Did you stay up? Could you do it?
Every year, and I mean EVERY year, there are some games like this. These games were they are just getting started at midnight. And when you are thinking oh, I should just go to bed, you should really start to order some wings or mozarella sticks and crack open a few. You finish extra innings and there’s sort of a continum that these games follow. Here is my mathematical law I came up with last night.
Nate’s Law: The more a game stretches on, the more a game will tend to never end.
This seems simple. This seems rather stupid. But it’s true. And it’s more complex than you might think. Because what’s underlying this law is that as a game stretches on—more and more pitchers are used up. And that means more and more pinch hitters are used up. Which means that when you get to around the 14th inning, unless you’ve planned for this monster of a game—you start to run out of players.
Which is what happened last night. Each team had approximately one pitcher left and one pinch hitter left. So the White Sox took it one further. And had a starting pitcher come in from the bullpen.
Nate’s Law also takes into account the tendency that as a game goes on and these new players end the game—-the possibilty that the best players have already left the game exists. No longer is it your great starting pitchers(except if they come in from the bullpen). No longer are all your sluggers in(because you might have used pinch runners). No, it’s the scrappy doo’s that are left to win the game. Not Scoobes. It’s the unknowns from the bench.
Like Geoff Blum. Who the hell is he?
And so. I’m bleary eyed. But at work. Wishing I was home. Wishing the Astro’s had won. If wishes were horses…
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