In 69 simulations of Game 3 of the 1997 World Series, the average combined score is about 13 runs. Most games look like baseball games. Some are pitching duels. Some are sloppy. Some are blowouts.
Timelines 67 and 68 are not baseball games.
Timeline 67 ends 23-22. Sixty-three combined hits. Forty-five total runs.
Timeline 68 ends 25-24. Sixty-five combined hits. Forty-nine total runs.
Together these two games produce 94 runs, 128 hits, and zero pitching performances that could be described as anything other than catastrophic. Every single pitcher on both rosters - all fourteen of them - gives up runs. Every reliever gets shelled. Both starters get shelled. The closers get shelled. The long men get shelled. The setup men get shelled. There is no escape.
But here's the thing that makes these games truly deranged: they should have been even worse. Beneath the 94 runs and 128 hits, there is a shadow scoreboard - the runs that didn't score, the rallies that died, because the best hitters on both rosters kept choking in the biggest moments. In these two games combined, batters strike out with runners in scoring position twenty-one times. The bases are loaded thirty-seven times, and in those thirty-seven plate appearances, batters produce thirteen outs, six strikeouts, and three flyouts that strand runners at third.
Forty-nine runs scored, and it should have been sixty. The apocalypse had room to get worse and the hitters wouldn't let it.
Al Leiter takes the mound for Florida to start the game, throws 28 pitches, and gives up 7 runs without recording a single out. Six hits and a walk. He doesn't survive the 1st inning. He doesn't survive the 1st half of the 1st inning.
This sets the tone for what follows.
1st inning: FLA 7, CLE 2. Florida scores 7 off Charles Nagy in the top half, capped by a Moises Alou 2-run homer. Cleveland answers - Jim Thome launches a grand slam off Leiter, 173 mph exit velocity, clearing the bases and making it 7-6. Thirteen runs score in the first inning. Nobody has settled in, because there is nothing to settle into.
2nd inning: FLA 1, CLE 4. Cleveland takes its first lead of the game. It won't last.
3rd inning: FLA 1, CLE 0. Here the game begins to reveal its split personality. Cleveland loads the bases with the score close. Tony Fernandez flies out. Manny Ramirez flies out. Jim Thome - the man who hit the grand slam two innings ago - strikes out. Matt Williams flies out. Four batters, bases loaded, zero runs. The inning ends with a whimper. In a game drowning in offense, Cleveland's best hitters strand three runners and score nothing.
4th inning: FLA 1, CLE 3. Cleveland chips away. Bobby Bonilla hits a 2-run homer for Florida, but David Justice singles in a run for Cleveland with the bases juiced. It's 10-9 Florida. Jim Thome flies out with runners on 2nd and 3rd.
5th inning: FLA 7, CLE 4. Dennis Cook enters for Florida and immediately surrenders 7 runs on 7 hits while recording one out. He faces 10 batters. Cleveland loads the bases and Sandy Alomar Jr delivers a 2-run double, and three more singles push runs across. But in their own half, Cleveland loads the bases and Marquis Grissom grounds out to end the threat. Jim Thome, with runners on 2nd and 3rd, flies out. The score is 17-13. The bases have been loaded four times for Cleveland. Thome has come up with bases loaded twice since his grand slam. He has struck out once and flied out once.
6th inning: FLA 0, CLE 3. Cleveland claws to within 1. 17-16. Gary Sheffield strikes out with a runner on 2nd. David Justice strikes out with a runner on 2nd. The runs score anyway, on other people's hits, around the failures.
7th inning: FLA 0, CLE 0. The only scoreless inning of the entire game. A miracle. An intermission.
8th inning: FLA 2, CLE 6. Cleveland explodes. Six runs. They take the lead for the first time since the 2nd inning. Edgar Renteria hits a grand slam to claw back 4 for Florida, but it's not enough. It's 22-19 Cleveland. But Gary Sheffield strikes out with bases loaded. Darren Daulton strikes out with bases loaded. Even the inning where everything goes right is an inning where the stars are flailing. Florida's best hitters strand runners at third while Renteria - the 21-year-old shortstop - hits the slam.
9th inning: FLA 4, CLE 0. Florida scores 4 in the top of the 9th to retake the lead 23-22. In the bottom half, Cleveland needs 2 to tie. They load the bases. Sandy Alomar Jr doubles in 2 to make it 23-22. Tony Fernandez singles to load them again. Manny Ramirez singles in a run - wait. That's only 1. The tying run is at third. But David Justice strikes out with runners on 2nd and 3rd. Jim Thome - bases not loaded this time, just 2nd and 3rd, close enough - strikes out to end the game. His last at-bat of the night. Struck out, game over, runners stranded, Cleveland loses by 1.
Jim Thome in Timeline 67: 1 grand slam, 2 strikeouts with bases loaded, 1 strikeout to end the game with the tying run on third. 4 RBI and 5 runs left on base. The hero and the goat on the same line of the box score.
Not a single pitcher in this game posts an ERA below 6.00. Here are the lowlights:
If Timeline 67 is chaos, Timeline 68 is despair.
Florida leads this game from the first pitch to the last. They never trail. Not for a single half-inning. And yet Cleveland scores 24 runs trying to catch them and never does. This is the Sisyphean timeline - the one where you push the boulder up the hill for nine innings and it rolls back down every time.
And the reason the boulder keeps rolling back? Cleveland loads the bases eleven times in this game. Eleven. They produce 6 outs and 3 strikeouts in those 11 bases-loaded plate appearances. The best lineup in the American League has the bases loaded almost every inning and leaves runners stranded like luggage at a bankrupt airline.
