A classic catch, in a Series worth catching

Houston perseveres in Game 5 and takes a 3-2 lead back home.

They danced like nobody was watching Thursday night, even though 45,693 sets of Bette Davis eyes were trained on their every twitch. A night on a Philadelphia witness stand can make you feel like nothing exists outside those walls. That’s the way every World Series used to make us feel.

The Phillies hit rocket shots that were caught. The Astros hit just enough that weren’t. Both teams left traffic jams on the bases. The pitchers, for the most part, looked as fresh as Opening Day.

And, in the end, Nick Castellanos was the winning run, at the plate. Two outs, bottom of the ninth. No clock, no escape hatch. As stupefying as baseball can be sometimes, it has moments no other game can match. This World Series has had several, including Wednesday night’s cooperative no-hitter, and maybe they’re beginning to reverberate a bit. Its ratings were up two percent through Game 3.

Castellanos hit a ground ball, and it snuggled up to shortstop Jeremy Pena like so many have, and Pena threw to first base, and tying run Bryce Harper trotted back into the home dugout. Houston had won the best World Series game in many a day, maybe since the 2017 World Series that it won. The score was 3-2 and so is the Series score, with Games 6-7 in Houston Saturday and Sunday.

Resolution is still a long way off. If you’re looking for the last team that won 6-7 on the road to win the Series, go all the way back to 2019, when Washington did it to Houston. Also, the Cubs at Cleveland in 2016. The Phillies will have to either beat or outlast Framber Valdez on Saturday to force Game 7, and if they do, they’ll probably get another shot at Lance McCullers, whom they abused in Game 3, primarily because he was semaphoring his pitches.

But the winner of a World Series usually is confronted with a crossroads moment, a play that must be made. Trey Mancini, pressed into first base service when Yuli Gurriel was hurt, smothered a wicked shot by Kyle Schwarber that ended the eighth inning, and center-fielder Chas McCormick (pictured) had to launch himself against a wire mesh and a scoreboard to grab a 102.4 mph shot by J.T. Realmuto that led off the ninth.

It might be the best and most consequential outfield play in a World Series since Kirby Puckett’s Plexiglas grab in Game 6 of 1991 in the Metrodome. McCormick leaped, caught it while airborne, whacked the wall and then went down like a movie cowboy, holding onto the ball all the while. Right-fielder Kyle Tucker ran past him with fists aloft, but McCormick lay there for a minute, counting all his ligaments and tendons, taking it all in.

There was a lot there. McCormick is from West Chester, where the Eagles used to train. In 2008 he regularly wore a Ryan Howard jersey, and he went to Citizens Bank Park as often as he could. He has a nephew who is named after Scott Rolen, the Hall of Fame candidate third baseman.

The Eagles are Philadelphia’s obsession these days, but for long, hot summertime months the Phillies are the only thing going. In South Philadelphia row houses and Main Line McMansions, the piercing baritone of Harry Kalas ruled many a night on the radio: “Long drive and it is…outta here!” And yet the love is unrequited. The Phillies rank 27th in alltime winning percentage, better only than Colorado, San Diego and Miami. They are 1,125 games below .500, most in the game. They had not won a World Series until 1980, with a team that wore the same powder blue uniforms that Thursday’s Phillies took to the field. That’s why Phillies fans are acting like this is a once-in-a-lifetime event. For many, it is.

McCormick went on to Millersville (Pa.) University, and the Astros drafted him in the 21st round. He climbed through the minors in four years. George Springer, the MVP of the 2017 Series, became a free agent and signed with Toronto, and the Astros dabbled with Miles Straw and Jose Siri in center-field, traded them, and wound up with McCormick in 2021. He has homered 14 times in each of his first two seasons and has a decent OPS of .751, but his main responsibility is to outrun baseballs, the same as Brandon Marsh with the Phillies. His catch is the reason baseball is so much better when it gives you more than just walks, homers and strikeouts. Defense is when the athletic brilliance kicks in.

Pena, the rookie, drove in the first run with a single, homered for a 2-1 lead, and skied to spear a line drive by Castellanos in the third. Houston’s marquee shortstop, and a former first-overall pick, was Carlos Correa. He signed with the Twins, but the Astros didn’t try to nab someone else’s free agent, just to entertain the fan base. They knew what they had in Pena, just as their young pitchers have more than adequately replaced Gerrit Cole. The best organizations are icebergs, with most of their strength beneath.

Meanwhile, Justin Verlander erased the one smudge on his coming Hall of Fame plaque. He has now won a World Series game, even though he only went five innings, even though Schwarber opened the first with a hollow-point home run into the delirious right-field bleachers.

Verlander stranded four Phillies in scoring position. He struck out Rhys Hoskins in the second with the bases loaded. The final threat came in the fifth, when Bryce Harper doubled. Castellanos dug in and took his siege of Verlander to 10 pitches. When he finally hit a fly ball to left, Verlander shook his fist. He could then hand the ball to a bullpen that hasn’t dropped it yet.

“Tommy John used to tell that a good pitcher can get out of trouble twice in a game and a so-so pitcher can only get out of trouble once,” manager Dusty Baker said. “A great pitcher can do it three times. I heard Tommy John talking to me tonight.”

John was Baker’s teammate on the Dodgers. He also was the first to have the tendon-transplant surgery that has saved thousands of elbows and bears his name. Verlander, indestructible for so long, had the Tommy John procedure in 2020 and was virtually idle for two seasons. This year he had the best ERA in baseball and is a heavy favorite to win a third Cy Young Award.

It’s easy to imagine John and lots of baseball dignitaries talking among themselves Thursday night. At last they were presented with a World Series game they could recognize.