The Magic of Christmas
Your daily dose of postseason baseball—plus a little sleight of hand.
WASHINGTON, D.C.—If you don’t mind, I’ll relive this one through my own experience. In other words, I’ll tell you how I experienced one of the greatest postseason games ever—and perhaps the greatest Cleveland baseball moment of my lifetime—while here at the Magic Retreat in Washington, D.C.
I was in my hotel room getting ready for the first night of magic when Cleveland rookie Kyle Manzardo smashed a two-run home run off the Yankees’ Clarke Schmidt, which both:
Gave Cleveland its first lead of this American League Championship Series.
Made Manzardo the first Idaho native to hit a postseason home run since Harmon Killebrew in 1970. Killer hit three postseason home runs, including a World Series blast off Don Drysdale in 1965. Only one other Idaho native has hit a postseason home run, and he’s obscure, but I’ll give you this hint: He was related to one of the biggest pitching prospects of the early 1990s—a pitcher who did eventually make the big leagues, though he never turned out to be quite the superstar people expected.