Fight to the ... tie? Extra innings moving toward extinctionBuster Olney
It was sometime around midnight that the Chicago Cubs' search for the run that would end the extra-inning madness against the New York Yankees became desperate. With Chicago batting -- I think it was in the bottom of the 16th inning, although sleeplessness has added a hazy halo around some of the details -- somebody in the Cubs' dugout started firing a barrage of sunflower seeds toward the field. Dozens of seeds, one at a time; a couple reached the third-base foul line, and then one or two bounced onto the field, with third-base umpire Alan Porter glancing over.
Players occasionally launch seeds like this onto the field from game to game, but the sudden eruption in the sixth hour of play Sunday suggested a brilliant attempt to alter the karma of the baseball gods. Rally seeds. But like the hitters for both teams in overtime, the sunflower ploy failed; the Cubs did not score, again, and at the end of the half-inning, the player responsible for the seeds threw out another handful, like the last burst at the end of a fireworks show.
The next inning, Kyle Schwarber donned a catcher's mask in the dugout, and Ben Zobrist wore a helmet backward. Anything to end the game, which finally concluded after 18 frigid innings, 6 hours and 5 minutes, and 583 pitches. As a reporter looking for interesting stuff to happen, I thought it was fun, a baseball marathon to be recounted to grandchildren in a quarter-century. I love the chance for chaos -- the baseball landmark for chaos might be the rain-delayed, 19-inning game between the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves that started on July 4, 1985, and ended with the promised fireworks just before breakfast.
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