The baseball season is a marathon – we all know that. As opposed to the NFL season, which some call a marathon, but is better described as “a series of 16 sprints,” the 162-game MLB schedule is actually like a 26.2 mile race.
In football, each game constitutes 1/16 – 6.25% – of a full season. Teams can lurch ahead or back on their way to the finish with just a small winning or losing streak.
Baseball?
Not so much.
A single baseball game is 0.62% of the season. Though we live and die as fans with every game, every inning, every pitch, we also constantly have to remind ourselves – moreso after a loss than a win – that it really is “just one game.”
The marathon season, like the foot race it calls to mind, gives plenty of time for the cream to rise to the top. Keeping the metaphor going, a marathon race is 26.2 miles, or 138,435 feet. 6.25 percent of the race is about 850 feet – less than three football fields.
Three football fields out of over 26 miles – illustrates just how seemingly irrelevant each single game is, doesn’t it?
And yet, with only 13 games remaining, with 92% of the season in the rear-view mirror, the American League Wild Card race is nearly as close as it was before a single game was played.
Five teams separated by a mere 2.5 games, with 12 or 13 to go.
The marathon is now a sprint. The two teams that are able to sprint these last ~2 miles of the 26 mile marathon will find themselves knocking heads in the second-ever Wild Card Game. Last year, the O’s toppled the Rangers in Texas – there is a possibility the matchup will be the same, but it doesn’t seem likely, the way Texas is plummeting.
For the Birds to reach the postseason again, their sprint will have to begin tonight in Boston – perhaps the toughest place to play in baseball at the moment. At 92-59, the Red Sox have the best record in MLB, and just swept the Yankees with relative ease. They’re 11-3 in September, and have scored 100 runs (!!) in those 14 games.
The O’s, on the other hand, have scored just 63 runs in going a very mediocre 8-7 so far this month.
The even worse news is that the Orioles have not just one, but TWO more series against the hottest team in baseball to finish out the year.
The road ahead is not going to be an easy one for our Birds. But if they can tear up that road in this one final sprint, we may get to watch October baseball yet again.
Their feet are in the starting blocks. The pistol is about to go off.
Enjoy the mad dash, Birdland.