1st inning: FLA 4, CLE 1. Florida jumps out early. Cleveland loads the bases in their half. Sandy Alomar Jr flies out. Jim Thome strikes out - the run scores on a wild pitch during the at-bat, so the K produces an RBI, which is the most Jim Thome thing that can happen. Matt Williams walks to force in a run. Omar Vizquel grounds out to end it. Bases loaded, 1 run, 2 outs. The pattern is set.
2nd-3rd innings: FLA 1, CLE 0. The calm before the storm. Florida 5, Cleveland 1.
4th inning: FLA 6, CLE 6. Both teams detonate simultaneously. Six runs apiece. Cleveland loads the bases twice. Tony Fernandez doubles in 2. Marquis Grissom singles in 1. David Justice doubles in 2. Good, productive at-bats. But Manny Ramirez strikes out with runners on 2nd and 3rd. Matt Williams strikes out with runners on 2nd and 3rd. The six runs feel like twelve if the stars had showed up.
5th inning: FLA 0, CLE 0. The eye of the hurricane. Both teams, exhausted, stare at each other across the wreckage.
6th inning: FLA 5, CLE 3. Florida pulls away. For Cleveland, the bases get loaded again. Sandy Alomar Jr strikes out. Manny Ramirez strikes out. Jim Thome flies out. Matt Williams finally singles in 2 runs, but by then two of Cleveland's best hitters have already struck out with the bags juiced. Devon White clears the bases for Florida with a 2-run double. The score is 16-10. Cleveland is leaving a small city's worth of runners on base.
7th inning: FLA 3, CLE 0. The lead swells to 9. 19-10. The game should be over. The bases are loaded again for Cleveland. Tony Fernandez doubles in 2 - he is the one man who refuses to choke - but Manny Ramirez flies out with runners on, and Jim Thome strikes out with bases loaded for the second time this game. David Justice strikes out with runners on 2nd for good measure. Three of Cleveland's four best hitters strike out in the same inning with the game slipping away. Zero runs score after Fernandez's double.
8th inning: FLA 0, CLE 6. It's not over. Cleveland scores 6. Paul Assenmacher and Michael Jackson combine to give up 5 hits and 5 runs each without recording an out - but that was earlier. The 8th is where Cleveland's bats catch fire. 19-16.
9th inning: FLA 6, CLE 8. This is where it gets cruel. Florida loads the bases and Moises Alou singles in 2. Then Bobby Bonilla singles in 1. Jim Eisenreich singles in 1. Edgar Renteria singles in 1. The bleeding won't stop. It's 25-16 before Cleveland bats.
Cleveland needs 9 runs to tie. They don't get 9. They get 8. Matt Williams singles in a run. Marquis Grissom singles in a run. Bip Roberts doubles in 2. Omar Vizquel singles in 1. Sandy Alomar Jr - bases loaded, game on the line, one last chance to erase the deficit - strikes out. His third strikeout of the game with RISP. David Justice strikes out with runners on 2nd and 3rd. Then Manny Ramirez - the man Dennis Cook owns across the entire multiverse - strikes out with runners on 1st and 2nd to end the game.
Three consecutive strikeouts to end a game in which Cleveland scored 24 runs. Alomar, Justice, Ramirez - three of the best hitters in baseball - go down swinging with the tying run on base.
Let the record show:
In Timeline 68, Cleveland batters strike out with runners in scoring position fifteen times. Fifteen. Jim Thome strikes out with bases loaded twice. Sandy Alomar Jr strikes out with bases loaded twice. Manny Ramirez strikes out with RISP three times. David Justice - who goes 3-for-4 otherwise - strikes out with RISP three times. The four best hitters in Cleveland's lineup combine for 11 strikeouts with runners in scoring position in a game where their team scores 24 runs.
The mind reels. If Thome had come through even once with the bases loaded - one more grand slam, one measly single, anything - the game is tied. If Alomar doesn't strike out to end the 9th, the game is tied. If Justice doesn't strike out behind him, the game is tied. Cleveland did not lack for offense. Cleveland lacked for offense at the exact moments when offense mattered most.
Twenty-four runs and they still choked it away. Not because they couldn't hit - they had 65 hits between the two teams - but because every time the universe offered them the chance to blow it open, to turn a 3-run deficit into a tie game or a lead, their best players froze. The runs came from singles and doubles and walks and groundouts that happened to score runners. The stars produced nothing when the bases were full. The stars struck out.
Across Timelines 67 and 68:
These are not simple blowouts. A simple blowout is a sink full of dirty dishes - messy, but comprehensible. These games are a dumpster that has been sitting in the sun so long it has developed its own ecosystem. There are layers. The pitching is catastrophic. The hitting is historic. And underneath the historic hitting, the clutch hitting is abysmal. The same lineup that produces 24 runs also strands 15 runners with strikeouts. The same Jim Thome who hits a grand slam strikes out with bases loaded four more times across the two games.
If Cleveland's stars had simply performed at their normal rate with runners on - not heroically, just normally - these games would have been 30-22 and 30-24. The apocalypse could have been worse. The universe kept offering Cleveland chances to run up the score even further, and Cleveland's best hitters kept whiffing at them.
Somewhere in the multiverse, October 21, 1997 is the day that baseball stopped making sense. The starting pitchers combined to last 7 innings between them. The closers combined for 0 outs recorded and 14 runs allowed. Forty-nine runs crossed the plate, and dozens more died on base because the stars - the guys getting paid to deliver in exactly these moments - couldn't stop striking out.
And in both games, Cleveland came back, mounted furious rallies, scored enough runs to win any normal game three times over, and lost by one. Both times. By one. Because of course they did.