Another eventful week in baseball was highlighted by an unusually fast-paced trade deadline. But trades aren’t games, so you won’t see anything about them here—aside, of course, from one particularly impressive debut.
Despite being the only major sport to be playing right now, baseball doesn’t quite sweep this week’s list of the top-five games. A changing of the guard in tennis finds its way on to this list, along with a changing of the guard in the NL Central that never happened, and a changing of the guard in left field in Boston that did.
5. MLB: Rangers 11, Mariners 10 (July 29)
Two teams that won’t be going to the playoffs put on a heck of a show Monday night, as the Texas Rangers emerged from a back-and-forth game with a narrow victory.
A dramatic outcome didn’t look probable early on, as the Rangers raced out to a 9-3 lead after five innings. But the Mariners worked their way back into the game, scoring three runs in the sixth inning and two in the seventh to cut the deficit to one.
In the top of the ninth, Rangers’ third baseman Ramon Vasquez continued his eventful game—Vasquez had four hits and four RBI, but also made three errors—and almost gave Seattle the victory in the process. Vasquez’ throwing error on Jamie Burke’s infield single allowed, of all people, pinch-runner Jarrod Washburn to score the go-ahead run for the Mariners.
Luckily for the Rangers, Vasquez wasn’t done. He hit a walk-off, two-run double in the bottom of the ninth, atoning for his mistakes and sending Texas fans home happy as the Rangers continued their resurgent season.
4. MLB: Tigers 14, Indians 12 (July 30)
While this game was not quite as dramatic, it made up for this with pure offense—the two teams combined for 41 hits.
Not that there wasn’t some drama. The Tigers did score four runs in the top of the eighth to tie the game at 11, then add another to take a one-run lead going into the bottom of the ninth. And Cleveland catcher Kelly Shoppach did extend the game with a solo home run with one out in his team’s last half-inning.
Shoppach’s heroics were for naught though, as it was the Tigers who would take the lead in the 13th on a Placido Polanco RBI groundout—yes, in a game with 41 hits, the winning run scored on a groundout—and would not look back.
A lot of credit for this win has to go to the Detroit bullpen, which allowed only four runs in 10 innings, after starter Nate Robertson got torched early, and gave up only one run in the game’s final six innings as the Tigers worked their way back into the game and eventually won it.
If Detroit hadn’t recently lost four games in a row, they might have been looking back at July 30 as the day they kept their season alive.
3. Tennis: Ivo Karlovic defeats Roger Federer in three sets (July 31)
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