Madison Bumgarner, a true Giant
Sports Saturday
What a world series it was for San Francisco Giants pitcher Martin Bumgartner! On Sunday he threw 117 pitches for nine shutout innings to win game five and then on Wednesday he returned to throw another 68 pitches for five shutout innings to preserve a 3-2 lead in the deciding game seven. And of course, that’s after having pitched a four-hit shutout to win the National League Wild Card game against Pittsburgh, pitching 7 2/3 shutout innings to win the first game against the Cardinals, and then pitching seven innings of one-run ball to win the first game of the World Series. As Shakespeare’s Cassius would have put it, the Giant did “bestride the narrow world like a Colossus”:
Brutus: Another general shout!
I do believe that these applauses are
For some new honors that are heap’d on Caesar.
Cassius: Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
If Bumgarner was Caesar, albeit a Caesar that his enemies were unable to stab, then the Royals’ Alex Gordon has got to be wondering whether he should have followed Brutus’ famous advice. With two outs in the ninth inning of the final game and representing the tying run, Gordon hit a single that was bobbled twice, sending him to third. He could have tried for home but instead decided to hold up, only to see the next batter pop up. Nate Silver, the guru of statistical analysis, says he should have taken a gamble and gone all the way.
Here’s how Brutus puts the choice:
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
To be sure, Gordon wasn’t exactly in a high tidal position—there’s a possibility he would have been thrown out easily—but as Silver describes the situation,
It would have been close. Alex Gordon might have scored, particularly if he’d been in the mindset to do so all along. Or maybe not. I’m sure there will be Zapruder-film-type breakdowns, and I’ll look forward to seeing them. It would have been one hell of a moment: Gordon, 220 pounds, who looks like he could have been a strong safety at the University of Nebraska, bearing down on Buster Posey, the catcher whose season-ending injury in 2011 helped inspire baseball’s home-plate collisions rule.
And Silver’s conclusion:
Here’s what I know: Gordon should have tried to score even if he was a heavy underdog to make it. It would have been the right move if he was safe even 30 percent of the time.
While the Royals don’t find themselves in dishonorable graves, having fought valiantly, they are bound up in the shallows and miseries of “what if?”
No Brutus-like suicides, please.