Sunday afternoon kind of said it all, didn’t it?
At Nationals Park in Washington, Yadiel Hernandez homered off reliever Manuel Rodriguez in the ninth inning to beat the Cubs 6-5 and end a series filled with little-known baseball players doing little-viewed and even-less-talked-about baseball things.
Meanwhile, at Guaranteed Rate Field, the White Sox were throwing their Craig Kimbrel-Liam Hendriks late-inning one-two punch at the Indians, enabling Brian Goodwin to stride to the plate in the bottom of the ninth and put a ball over the wall for a 2-1 walk-off. Tense, urgent, exciting — every pitch. Goodwin’s Andersonesque bat flip seemed to be for himself, for his team and for everyone who has that 2005 feeling all over again.