might win his favour at all. But I also saw smarter observations that the Wisconsin-reared and rooted Counsell—the winningest manager in Brewers history—didn’t want to stray far from home in any job change.

He got what he wanted and more, the Cubs signing him for five years and $40 million to steer their Ricketty ship. That alone may do wonders on future markets for steadily successful managers who are usually expected to work for comparative peanuts and be bosses to players who could buy and sell them for the equivalent of a year’s worth of sales taxes.

The Cubs may not fall into big bidding wars for this winter’s free agency class, but they’re expected to be active enough to fortify a team that looked like a rising team often enough in 2023. Cub fans know only too well how swiftly expectations can turn, of course, but let’s leave it be for now.

I would repeat my earlier counsel to Counsell: watch your back—and not just from Brewers crowds ready to hammer you the first time you lead the Cubs to Milwaukee for a series. The next rising managerial star might turn Cub eyes toward him at the first sign of availability, too. And it may not matter whether or not you continue building a resume that might include managing the Cubs to another World Series title, either.

It took Ross—a World Series hero as a role player on the 2016 Cubs, who hit his final major league home run during that staggering Game Seven—several days to speak out about his execution. Telling Talahassee Democrat writer Jim Henry that anger is poison to him, Ross preferred gratitude:

There was a lot of people who worked really hard alongside me. … I am really thankful for the four years I got, coming from zero coaching experience to getting the chance to manage such a great organization that has impacted my life in a great way. There’s great people there. I really don’t have a whole lot negative to say, to be honest.

I get mad from time to time but I have a lot to be thankful for.

Few men and women pick up and dust off from their unexpected purgings with that kind of grace. The Cubs should consider themselves fortunate that Grandpa Rossy didn’t elect to stay away from future team commemorations as long as the incumbent ownership and administration is in place. As with the case of a certain Yankee legend, nobody might blame him if he did.

“They think you’re supposed to win running away”

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Dusty Baker

“After awhile, you just get tired of answering questions.”—Dusty Baker.

The Yardbarker headline says, “Dusty Baker blames surprising source for retirement.” Then, citing his interview with The Steam Room podcast hosts Ernie Johnson and Charles Barkley, they note the “surprising source” is “bloggers and tweeters” Baker deemed unfair. Baker is not necessarily wrong.

“We had a lot of success here, Ernie and Charles, and then the last couple of months here weren’t very pleasant, because we weren’t ten games ahead,” Baker said of his Astros, whom he managed to a seventh American League Championship Series game this year and in pan-damn-ic short 2020, plus a 2021 World Series loss in six but a 2022 World Series ring—also in six.

You spoil people. They think you’re supposed to win this every year running away and it’s not like that. Every year’s different.

There was a whole bunch of criticism from 30-year-olds and bloggers and tweeters that I’m not doing this and I don’t know that, and I told my wife, ‘You know, I’m kind of tired of this and tired of the scrutiny and if I could go manage and show up at say 6:30 for a 7 o’clock game and leave 30 minutes after the game, don’t do the (pregame and postgame interviews), I could manage for another four or five years.’ You know what I mean? After a while, you just get tired of answering questions.

God and His servant Casey Stengel only know success can soil and spoil. In certain ways, the 74-year-old Baker and his Astros were actually fortunate. Their run of sustained success is comparatively recent. Astro fans actually have time to reconsider, reflect, and remind themselves that sustained success may not always live long. Their own franchise history might be a fine place to start.

They might look to those longtime American League ogres who carried slightly more than half a century worth of pennants and slightly more than a quarter century worth of World Series titles into the current century. Yankee fans are nothing if not spoiled rotten enough to believe a) the World Series is illegitimate without the Yankees in it; and, b) they are as entitled to Yankee success as the Yankees themselves.

They might look to the National League West owners, too. Those Dodgers who’ve won ten of the past eleven NL West races, including eight straight before 2021 and the past two consecutive, and who had considerable success in the second half of the 20th Century. Starting with winning six pennants (including two pair of back-to-back flags) and Brooklyn’s only World Series in eleven years; continuing with four pennants and three World Series rings within their first nine years in Los Angeles.

Dodger fans are almost as spoiled as Yankee fans these days. And, almost as frustrated. They may not yet think a World Series is illegitimate without the Dodgers in it, but they can’t fathom any more than the team itself how the Dodgers could win ten of eleven NL West titles with only one pennant and Series ring to show for it.

