The sun was bleeding over the concrete cauldron of Busch Stadium, a slow-motion psychedelic nightmare played out on a field of perfect green. This wasn’t baseball; this was a fever dream, a statistical hallucination transmitted directly into the skull. The first act was a grotesque ballet of errors and incompetence. Jung Hoo Lee, a ghost in white, materialized on first base courtesy of a fielding error—a tremor in the cosmic order from some poor bastard named Saggese. Then, the grim choreography
of the double play, a hypnotic, soul-crushing ouroboros of a play, a ritual sacrifice of men and momentum, as Adames and Smith were swallowed by the abyss.
Second inning: the narcotic fugue continued. A man named Chapman was assaulted by a pitch, a small act of violence in the middle of this vast emptiness. The double play reappeared, a malevolent spirit haunting the diamond, another pair of souls dragged into the vortex. The Cardinals, in a desperate attempt to summon some kind of meaning, offered up a series of pop-outs and groundouts, pathetic little sighs of failure that vanished into the cooling night air.
By the fourth, the Giants had found their groove, a kind of low-frequency hum of existential dread. They scored, not with a roar but with a whimper—a sacrifice fly, a hollow victory that felt like a mockery. Drew Gilbert delivered a double, a single brutal line of force that tore through the baseball game, and another run slithered home. The score stood at 2-0, a number devoid of passion or purpose, a cold, hard fact.
The middle innings were a blur of motion and stasis, a bad trip of strikeouts and lazy groundouts. Players moved like zombies through the field, their movements dictated by some unseen, sinister force. Pitches screamed by, or hung like dead meat, and the crack of the bat was a hollow echo in the vast stadium. A man named Matt Chapman, a figure of silent, desperate fury, was caught in a brutal runner out at home plate, a chaotic, futile scramble that ended in nothing but despair.
But the final act was a pure, unadulterated shot of adrenaline. A man named Jordan Walker, a figure of raw, untamed power, unleashed a double—a goddamn thunderbolt that ripped across the outfield. Two men, two ghosts, flew around the bases, their cleats tearing at the dirt. The crowd, a random lot of faceless humanity, roared with a primal ferocity for such a game. The Cardinals had won. The numbers flipped, a violent reversal of fortune, a final, desperate, glorious punch in the face of the universe. It was an ugly game, a chaotic mess, a testament to the random violence of the universe. But for one brief, shining moment, it was beautiful.
The game limped into the bottom of the ninth, a final, desperate gasp. The Cardinals, a team of broken men, found a flicker of deranged hope. A series of singles and a cruel hit by pitch loaded the bases. The air was thick with the scent of cheap beer and something else—something dangerous and unhinged. Then came the climax, a sudden, violent eruption of action. Saggese, the man who had started this whole grotesque charade, delivered a line-drive single, and a run came home.
