These are not easy times for Travis Jankowski.
Uncertainty can make a man lonely, confused, desperate.
So those were not easy pitches to let go.
How good it would have felt to slap a single into left field. How much it would have seemed like he had shown something that could help determine something.
“Honestly, I wanted to be the hero,” Jankowski said later. “I never had a walk-off in the big leagues.”
But as unsure as he is about his future, there is one thing Jankowski is always certain about. His role is to help his team win, and so among the seven pitches he saw in Tuesday’s 10th inning, he swung at just the two near the middle of the zone, the second a full-count fastball he fouled into the seats.