Around 3.25 this morning Alex Wood came on to pitch the top of the 18th innings in Game 3 of the World Series. The Score had been stuck at 2-2 since the 13th. Fox had long since run out of paid commercials to show, nothing but promos. We were in it for the long haul.

Alex pitched well, got into a bit of trouble but escaped it, the tie remained. Enter Nathan Eovaldi 4 short of 100 pitches, a truly heroic performance over 6 innings. timo, you were so right when you pushed for this guy before the August deadline, he was amazing but as you might imagine he was running out of gas here and Muncy took him deep in the bottom of the 18th and everyone could go home.

Pretty amazing game. 7 hours 20 mins, longest WS game ever, within an hour or so of longest game ever according to the Fox boys. Each side used 9 pitchers, Eovaldi at the top, Buehler started (at 8.10!) and pitched 7 strong innings, 2 hits, no runs. We exited the first 9 innings tied at 1. What we didn’t know we had a further 9 awaiting, exactly.

It went on and on. 30 dozen baseballs, strike outs galore as so many tried to be the hero who ended it. It was an exciting game all the way, it never dragged, there were many opportunities for either team to put it away, no one could.

Which is my point and I apologize to Rob for crashing the thread program but I couldn’t let this go unnoticed. From my perspective there has been so much indifference/apathy shown here to this Series I kind of guess very few of us would have watched 9 let alone 18. Why I don’t know, it blows my mind. It was a marvelous game. Even if it turned out to be a stinker it was still Game 3 of the World Series.

Tribalism, gentlemen, and proud of it is the only conclusion I can come to. Do you think when we soccer freaks get knocked out of the quarter finals of the Champions League  we switch off and can’t be bothered to watch Barcelona and Real Madrid fight it out? Hardly. It’s still a joy, even without our team there.

It’s the game, you know.