Games Leave You Thirsty for More

The complaint, for years, by those who have watched baseball descend from national pastime to national past tense, is that the games are too long.

This postseason, games have lasted more than five hours twice, more than nine innings half a dozen times, and you know something?

They’re not long enough.

Goodness, give us more.

Baseball is back.

Give us more praying housewives in Boston, more dancing cowboys in Houston, more of Carlos Beltran’s shoes, more of David Ortiz’s smile.

Give us more games that unexpectedly swallow our evening like a long-lost friend who shows up out of nowhere. We sit down for a few minutes to check things out, and four hours and 20 minutes later, we are still there, still waiting for Johnny Damon to lay down that bunt. Why can’t he bunt!

Give us more championship drama on a human scale, Manny Ramirez stumbling past a ball in left field like an 11-year-old, Alex Rodriguez striking out with his eyes closed, hey, that could be us. That was us.

And, please, give us more late-night swings that become everlasting victories, a hanging pitch, a long fly ball, and suddenly the serene field is overrun with colorful chaos. It’s the greatest scene in sports, grown men jumping up and down like teens in a mosh pit, their faces filled with the wonder of a child.

And now, tonight, there is a Game 7 in a situation where there has never been a Game 7 before. This game will be played on a field where, Tuesday night, riot police served as batboys. This game will be played with history at stake and a nearly century-old curse on the line.

Immediately after the Red Sox beat the Yankees on Tuesday to become the first baseball team to force a seventh game after trailing three games to none, I received a three-word e-mail that spoke for a postseason.

“Oh. My. God.”

Baseball, long marred by strikes and tainted with selfishness, is back in all of its pastoral, fist-pumping glory.

Baseball, drawing us once again to its timeless, ancient light.

And pulling us away from the NFL.

You read right.

Hey, Hank, are you ready for some Nielsen ratings?

On Monday night, the prime-time baseball coverage of the league championship series averaged a 14.6 national rating.

“Monday Night Football,” meanwhile, drew a 7.7 rating, the lowest in that series’ history.

Granted, baseball featured the great rivalry in sports -- Yankees versus Red Sox -- whereas football had some strangers from St. Louis playing some itinerants from Tampa Bay.

Still.

Pro football is king, even when its games are jesters, and few can remember when even a baseball playoff game outdrew any sort of football game.

“The drama we’ve seen in baseball the last two years has been extremely compelling, drawing even the most casual viewers,” said Lou D’Ermilio, media vice president for Fox Sports.

Indeed, last year’s postseason appearance by the nationally beloved Chicago Cubs, added to consecutive Yankee-Red Sox championship series, has reminded us what tobacco-stained followers have known for more than a century.

“Baseball is the best game, because it’s the most human game,” said Buzzie Bavasi, 90, former general manager of the Dodgers and Angels.

“When you see a baseball player do something, chances are, you are thinking, ‘I could do that,’ ” he said. “You watch football, you see a 300-pounder out there, smashing somebody, and you think, ‘No way.’ ”

Baseball works so well in the postseason because it’s about people who look like us, facing the incredible pressures we face every day, and we can see every wince.

Super Bowl winners are hidden under helmets. Basketball champions disappear into the sky.

Baseball players, dressed in colorful pajamas with leather footies, roll around on our living room floor and bounce on the couch.

Julian Tavarez blows his cool on the mound, and we see the tumult in his eyes. Curt Schilling prays behind the mound, and we see every breath.

When the games are close -- and aren’t they always close? -- we can see Jeff Bagwell biting his lips and Scott Rolen furrowing his brow.

And when Beltran hits a game-winning home run off his shoes, we jump out of ours, because we know it wasn’t a superhuman who just did that, it was one of us.

“Fall is baseball’s epiphany,” said Phil Pote, a longtime Seattle Mariner scout who rushes home to watch the games after spending the day working with inner-city Los Angeles high schoolers. “This is the time when everyone remembers the greatness of the game. This is why it will never die.”

And, sometimes, never end.

As weary, thankful fans have been continually reminded the last two weeks, baseball is the only sport that follows the clock of life.

They play until they are finished.

The greatest statistic of this postseason, then, belongs not to a human, but an airship.

On Monday, the Yankee-Red Sox playoff game went so long, the blimp flew home because it was running out of gas.

Not us. Not now. Take me out to the fall game, and I don’t mean football.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.