The Earned Drama and the Hero Shot: World Series Game 1

[Matthew Trueblood]

Friday night, we all got to watch something that hadn't happened since 1988. We also got to watch something that hadn't happened since 1960. And honestly, it amounts to something that hasn't happened, period.

Image courtesy of © Sage Osentoski-Imagn Images

When Game 1 of the 2024 World Series began, there had been 20 home runs in the history of the Fall Classic that took a team from behind to ahead, in the sixth inning or later. There have been more go-ahead home runs than that, of course, but it's easy to forget just how many of them came with the score already tied. Often, in those moments, you already knew something was up. Those dingers hit like sudden, breathtaking forward sprints, from a standing start: they brought the blood up to your cheeks, and they got that tingle of adrenaline racing out to your fingertips. But was there drama, there? Was the rising action sufficient to give the moment the perfect mixture of expectation and desperation—of fear, and hope, and then (depending on your perspective) the violent confounding or confirmation of either?

No, I like my go-ahead homers to be single-stroke come-from-behind jobs. To make them happen, there has to have been some preamble. After all, there's a runner on base. Besides, while a tie game can be tense and taut, the ragged, feral energy of a close but non-tied game is something different, brighter, sharper, more dangerous, and more fun. In those moments, a home run hits less like a sudden sprint and more like a masterfully blocked twist in a dramatic story. Twists that good are earned and difficult and therefore rare, which is why we'd only seen 20 of them when Friday's game started.

Now we've seen 22.

View full article