If Baker (once a Dodger player himself) thinks bloggers and tweeters were rough on his Astros this year, he may not have seen how rough they were on the Yankees and the Dodgers. That roughness almost makes any hammerings on the Astros for not running away with the AL West this year seem like love taps.

Baker also may not have seen how much rougher than that were lots of blogging and tweeting fans of other teams upon whom atomic expectations fell at the season’s beginning but upon whom atomic deflations fell almost as fast. Met fans of the past several years have come to believe a season lost upon one bad inning—in April, never mind when big moves became big falls.

Don’t get me started on Cub and Red Sox fans, even if the former finally broke its long World Series drought almost eight years ago and the latter have more World Series rings this century (four) than anyone else. Or Cardinal fans, priding themselves as the best in the game but guilty of unnecessary roughness when the Redbirds finished at the bottom of the weak-enough NL Central this year after a decade of nine first or second place finishes in eleven seasons. Or Braves fans, respoiled by recent success after the comparative drought following that protracted NL East ownership of the 1990s-early Aughts.

Baseball is about rooting and caring, but too many fans take protracted defeat and failed high expectations personally. There may never again be the Yankees’ 20th Century dominance. God willing, the Yankees today won’t succumb to the temptation too many of their fans still ask: What would George do? More fan bases than just the Yankees’ base see lack of success and wish their teams had that kind of owner. Not so fast, folks.

There may take several if not many years before the next small dynasty comes out to play. Nobody guarantees that a solid club of Rangers who just won the World Series in five thrilling games can do it again, and again, and again, consecutively or at least consistently. Nobody guarantees the Astros’ success run will continue indefinitely.

The advent of the blogosphere and social media makes fan frustration seem about a thousand times more intense than when all we had was the morning paper, the evening news sports reports, and assorted retrospective books by which to go. Interviewers asking foolish or even stupid questions didn’t begin with Xtwitter.

Brutal fan attacks didn’t end with the letters to the editor sections. Death threats, even, didn’t end when Roger Maris (single season) and Hall of Famer Henry Aaron (career) finished knocking the Sacred Babe to one side in the arguable two most hallowed pages of the record books.

Baker’s hardly the only manager who ever got fed up with the witless who come forth worse than whatever mis-step they’re criticising. He may be the first to retire over it. Some of us think we should consider ourselves fortunate if certain players don’t retire when the social media universe attacks them without knowing the possible wherefores behind what they’re attacking.

Questioning mediocrity is one thing. But when once-glittering star players decline when they’re not exactly old men just yet, the social mediaverse seems to prefer hammering first and asking questions later. Even when it sees those players among the walking wounded on the injured list, the social mediaverse is only too prepared to dismiss them as fragile goldbricks still.

Go ahead and say Baker finally couldn’t stand the heat so he walked out of the kitchen at last, if it makes you feel good. But ask yourselves, honestly, how many of you would really be willing to go to work when it’s before five-figure audiences in a ballpark and seven figure audiences watching television, listening to radio, watching online, Xtweeting as they watch, or all the above.

That’s what I thought.

Not now, Snakes

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Arizona Diamondbacks

The Diamondbacks fell in this World Series, and losing the final three at their own Chase Field really stings. But . . .

Stop right there. I mean you, everyone who thought “Bill Buckner” the moment Diamondbacks center fielder Alek Thomas over-ran Jonah Heim’s top of the ninth RBI single into an extra Rangers run, two outs before Marcus Semien slammed an exclamation point down upon the season and the Diamondbacks’ fate.

For one thing, the Diamondbacks still had three outs to play with coming at the plate. For another thing, these Snakes were that resilient bunch who usually found ways to overcome when absolutely necessary, no?

Not this time. Just as they couldn’t quite close a Game Four blowout into a possible tie and overthrow, they couldn’t turn a near-eleventh hour Game Five deficit into another tie or overthrow. It hurt even more losing the World Series with a three-sweep at home after splitting the first pair in Arlington.

At last, as Semien’s two-run homer off Diamondbacks finisher Paul Sewald disappeared over the left center field fence in the top of the ninth, that Diamondbacks resiliency failed them even as the Rangers’ equal resiliency hurtled them to the Promised Land in five arduous World Series games.

