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Fastball, 103.5, foul ball, 1-2
Pitch #38 was Miller’s best effort at ending the proceedings. It was the hardest pitch he threw all night, the hardest one he’d thrown in weeks, one of the ten hardest he threw all season. History won’t remember, but it was 103.5 and dotted, just above the bottom of the zone and right edge of it. Eno Sarris’s Stuff+ graded it as “Holy crap!” If he throws that pitch 100 times, on 95 of them the game ends.
Jackson Chourio fouled it straight back, and hours later, I really have no idea how he did it. To be 22 and have those hands, that kind of hand-eye, and that level of baseball instinct. For five minutes before I die, let me feel the way Chourio did in extending the game by spoiling a nearly perfect pitch.
It’s not that I’ll ever forget how the game ended, but Chourio fouling off 103 down and on the black in a slider count is going to stay with me just as long.
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