Strike One: The Lonliest Number

The “Caught Looking” of Ryan Howard to end the ’10 NLCS reminded many of the infamous Adam Wainwright hook that froze Carlos Beltran in Game 7 of the ’06 NLCS.  Yeah, that brought back some bad memories, thanks.

Not to open up a wound that’s still fresh for many, I’d like to make this point for the pure sake of making it and getting it off my chest:  The 2006 NLCS did not end with strike 3.

It ended with strike one.

Go back earlier in the season … August 22nd, 2006.  The Mets played the Cardinals, and Carlos Beltran had the last at-bat in that game as well.  It was in the ninth inning, down 6-5 against then closer Jason Isringhausen.  Before the first pitch, and you’re just going to have to take my word on this, I muttered to the television “first pitch fastball, jump on it, end the game.”  And that’s exactly what happened.  Isringhausen tried to sneak a first pitch fastball by him and Beltran crushed it.  It was an emotional high water mark of the regular season.

Now fast forward to Game 7.  Everyone and their mother knew that Wainwright had a killer curve.  So I thought about that HR off of Isringhausen and thought that the last thing Beltran wanted to do was let this at bat get to strike two.  The curve was coming.  But as good as that pitch was, Wainwright was still a rookie.  And it was up to Beltran to out-think him.  Even if that dinger off Isringhausen was in the Cardinals’ minds, a rookie is most likely going to try to start the at-bat with a fastball for strike one.  So I thought the same thing.  First pitch.  Fastball.  Jump on it.  He’s the rookie, not you.

I was right.  First pitch was a fastball.

Beltran, possibly due to the importance and tension of the situation, took it for strike one.

At that moment, my heart sunk.  The curveball remained in play, and after strike two we all knew it was coming.  But we also all knew that even if Beltran knew it was coming, he probably wasn’t doing anything with it.  Thus, you have the ending you had.  But the ending was really strike one.  A get me over fastball.  That haunts me more than the curveball.  And now that Howard has met a similar fate to Beltran, it haunts me all over again.