“I definitely could have done a better job of getting in front of the [Heim] and calming down and just fielding it,” Thomas said postgame, refusing to shrink away, “but I think I rushed it and just didn’t get the glove down. I think I made an error on that two times last year and this year, and I think by now I should learn my lesson on how to go about that ball. But definitely gonna work on that in the offseason, make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

Long before Thomas had his moment of ill fate, the Diamondbacks failed to rise to several occasions. Their gallant starting pitcher Zac Gallen took a no-hitter through six innings while his Rangers counterpart Nathan Eovaldi pitched into and out of heavy traffic yet refused to surrender so much as a single run.

They loaded the bases on Eovaldi in the first and the fifth and left them that way. They had to know Eovaldi didn’t have his best stuff to throw and couldn’t do more than four hits despite also drawing five walks on the veteran righthander.

Then the most they could do against the Ranger bullpen was a seventh-inning walk, an eighth-inning base hit, and nothing else to show for it while that pen struck them out five times, including Ketel Marte looking at strike three from Josh Sborz to end Game Five and the Series whole.

“To get a taste of postseason baseball and the World Series,” said veteran Snakes designated hitter Tommy Pham, “if this doesn’t motivate you, I don’t know what will. This is a young team. There’s a core you can build around. And now everybody knows what it takes to get here.”

Pham surely didn’t mean backing into the postseason in the first place, as the Diamondbacks did claiming a wild card slot after finishing well back of the National League West-owning Dodgers on the regular season. Once they got there, though, they swept two division winners (the Brewers, the Dodgers) out of the wild card and division series rounds, then fought the Phillies to a seven-game National League Championship Series conquest.

Then they ran into the Rangers. Except for their 9-1 Game Two win, for the Diamondbacks this was like running into a pack of snake hunters unwilling to show much in the way of mercy. Even when they fought back from a 10-1 blowout in the making to make it 11-7 in Game Three, the Rangers were too much for the Diamondbacks to handle.

These Snakes didn’t have the star power of their 2001 World Series-winning predecessors. They kind of liked it that way, too. “I felt like we’re definitely a bunch of misfits,” said relief pitcher Ryan Thompson after Game Five ended.

That’s what makes us special. We got a bunch of young guys who are hungry, doing it for the first time. We got a bunch of veterans who have been there, done that, but not quite won the whole thing. It’s awesome being able to put our names on the map.

Gangs of misfits have won World Series in the past, with or without star power. The 1934 Cardinals, that shameless brawling Gas House Gang, was one. The Bronx Zoo Yankees of 1977-78 were another. The 2004 Red Sox called themselves the Idiots as though it were a badge of high honour. The 2010 Giants—managed by now-triumphant Rangers manager Bruce Bochy—thought of themselves as a bunch of morons.

What these Diamondbacks had was future star power. Corbin Carroll, Gabriel Moreno, Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly, and Thomas himself. You could say it wasn’t their fault the Rangers hunted, pecked, pounded, pricked, and pulverised them. But you’d also have to say these Diamondbacks made enough of their own mistakes to enable that Ranger romp, too.

You credit the Rangers for such seizures. But you hand it to the Diamondbacks for making a showing for themselves before the World Series arrived. In a sane world, ruled by a sane commissioner and group of owners, they wouldn’t have reached the postseason in the first place.

But under the way things are set now, the Diamondbacks made the most of their entry. They left the Brewers looking brewed to a fare-thee-well. They left the Dodgers to a winter of self-re-examination. Then they ran into a Texas chainsaw massacre, more or less. There was no shame in that.

Oh, sure, they looked foolish a few times. Especially when manager Torey Lovullo talked early in the postseason about all those “receipts” the Diamondbacks kept to stick right back up the rears of those who doubted, the cynics who figured they were due for an early and painful postseason exit, the snorters who figured the big bad Phillies would make rattlesnake stew out of them.

They outlasted the Phillies. It wasn’t really easy to do. But the Rangers were another proposition entirely. The Diamondbacks really didn’t stand much of a chance no matter how bravely they hung in for five games, no matter that this Series matched two of baseball’s best defensive teams on the season.

The Rangers were only too happy to stuff those Diamondbacks receipts right back where they came from. But the Diamondbacks have no reason for shame otherwise.

“I’m so proud of what they’ve done,” Lovullo said. “And we have to step back for a minute and tell ourselves that we’ve done a lot of really amazing things this year. And then we got on this really fun ride through the course of the postseason. You just never want it to stop.”

