TORONTO — Francisco Liriano remembers the 2013 National League wild-card game well. He could try, but he’ll never forget it.
“It was just such a crazy scene,” says Liriano, now a member of the Toronto Blue Jays who will battle the Baltimore Orioles in a wild-card game Tuesday night. “From the first pitch right through to the end of the game, it was just pure emotion.”
Liriano started that game, then as a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, throwing seven innings of one-run ball against the Cincinnati Reds while striking out five. Current Blue Jays catcher Russell Martin played in that game as well, hitting two solo home runs to power the Pirates offence.
And Pittsburgh’s closer that night? It was a fiery 36-year-old with shaggy hair by the name of Jason Grilli.
“I just remember the emotions running so high. That place, and the whole city of Pittsburgh, was going nuts,” Grilli says. “It’s Game 7. It’s intense. It’s all or nothing. It’s not for the faint of heart.”
Those three are part of a select group in the Blue Jays clubhouse—Josh Donaldson is another—to have played in a wild-card game before. By the time Tuesday night is through, everyone in that room will have experienced similar dramatics. Liriano says there’s no perfect way to prepare for such a crucial, do-or-die night of baseball. The recommended method is actually willful ignorance.
“You have to just try to trick yourself and think it’s another game. I don’t know if that’s possible, but you have to try,” Liriano says. “That’s what I did. I just went out there and tried not to do too much. Just make some good pitches and do whatever I could do that day and not try to do more than I can do. It’s fun. It’s a great atmosphere. But it’s definitely a very different feeling. The adrenalin is way higher. You have to control yourself.”
Grilli, no stranger to emotion himself, agrees.
“Baseball, this is a very unforgiving game. It’s a failure-based game. If something doesn’t go your way early on in the game, you can’t get caught up in that,” the veteran reliever says. “You just have to stay positive. You have to keep your head where it needs to be and focused on what it needs to be focused on. There’s no hemming or hawing. You have a job to do and you need to get that job done.”
Doing too much is never a good idea in baseball. It’s not a game where being excessively hyped up or trying too hard to make something happen is often rewarded. But the temptation is certainly there in a wild-card game with everything on the line, especially one that will be played in front of 47,000 rollicking fans like Tuesday night’s.
“I can’t imagine what this place will be like,” Liriano says of a Rogers Centre crowd for a win-or-go-home game. “I know that in Pittsburgh the crowd was definitely a factor. They were crazy. They were screaming and yelling throughout the whole game. And we had a pretty good game that day. The crowd played a big part.”
You can ask Martin about that. Maybe the most indelible moment from that wild-card game—or any wild-card game—came in the second inning as 40,487 at PNC Park taunted Reds starter Johnny Cueto with long, deafening chants of: “Cue-to! Cue-to! Cue-to!” Martin was in the batter’s box as it happened, and looked out at a rattled Cueto as the right-hander looked up at the crowd ridiculing him in unison and dropped the ball from his glove.
The ball rolled off the mound, forcing Cueto to sheepishly walk over to pick it up, which only ratcheted up the crowd’s mockery even further. Martin went deep on Cueto’s very next pitch.
“That was crazy,” Liriano says. “Never seen anything like that. It’s funny sometimes how this game works.”
Martin didn’t want to be interviewed for this piece; Donaldson neither. The past is in the past and those two are only interested in looking ahead. And, to be honest, Liriano and Grilli weren’t particularly excited to talk about past wild-card experiences either. And part of the reason for that is they don’t particularly like the concept itself.
“Honestly, I think they need to change the format. It’s unfair,” Grilli says. “Teams could win 120 games and be in that same situation. It should be a series, because anything can happen. Big league teams can beat big league teams on any given day. It’s an unfair situation. But it is what it is. You can’t change it. So, you just have to go win the ballgame.”
“I feel it’s a little unfair,” Liriano echoes. “It’s just one game. Anyone can win just one game. But you just have to go out there and give everything you have. Whoever wins, wins. You just have to try to not do more than you usually do. Don’t try to be somebody you’re not. Just go out there and have fun and play the game. If you give your all, you can live with the result.”
That’s the cruel reality of a wild-card game. It’s one night for your season after a six-month battle to get there. As a player, a loss in that game has to be crushing. But it also has to be somewhat liberating, because one thing ballplayers understand more than anybody about their sport is that stuff happens. Games are won and lost on wild pitches, bad calls, outfield missteps, balls lost in lights, and all other method of unpredictable fate. With so many factors out of your control, how can you get so invested in the result?
Put those thoughts to Grilli and he’ll tell you you’re overthinking it. He’ll tell you he doesn’t want to hear any of that. Maybe it’s just a defence mechanism to guard against the sheer chance of it all, but Grilli says a loss in a wild-card game is no different than any other loss at this time of year. The only thing that’s different is a win on the last day of the post-season.
“You know what the real goal is?” Grilli says, before pointing up at a pair of replica 1992 and ’93 World Series banners that hang in the Blue Jays clubhouse. “Right there. Those suckers right there. That’s it. That’s my answer. I don’t care about a wild-card game. You don’t sit there and go, ‘oh yeah, I got a wild-card hat. I got a playoff hoodie. I’m happy with this.’ That’s not it. That’s not where it’s at.
“The real goal is what’s up there. If you’re not in a World Series at this point in the season, it doesn’t matter how you failed to get there—it’s the same feeling. Whether you lose in a wild-card game, a division series, whatever. You still lost. If you don’t win that World Series championship, you lost. That’s all that matters.”
