The Game within the Game: A Closer Look at Game 163

Among the two dozen or so video clips of the AL Central Tiebreaker game between the Twins and Tigers that mlb.com elected to post in its multimedia page, one will find only one from the top of the eighth inning. That clip is of Magglio Ordonez's game-tying home run.

What the clips don't tell you, though, is that the most important event of that inning occurred much later. After Ordonez's blast, which led off the frame, the Tigers put runners on first and second again with one out. The threat prompted Twins skipper Ron Gardenhire to remove reliever Matt Guerrier, and bring in star closer Joe Nathan to face dangerous Tigers third baseman Brandon Inge.

Nathan fell behind 2-0 to Inge, who hit 27 homers this season despite a nagging and painful knee injury. But when Inge tried to get around on a 95 mph Nathan fastball up and away, he failed, and popped up to second base.

With two outs, the Metrodome crowd of over 54,000 could sense the tension of the situation. Each pitch elicited a rising wave of noise, punctuated by either a triumphant roar, or an indignant growl.

On the first pitch, it was the latter noise. Nathan bounced his first-pitch slider in front of catcher Joe Mauer for ball one. Mauer narrowly kept the ball near enough to prevent the runners from advancing.

The second pitch was a no-nonsense fastball, 95 miles an hour across the outer black. Laird stood stony at the plate, not fooled by the pitch but knowing he could do nothing with such an offering. The crowd noise ratcheted up yet again; the Twins were but two strikes from escape.

Nathan overthrew his slider once again, torquing his arm too much and bouncing another 89 mph dart off the dirt and up into his dependable battery mate Mauer, who deftly blocked it once again and kept pinch-runner Wilson Ramirez at second.

With the count at two balls and a strike, Laird sat on an inside fastball, and Nathan fulfilled his expectation. Unfortunately for Laird, the 94-mph heat dove inside like a spitball, tying Laird into a hopeless knot as he tried to check his swing (he failed) while avoiding the ball with his back leg (he succeeded).

Now the crowd came to its feet en masse, and the volume rose again. Nathan walked around the mound, now seemingly in control of the situation and comfortably upsetting the rhythm of the at-bat for Laird.

When finally he returned to the bump, Nathan shook off Mauer's first sign. This may indicate that he didn't want to try the slider, control of which he had not yet established, a third time in one plate appearance. Instead, Nathan took the second sign, sighed, and delivered.

Laird still had the specter of that guided missile on the 2-1 count in the back of his mind. He may have been looking for the fastball, or the slider again. He certainly expected to be buzzed inside once again. Whatever he expected, however, he proved woefully unprepared to handle what arrived in his dominion a moment after Nathan released it.

Laird's hands twitched, moved forward as if to take action, and then returned to their original position, as though recalled by an invisible bungee cord. His eyes went wide as he turned to look at the plate where the ball had so briefly been. Then he started walking, nonplussed, toward the Detroit dugout on the first-base side.

Nathan had thrown a curveball, at 83 mph, which broke precisely across the edge of the plate at the knee level of Laird. He throws the curve more now than he has in any season since 2003; still, it's a distant third on his pitch list. He throws his slider over 30 percent of the time, and the curve just over ten, according to fangraphs.com.

Choosing to go to that pitch in that spot defies the crucial axiom of relief pitching by the traditional book: Don't get beaten on anything but your best pitch. Nathan used not only a complementary, but an entirely secondary weapon.

He played with Laird's mind throughout the at-bat, forcing the Tigers' batter to question Nathan's control by bouncing the two sliders, and by nearly hitting the hitter with a fastball. He preyed upon the fear hitters so often have, even if they have so repressed it that they would never admit it, of the inside pitch. Using those tools of deception, psychology, and outright physical dominance, he embarrassed a good hitter in the tightest spot of the game to that point.

The eighth-inning confrontation will go understandably unnoticed, in light of the 12-inning thriller that ultimately was.

It may well pale in a comparison of pure significance with Nathan's exceptional ninth-inning escape. After Ramon Santiago reached on one of the best bunts of the last 15 years, pinch-runner Adam Everett distracted Nathan sufficiently to cause him to hang an inside fastball, which Curtis Granderson ripped into right field to put runners at the corners with no one out.

Needing a strikeout, Nathan faced Placido Polanco. Polanco is the second-toughest player in the last three seasons to whiff. Nathan threw Polanco five straight fastballs, achieving a 2-2 count through a swinging strike, two foul balls, and two balls up and in.

He then threw Polanco a high, inside slider. Polanco bailed out, turning his shoulder in anticipation of being hit. Instead, the ball broke into the upper inside quadrant of the strike zone, and Joe Nathan had his key out. When Magglio Ordonez smashed a line drive to shortstop Orlando Cabrera, and Granderson failed to read the play properly, Minnesota was out of the inning, and stormed off the field in a manful sort of violent jubilation.

The double play will stand the test of time, a dramatic memory filled with melancholy for Michiganders and pleasant nostalgia for Minnesotans. So will the comeback which extended the game for the Twins in the tenth, after Detroit had scored in its turn. So, too, will the 12th-inning rally that won it.

But for those who revel in the taut, tense simplicity of the duel between batter and pitcher, who love great execution and great crowds and true pennant-race drama, the eighth and ninth innings will live in unabridged completeness and rich, vivid detail.

The best things about America's best game all demonstrated themselves in those two frames. And Joe Nathan made himself a giant in this reporter's memory, a baseball titan who deserves far more recognition than he has garnered, and a deserving future Hall of Fame candidate.