Astros 4, A’s 3
W: Veras (4-1)
L: Cook (1-3)
Submitted by Reuben
It’s not often that the Astros manage to rally in the 7th inning against a tough pitcher and not only tie the game but take the lead. And it’s really not often that they are able to rally in the 9th inning and turn around a deficit. So I’m guessing it’s extremely rare that they achieve both of those feats in the same game, yet that is exactly what happened Sunday afternoon in Oakland.
I wasn’t even expecting to be able to catch much of this game. I was flying back from visiting my folks in North Carolina and had a 6pm ET flight. I got to the airport at 5, went through security and found my gate, and then turned on the radio broadcast on my headphones while I waiting for boarding to begin. 6pm came and went and eventually we were informed that there weather in Charlotte, where my connection was, and that we would be “updated” again at 7 – the time we were originally scheduled to actually land in Charlotte.
So I got to hear the 7th-inning rally, which was great. I texted my dad, wondering who Lawless would use as closer with Qualls admitting that the A’s were his Daddy. Maybe Keuchel could throw another CG? Nope, was the near-immediate answer from the game, as Dallas surrendered a 2-run bomb to former Stro-property Nate Freiman. I focused on my book for a while before reluctantly turning the game back on.
Things got interesting in the 9th. A leadoff walk to Marwin was followed by 1-out walks to Krauss and Grossman. Then Ryan Cook’s wildness infected Fernando Abad, and soon the Astros had scored 2 runs without the benefit of a hit.
Then we heard from the captain that we were finally going to take off. Which was great news, because the window was quickly closing on any shot I had at making my connecting flight. But, the game wasn’t over and the Astros holding a 1-run lead in the bottom of the 9th against the A’s was about as automatic as a stick shift. At least Lawless had the sense to use Sipp. His decision to have Fowler bunt Altuve to 2nd base earlier had me questioning his sanity/IQ.
We started to taxi over to the runway. Crap, hurry up, Sipperstar. He tried to oblige, getting the first two batters out. Then a walk to zero-HR-hitting Craig Gentry with clutch-power-hitting-Astro-killah Josh Donaldson on deck. Shit, Sipp. Now Fields was coming in. Take off was imminent. Finally Fields finished his warm-up tosses and play resumed. The engines fired up, simulating a Fields fastball (some say Josh might be the best player on the team, don’tyouknow). It seemed inevitable that we would be way up in the air, out of reach of my phone’s 3G network, before the at-bat could end, and I would have to wait, not knowing the result of an annoying-ass cliffhanger, until we got to Charlotte – at which point, certainly, it would turn out Donaldson had hit a walk-off homer.
But he didn’t, and Fields got strike 3 after we left the ground but about 3 seconds before I lost the signal. So melodramatic, these Astros. Anyway, afterwards, OrangeWhoopass’s NeilT pointed out the real significance of what the win meant:
