The scenario at Minute Maid Park: Brad Peacock will start (open) Game Six for the Astros . . . one day after he pitched the last Astro pitching inning of Game Five in New York.
The last pitcher to do that: Firpo Marberry of the 1924 Washington Senators. The arguable great-granddaddy of the relief specialist. Who relieved Tom Zachary to get the last out of Game Two (he struck out dubious Hall of Fame Giant Travis Jackson), then started Game Three. (He surrendered three runs---two unearned, one scoring on an infield ground out---in three innings' work.)
In the same Series that the Old Nats won with---the horror!---what we'd call a bullpen game and starters-as-relievers in Game Seven.
Player-manager Bucky Harris, the boy wonder (he was 24), opened with righthander Curly Ogden just to deke Hall of Fame manager John McGraw into loading his lineup with lefthanded hitters . . . knowing full well that Ogden (who was on board fully with the plot) wouldn't face more than two hitters before Harris would lift him---for his Game Four starter George Mogridge, a lefthander. The game ended up tied going to the ninth; Marberry relieved Mogridge for the sixth and, after surrendering a game-tying sacrifice fly, telegraphed hapless Jeurys Familia in the 2015 World Series when a pair of Senators infield errors later in the inning let the Giants take a 3-1 lead.
The Old Nats tied in the bottom of the eighth when Harris's own grounder took the notorious high hop away from Giants third baseman Freddie Lindstrom and sent two runs home. For the top of the ninth, then, Harris reached for his fourth pitcher of the day: Hall of Famer Walter Johnson. Who'd pitch four scoreless until the Old Nats won the game and Washington the city's still-only World Series triumph in the bottom of the twelfth.
And to think the Old Nats bullpenned a World Series win in the same year J. Edgar Hoover was named to run the FBI, Native Americans were finally awarded official American citizenship, and Macy*s held its first Thanksgiving Day parade!
So the questions before the house tonight are:
* Will the Astros bullpen their way to the pennant in Game Six?
* Or, will the Yankees bullpen their way into a Game Seven showdown?
Game Six is about to begin . . .