Postseason can’t match last week’s excitement

OK, so Tigers fans were apprehensive Sunday when Jose Valverde came on to record your basic 34-pitch nonsave with giant raindrops falling. Detroit still won by two. In dramatic terms, this was not Peter O’Toole in "Lawrence of Arabia."

Valverde edged a little closer to taking Damascus on Monday, when he threw 19 pitches and the Tigers won by one.

On Wednesday, the final day of the regular season, it was De Niro in "Raging Bull" and Brando in "Last Tango in Paris" or "A Streetcar Named Desire" or "The Godfather," take your pick.

It was a little past 8 on Thursday morning when the sun came crashing through the marine layer and landed on my face. Window coverings in 10-story lofts in downtown San Diego are optional, it seems, and in the next room, I heard the acerbic voice of Dick Vitale on TV.

Vitale was talkin’ baseball (?!), about Evan Longoria — does not rhyme with Willie, Mickey or The Duke — hitting the line-drive home run to the short porch in left field that had astonishingly put the Rays into the playoffs — only three minutes after the Orioles had just as astonishingly knocked the thoroughly melted-down Red Sox right out of them.

It was awesome, baby, with a capital "A," Dickie V. said, watching Longoria hit that homer in the 12th and another one in the eighth with two guys on base. And a third tater, this one struck by pinch hitter Dan Johnson with the Rays down to their last strike in the bottom of the ninth, lifted the magic slate on what had been an insurmountable 7-0 Yankees lead after seven.

Vitale was sitting behind the Rays’ dugout. That made it even more awesome, he said.

While all these wondrous and inexplicable things were happening, the Red Sox were getting something lodged in their collective windpipe in Baltimore and the Braves were doing likewise against the Phillies — but only after 13 innings — leaving the playoff backdoor open for the Cardinals.

ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian called it the "greatest day in major league baseball regular-season history," or something to that effect, and, for once, it might not have been hyperbole.

And while all of this was happening, I was in San Diego, watching the Padres beat the Cubs, 9-2.

Though there is something delightfully perverse in watching mediocre teams finish with identical mediocre records of 71-91, it never ceases to amaze how guys such as Dick Vitale consistently wind up in the right place at the right time, and guys such as I consistently wind up in Petco Park on the last day of the baseball season.

I told my sister, a loyal Padres season-ticket holder, that the fact she did not give away her ticket for Game 162 (and Games 160 and 161) to some guy from Iowa wandering the grounds at Seaport Village might be taken under advisement by The Baseball Gods.

A Grand Salami by Will Venable — hadn’t I seen him playing for the Tucson Padres at Cashman Field just a few weeks ago? — wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. It would have to suffice, though, because The Baseball Gods were working overtime in Tampa-St. Pete and Baltimore and Atlanta. The Cardinals, as it turned out, didn’t require their intervention. The Gods’ presence hasn’t been required in Houston since 2005.

About the time Venable was touching them all, I noticed on the out-of-town scoreboard in right field that the Rays had trimmed the Bombers’ lead to 7-3, and this is where somebody should have cued the theme to "Jaws" or that suspenseful "Twilight Zone" music. Game on, as Wayne and Garth said.

And then it was 7-6 in Tampa-St. Pete. And then 7-7. And then Alfonso Soriano flashed the peace sign to my sister, and the Padres’ and Cubs’ seasons were mercifully over and we were in this bar called the Proper Gastroclub in the East Village, directly behind the prodigious left-field scoreboard at Petco, next to the bronze statue of Tony Gwynn.

I had to ask Mitch the bartender to change the channel, because they had soccer on. (While San Diego wants very much to be a respected baseball town, this proves it still has a way to go.)

And then it was over in Baltimore, and three minutes later Evan Longoria was happily bouncing his batting helmet off the ersatz grass at Tropicana Field. And then, at some point, after last call, we were hurtling through the Gaslamp Quarter in a taxi, when the humorless driver ran a red light and my wife made an under-the-breath wisecrack about him killing us all. Only it was a little over her breath, due to the late hour and the beer, and Hack Wilson began to chuckle.

It was then I concluded that our cab driver could not have possibly been a Red Sox fan.

Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.