The Wild Card Game will still eat your soul, is still the best

In the interest of full disclosure and objectivity through subjectivity, I should point out that I was rooting for the Pirates. Like most patriots, I own an I Love Kent Tekulve hat. I own a Dave Parker-themed shirt. I have nothing against the long-suffering Cubs, other than some rat-faced old man hitting an 0-2 pitch off Mark Gardner, dammit, but I’ve been drawn toward the Pirates as an alternate team for a couple decades. And I’m sick that it took about five minutes for them to get bounced out of the postseason after their best regular season in 25 years.

I’m also here to talk to you about how great the new Wild Card format is.

“Rooting for the Pirates” and “Yay, Wild Card Game!” would seem to be at odds. The Pirates have averaged 93 wins over the last two years, and they have exactly 18 innings of pain to show for it. The Mets won 90 games for the first time in a decade, and they get to have at least three games, just this year alone. It’s inherently unfair.

More disclosure: I’m a tourist of a Pirates fan. I will wake up tomorrow without thinking about the Pirates. I’m wearing that shirt like they’re a really cool band that I’m sort of into, knowing that when I go home I’m just going to throw on that Imagine Dragons album like a true dullard. There are Pirates fans -- real, hardy, beautiful baseball fans -- who are absolutely crushed right now. They don’t want to hear about the awesomeness of the Wild Card Game, and I don’t blame them.

I can’t help it, though. After two days of delirious Wild Card action, I’m on the roof, dress shirt unbuttoned, arms spread wide, asking baseball to take me, take me, take me. The excitement is manufactured, and I know it, but complaining about the artificial nature of the excitement is like saying prescription drugs can’t really alter your consciousness, so whatever you’re feeling isn’t real. Which is obviously false. The excitement isn’t ... organic, no, but sometimes science comes up with some pretty impressive things. It’s all molecules and neurons, pal.

Start with the crowds. The new Yankee Stadium charges you $400 for a postcard, and half of the fans were still stuck in M.C. Escher security lines in the middle of the third inning, but the place was still loud, gloriously loud, with every pitch. Dallas Keuchel exacted those cheers with a scalpel, one by one, but they weren’t just around for the pregame introductions. The thought of win-move-on/lose-go-home gets fans to care. A lot. They send those cares into space, into satellites that send them through my glowbox, and suddenly I care.

And Pirates fans, after decades of games free of meaning, are breaking into their private reserves of care.

They were so very loud. Even after Gerrit Cole gave up a first-inning run, against a pitcher who hasn’t given up a run since the world was powered by steam, the crowd was doing its best to exhort the team on. When the game was 4-0, still against one of the best pitchers in baseball, the crowd perked up when there was a rare baserunner. The fans got boisterous with an additional baserunner, and they were delirious with the bases loaded and a chance at one-swing redemption. The count was worked and a ball was hit hard. The Pirates were a mite unlucky, as these things go, and at the same time they were being dominated by someone at the top of his craft.

Now move onto the scrutiny, the idea that everything mattered, from the starting pitchers to the esoterica of the specific lineup. Was that Tommy La Stella hitting fifth? How is that? How can that? It took a trip to Baseball-Reference for me to remember that La Stella won’t get down-ballot MVP votes, and suddenly I was thinking about what the Cubs did. What they were giving up, what the risk was, what the reward was. La Stella ended up not mattering at all. But I was thinking about baseball for an hour because of him.

In the game, players were out of position. Kris Bryant was there, Kyle Schwarber was here and Sean Rodriguez was playing first because the regular first baseman isn’t so hot at that. Then that first baseman came in much earlier than he would have in a regular-season situation because he was some sort of ALVAREZ, THE DINGERMAGE card in Clint Hurdle’s Magic deck. The managers were different. The moves were different. The players were shuffled around not based on their feelings, but on the managers’ hunches and stratagems. And I’d die if this was the case with every regular-season game, but in concentrated doses, it’s a helluva rush.

Finish with the results. And, oh, no, those are total crap. The Pirates are gone, and that’s total crap. They’re an excellent team, a well-built team that deserved the chance to rally back from an 0-2 deficit in any postseason series you throw at them. They’re gone, again, too soon. Oh, to watch three more of those Cubs-Pirates games, especially after the kerfuffle. Instead, it was a short rush, and we’ll wake up in the lost-and-found tomorrow wearing someone else’s clothes.

Phew, love that elimination baseball, even as I’m retching into the morning abyss.

Except if you believe that, if you really believe that the fascination of the play-in game to a playoff game is worthwhile, just because you need a reason to care about baseball when it isn’t your team, which is the new-baseball way, then you’re agreeing to a social compact. That agreement is, roughly, this will happen to my team, and it will suuuuuuck. You will watch 500 hours of baseball in a season, get your hopes up and slink away, horrified, after three additional hours. If it doesn’t happen right away, if those three hours make you feel better this year, just wait ‘til next. The Wild Card Game is coming for you, and it will be awful.

We all have to agree to that. We can still complain, mind you, and we knew it was coming, but those are the terms.

I’m agreeing to them now, but I’ll rail against them next year, or the year after, or the decade after. This isn’t worth it. This is the best. What have we agreed to? Why didn’t we agree to it earlier?

The postseason will always break your heart. But Bud Selig put these two spiders in a glass jar and shook it to see if they would fight, and we’re all watching. And we’re watching. Oh, no, we’re all watching. It’s so much fun.