But that’s the problem. They can never rescind the rule that somebody has to lose games.  The good news further is that the Diamondbacks are a comparatively young franchise and lack the kind of snake-bitten history that once plagued such antiquities as the Cubs, the Red Sox, and even the 63-year-old Rangers. And still plagues the Guardians, who haven’t won a World Series since the Berlin Airlift.

Barring unforeseen calamity or brain damage, the Diamondbacks will be back soon enough. For now, let them mourn lost opportunity while celebrating how they got to have the chance in the first place.

Of great misfortune and unforeseen reward

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Texas Rangers

Big man lost? No problem, so far . . .

Maybe, as much as he loathed the original move of the second Washington Senators to Texas for 1972, the late Frank Howard put a good word in when he arrived in the Elysian Fields Monday. On the same day he departed, the Rangers got just what they needed to win World Series Game Three. On the day after, they got a lot more of what they needed to end Game Four one win shy of a franchise-first Series title.

Rest assured, however, that the gentle giant nicknamed Capital Punishment did not arrange for the Rangers to lose Max Scherzer and Adolis García for the rest of the Series.

The Rangers needed anything Scherzer had left in Game Three and got it, until his back tightened after three shutout innings to open. They needed their bullpen, paced by usual starter Jon Gray, to keep the Diamondbacks from getting frisky at the plate, and they got that, too, other than one late excuse-us! run.

They needed just enough runs to make a difference and to stop a couple of potential runs with their arms and leather, and they got both. They even needed the usually mistake-conscious Diamondbacks to make a critical mistake and got that, too. But they didn’t need García straining his left oblique after an eighth-inning swing at the plate.

Losing García for any length after everything he did to get and keep them here could have been even more grave than losing Scherzer, who wouldn’t have expected to see further Series action until a possible Game Seven. But the Rangers didn’t just rise to the Game Four occasion on Halloween, they smothered it.

“What good is it,” asked Howard once, “to be able to throw a ball through a brick wall if you can’t hit the wall?” The Rangers didn’t expect Scherzer to throw anything through a brick wall, just elusive enough to Diamondbacks bats or enough to compel them to hit them where they were. He’s not Max the Knife anymore, but he didn’t have to be. So long as he kept the Snakes from biting, he set a tone for the Ranger pitching staff. He set it well enough to leave room for the Rangers to win Monday night, 3-1.

Of course, he and they got more than a little help from their friends. Shortstop Corey Seager provided an early blast plus a late defensive double play that probably saved Game Three. Adolis Garcia took advantage of a critical Diamondbacks baserunning mistake, Christian Walker running through his third base coach’s stop sign, to help save it defensively, himself.

Then came the news that García wouldn’t be in the Game Four starting lineup at least. Then, later, came the news he’d be off the Rangers roster along with Scherzer the rest of the set, barring divine (Howardian?) intervention. Their replacements: a relief pitcher named Brock Burke and a utility player named Ezequiel Durán.

Durán can hit a bit and with some long-ball power, and he can handle shortstop especially if Seager needs a break or matchup relief. Burke is a testy proposition at best; he can miss bats but when he doesn’t it can be disaster. (4.37 ERA; 4.90 fielding-independent pitching rate; 5.78 K/BB ratio but 9.7 hits per nine and 2.0 home runs per nine.)

Thus did the Rangers plug difficult-to-impossible holes, not to mention inserting Travis Jankowski into right field in García’s place, and reach for a bullpen Game Four. As did the Diamondbacks. Andrew Heaney opening for the Rangers, Joe (Be Fruitful and) Mantiply for the Snakes.

What was it that Don Vito Corleone once said about great misfortune sometimes leading to unforeseen rewards?

First, García himself gave his teammates a pre-game talk that began with telling them how much he loves them and finished with a call to go out and win two more Series games he had no doubt they could do. Then, stirred by that address from a guy who isn’t known for clubhouse speeches just yet, the Rangers went out and got half the job done Tuesday night.

They made early work of the Snakes with a five-run second, the runs scoring on a wild pitch by Mantiply’s relief Miguel Castro, then a two-run triple by struggling Marcus Semien to chase Castro in favour of Kyle Nelson, and then a two-run homer from Corey Seager on Nelson’s dollar.Then they got nastier in the third: a two-run double (Jankowski, maybe doing a García impression) and a three-run homer. (Semien—did he figure out ways to break out of a postseason slump, or what?)

