ST. LOUIS — Playoff baseball is like watching a loved one defuse a bomb. It is not something that you enjoy. It is something that you endure. Every pitch is a tick on a timer that is counting down to some unknown number, every swing a snip at a tangle of multicolored wires, any one of which is liable to make the season explode. It is the type of thing that should be regulated by an international governing body. Except, this is the kind of psychological torture to which you willingly submit.
Eleven years might have been enough to make you forget about all of that. But by the seventh inning of the Phillies’ wild-card opener against the Cardinals, they had you wondering how you’d ever thought October baseball could be fun.
It can happen fast, even in normal circumstances. In the first game of a three-game playoff series, it can arrive like an errant left turn. One pitch, one swing, one sickening crack, and everything changes. José Alvarado hangs a slider, Juan Yepez pounces, and the Phillies are six outs away from a fight for their lives. This was the seventh inning on Friday afternoon.
