Major League Baseball

This Game 7 should be extra special

Published Oct. 28, 2011 1:00 a.m. ET

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We’re about to witness something that hasn’t happened in 25 years.

We’re about to watch a team scrape its guts off the ground for the sake of one more game.

We’re about to see if 25 men can perform at their peak less than 24 hours after missing their greatest professional triumph by a matter of inches — on a single play.

We’re about to find out how the 2011 Texas Rangers will be remembered: remarkably resilient or tragically ham-handed.

By now, there should be no such thing as an American sports fan who lacks a rooting interest in the 107th World Series. Maybe you want to see the St. Louis Cardinals complete their journey from August long shot to October champion. Maybe you want to see the Rangers win their first world championship, following a 10-9 Game 6 defeat for which “devastating” is an insufficient descriptor.

But you must be one or the other. The middle ground disappeared around the time David Freese’s jersey was ripped apart by delirious teammates after his 11th-inning walk-off home run.

Friday night, the country will savor its first World Series Game 7 since 2002 (FOX, 7:30 ET), yet to call this a once-in-a-decade event would sell it short. Generations may come and go before we see another baseball game like the one that unfolded before 47,325 witnesses at Busch Stadium on a frosty Thursday night.

For those of us born after 1980, this is the closest thing we’ve seen to the Carlton Fisk Game.

In the ninth inning, with Neftali Feliz on the mound, the Rangers were one strike from becoming world champions.

It never came.

In the 10th inning, with Scott Feldman on the mound, the Rangers were one strike from becoming world champions.

It never came.

For the Rangers, rolling out of bed Friday, throwing on some clothes and showing up at the ballpark will be an act of great inner strength.

“We fought hard all year to get to this point,” said Rangers star Josh Hamilton, whose 10th-inning home run nearly made him the Game 6 hero. “You’re not going to give up now. We lost tonight. It was a great game — probably a classic. But we’ve got to come back tomorrow.

“Mentally, when we get through with (answering questions from) you guys, it’ll clear the slate. We’ll focus on coming in early tomorrow, getting our work done and approaching the game like we always do.”

Still, there is nothing routine about this. A quarter-century has passed since the last time a team came this close to a ring fitting, only to lose the game and/or series. You’re probably aware of the story: Oct. 25, 1986, Shea Stadium, a ball through Bill Buckner’s legs, and a 6-5 Boston loss.

The Red Sox have won two titles since then, but not before New Englanders endured another 18 years of agony. Even today, fans and historians are fascinated by that game, a spellbinding case study in how quickly champagne turns to chaos. Buckner, Roger Clemens, Calvin Schiraldi, and Bob Stanley — the more times we see the tape, the more culpable they become.

That is why the sentimental types will root for the Rangers on Friday night. When a team loses biblically — as the Red Sox did in ’86, as the Rangers did Thursday night — one winter will not be long enough to put the questions to rest. When a catastrophe should have been prevented, in sports or otherwise, the events that preceded it are impossible to forget.

The Red Sox actually held a 3-0 lead through the early and middle innings of Game 7 in ’86, before the Mets tied it in the sixth and went ahead to stay in the seventh. If a similar fate befalls the Rangers on Friday night, Nelson Cruz might go from American League Championship Series MVP to the Buckner of Arlington, Texas — whether it’s fair or not.

Texas wouldn’t be here without Cruz’s bat, just as the ’86 Red Sox needed Buckner at first base to win the pennant. And while Cruz wasn’t charged with an error on Freese’s game-tying triple in the ninth, he took a poor route on a difficult (but very catchable) ball. Cruz hesitated for a couple of steps as he reached the warning track. That was all it took.

In one sense, the anguish quotient is higher with Cruz than it was with Buckner. If Cruz had caught Freese’s two-out fly ball, the Rangers would be planning a parade right now.

With Buckner, it was more complicated. The Mets had already tied the Red Sox by the time the ball rolled through his legs. Retiring Mookie Wilson would have forced extra innings, not clinched the title.

Cruz is an excellent player and upstanding citizen but clearly ran afoul of the baseball gods Thursday night. If Cruz had made the play on Freese, his solo home run in the seventh would have stood as the Series-clinching run. Cruz’s eight home runs this month are tied for the most in a single postseason.

Now, however, he might not have the chance to add to that total. He left in the 11th inning of Game 6 with a right groin strain, and his status for Game 7 is very much in doubt.

Meanwhile, X-rays were negative on the left ankle of Texas catcher Mike Napoli, after he rolled it (rather gruesomely) on an awkward play at second base Thursday. So, he should be able to play. But he’s sure to have a lot of soreness in the area, leaving open the question of how much he’ll be able to offer during the game.

The Cardinals have their own concerns, with left fielder Matt Holliday departing early from Game 6 because of a severely bruised right pinky finger. But St. Louis has home-field advantage, the emotional surge from the Game 6 win and the more experienced Game 7 starter — as long as manager Tony La Russa assents to the wishes of ace Chris Carpenter, who has made clear he wants to pitch on short rest against Texas left-hander Matt Harrison.

“Why wouldn’t you?” Carpenter asked reporters in the aftermath of Game 6. “If you don’t, you might as well go home.”

Technically, everyone goes home after Friday night. One team will be ebullient, the other heartbroken, and each emotion should be even more overwrought than in a “normal” Game 7. That’s what happens when you’re forced to follow one of the greatest games in the history of the sport.

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