The Dodgers and Astros Are Why You Stay Up at Night

The windows one floor up and diagonal from the living room window were illuminated shortly past midnight. We’ve all been there: A child wails, an animal skedaddles, a stomach growls, a phone rings, a bladder pleads, and suddenly you’re ambulant when the rest of the home is prone, wondering why nature won’t let you be, and you use one finger to flip on the lights and another to flip off the world.

Then there are the times you are awakened by the summons of playoff baseball, which often ends too late and still never goes long enough. The visiting Houston Astros trailed Los Angeles 3-2 at the top of the ninth inning and ended the inning tied; they began the 10th by seizing a 5-3 lead and surrendered it minutes later to go 5-all; then Astros outfielder George Springer sprung a line-drive home run to give his team a 7-5 advantage at the outset of the 11th. This is the part when your phone starts glowing: “Are you seeing this?” As Jayson Stark wrote in the wee hours Thursday morning, “There had been 17 extra-inning HRs in World Series history before tonight. There have been 4 in the last half hour.” At minute 30, second 1, the neighbors woke, and it wasn’t because of a crying baby.

“I can’t find an open bar,” texted a friend who recently moved and hadn’t yet gotten his cable hooked up yet. “I don’t even know how to get back home.” The Astros and Dodgers rounding the bases did.

Imagine the Fourth of July with your family, and that proud but old “William Tell Overture” is blaring as the coda of fireworks bursts in the sky. Now envision the fireworks are so numerous that you no longer see red wisps drooping, concentric circles of cream dots expanding, blue sparks tasseling to the earth. Everything booms at once, and the heavens are filled with this brilliant and blinding color that appears white but is too overwhelming to discern. That is what it’s like to watch Houston’s Marwin Gonzalez loft a dinger to tie a Fall Classic contest in the ninth;

And his teammate Jose Altuve crack one to put his team in front in the 10th;