Skyfall

By Jon Weisman

The sky, like the game, didn’t know what color to be.

An afternoon that had been so bright and so cathartic turned into a night so humbling, so fast.

Retiring 16 batters in a row between solo home runs in the first and sixth innings, Clayton Kershaw was painting poetry. And the Dodger offense, put on edge again by another plunking by a St. Louis pitcher, responded gloriously, reaching base 13 of the 26 times they came to the plate against Cardinals ace Adam Wainwright, struggling from the first inning to his fifth and last, to build a 6-2 lead in Game 1 of the National League Division Series.

A.J. Ellis with hit after hit after hit, including a two-run home run. Matt Kemp with three hits. Yasiel Puig on base four times. Carl Crawford, Hanley Ramirez busting through with two hits apiece.

Then day turned into night, and blue turned into black.

* * *

Improbably, Kershaw started the top of the seventh by allowing four consecutive singles, all to center field, and St. Louis cut the Dodger advantage to 6-3 with the bases loaded. Pete Kozma struck out on three pitches, but John Jay singled in another run.

Don Mattingly made a visit to the mound, but it was a short one. At 99 pitches, Kershaw, arguably, was still the best pitcher for the situation, validated by his fanning pinch-hitter Oscar Taveras on three more pitches, his 10th strikeout of the game.

The next batter was Matt Carpenter.

The villain from Kershaw’s Waterloo at St. Louis last year, Carpenter had started tonight’s game 0 for 2 before going against type and patience and homering in the sixth inning on the first pitch he saw from Kershaw. But here in the seventh, it was virtually a rerun from 2013.

Foul, foul tip, foul. Two balls, and then two more fouls. It was all so sickening in its familiarity, you placed your faith that fate wouldn’t be so cliched as to allow the same outcome as last October.

Instead, Carpenter drilled Kershaw’s next pitch to no man’s land in deepest right-center field, clearing the bases and clearing out Kershaw.

The damage wasn’t done. Perversely validating the long leash Mattingly gave Kershaw — and I have no argument with it (except perhaps when Carpenter himself came up, but even then I still believed) — Pedro Baez entered, walked his first batter and then gave up a three-run homer to Matt Holliday.

St. Louis had eight runs in the seventh, the most the Dodgers had allowed in a postseason inning since the Cardinals scored nine in the second inning of Game 4 of the National League Championship Series in 1985.

Unbelievably, Kershaw was charged with more runs (eight) in this game than in last year’s finale, the most in MLB postseason history by a pitcher who had struck out at least 10 batters, surpassing Randy Johnson, who allowed seven while striking out 11 in Game 1 of the 1999 NLDS, 15 years ago Sunday.

* * *

In the bottom of the eighth, Adrian Gonzalez hit a two-run home run raised an eyebrow. Was the disaster ending of the seventh a false climax? Would the night end with fireworks shooting to the stratosphere?

One out into the ninth, Ellis singled and Andre Ethier doubled. Dee Gordon hit a grounder — bobbled by David Descalso, but not for long — to drive in the ninth run for the Dodgers. Was the greatest postseason game of Dodger Stadium history happening before our eyes?

Puig, larger-than-life Puig, came to the plate and battled like a maxi-Carpenter, fouling off three Trevor Rosenthal pitches of 99 mph or faster with a 1-2 count. It was heart-pounding.

And then it was over.

* * *

We want our team to win, why? If we’re not in the game, if we’re only watching, we want to win for the way it makes us feel. It’s emotional rescue, served at your pleasure.

The joy that comes with a victory has as much to do with the endorphins (or whatever’s the correct term — sue me, I’m not a biologist) they generate as any other tangible quality. The rush, multiplied by the stakes, is incredible.

The absence of that joy, the deprivation, is what you get when you’re not in the playoffs. The reversal of that joy, into what came tonight, creeping shadows into your soul darker than those harmless silhouettes on the field before the sun set, tests your very spirit.

But until there are no more games, you don’t stop. You keep coming back for more. And Saturday brings another game. A new sky.