Meanwhile, it remained a bullpen game on only one side of the field. Surprising maybe everyone watching, Heaney pitched well into the fifth inning, his only blemish until then a second-and-third, nobody-out jam in the fourth out of which he escaped with only one run coming home on a sacrifice fly.

The Diamondbacks only thought they could out-smart the Rangers by staying with a bullpen game and using their lowest-leverage bulls to try sneaking outs through the basement. Until Ryne Nelson entered and swallowed five innings that went unblemished but for Josh Heim’s leadoff bomb in the eighth and Seager’s leadoff ground rule double in the ninth, the Snakes bulls got snaked but good early and too often.

“You’re throwing different looks at guys the whole game,” said Mantiply postgame, after getting the game’s first four outs. “Each hitter never really sees the same guy twice. Obviously, what Ryne did tonight was huge; he stepped up and ate five innings for us. But the strategy is to limit the amount of at-bats guys get off the same guy.”

If only Miguel Castro (the run-allowing wild pitch), Kyle Nelson (Seager’s blast), and Luis Frias (the third inning mayhem) could have followed the script. Then manager Torey Lovullo could have reached for his higher-leverage relievers such as Kevin Ginkel, Paul Sewald, and Ryan Thompson instead of having to ride the Ryne. But the Rangers’ early slashing and smashing turned out to be more vital than thought in the precise moments.

That’s because hese pesky Diamondbacks don’t give up without a good hard fight. The 11-7 final score still seemed lopsided because the Rangers led it 11-1 after seven and a half, but the Snakes rattled a four-run eighth (Tommy Pham with the one-out, bases-loaded sacrifice fly; Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. with the two-out three-run homer) and a two-run ninth (Gabriel Moreno with the two-out, two-run single) before it finally ended.

It just wasn’t enough to overthrow a Rangers team that spent the regular season finding ways around the injured list, never mind get the game to the Diamondbacks’ bigger bullpen bulls.

At various times they lost García himself plus Seager, Josh Heim (who hit a solo bomb in the Game Four eighth), Mitch Garver, Josh Jung, and Leodys Taveras. That was six lineup mainstays. They also had to make do at various times without Game Five starter Nathan Eovaldi plus starter-turned-Series-relief ace Jon Gray plus closer Jose Leclerc and fellow high-leverage bullpen bull Josh Sborz.

They lost free agency signing Jacob deGrom to Tommy John surgery and for the season. They landed Scherzer at the trade deadline but lost him to a shoulder injury in late September and—before the back tightness taking him out Monday—didn’t see him at work again until the American League Championship Series.

The Rangers could have buckled under any one of those injuries. They could have collapsed outright after losing García for the rest of the Series. The Diamondbacks might only wish that they had. Maybe now their fondest wish might be to keep García’s pre-game big mouth shut.

At least one good thing came forth for the Snakes. If Game Five starter Zac Gallen falters or gets torn up early, they’ll have Ginkel, Sewald, and Thompson fresh enough for service. Their second-fondest wish behind possibly muzzling García in the Rangers clubhouse might be getting those three to work in time enough to send the set to a sixth game at minimum.

“We put ourselves in a very tough spot right now,” Pham said postgame. “It’s going to take a lot.”

But Heaney, maybe an unlikely hero for the Rangers, did his team a favour just as big. His five one-run innings saved the meat of the Ranger pen for Game Five. Meaning Gray, Leclerc (who only worked a third of an inning to end Game Five), and Sborz ready to rumble if the Rangers strike early enough and often enough. They did pry three runs out of Gallen in Game One, after all.

What they did to the Snakes’ opening corps Tuesday was a lot more than just prying.

“Five runs in the second inning there, really takes a lot of pressure off,” said Heaney, a veteran who could be both remarkable and vulnerable as an Angel, a Yankee, and a Dodger, before joining the Rangers as a free agent but spending September and most of the postseason in the bullpen. “And then putting up five the very next inning, we had a ten-run lead. It’s a lot easier to go out there, attack the strike zone and not feel so confined to having to make perfect pitches.”

Just hope someone in the Elysian Fields reminds Frank Howard that Game Five doesn’t have to be even half as insane as Game Four.