THE MORNING HORSEHIDE HERALD

THE OCTOBER DESK: THE IDLE DAY IS SPENT AND THE WAITING ENDS AT TWO O'CLOCK — FOUR GAME ONES BETWEEN THE MATINEE HOUR AND THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT, AND EVERY ARM THAT WILL THROW THE FIRST PITCH NOW KNOWN BY NAME

Monday passed exactly as this paper foretold in its last dispatch: not a ball was pitched in anger anywhere in the land, the twelve traveled and talked and took their batting practice behind closed gates, and the only scores kept were at the press conferences. The vigil ends this very day. Four best-of-three series open this afternoon and evening, every game at the higher seed's park, carried on the NBC and Peacock circuits with ESPN Radio crying the action coast to coast.

The card, in order of first pitch, with the duelists now confirmed by the league's own probable-pitcher ledger: Philadelphia at Atlanta at two o'clock at Truist Park, Luzardo (14-5, a 2.86 figure, two hundred one-and-twenty strikeouts) against the grizzled southpaw Sale (14-9, 2.16); the White Sox at Houston at five o'clock at Daikin Park, the rookie Smith (3-3, but a 1.29 figure) against the rookie Blubaugh (5-3, 3.66); Boston at New York at eight o'clock in the Bronx, the rookie Tolle (9-6, 3.03) against Schlittler and his league-best 1.95; and the Cubs at San Diego at ten o'clock at Petco Park, Boyd (10-5, 3.91) against King (12-10, 3.21).

The wage of survival is engraved already: the winners advance to the Division Series opening Saturday, the third of October — Boston's or New York's survivor to Tampa Bay, the Houston series' survivor to Cleveland, the survivor of the San Diego series to Milwaukee, and Philadelphia's or Atlanta's to the hundred-win Dodgers, each at the resting club's yard. Of the four openers the armory desk below gives the particulars, for every one of them carries a story.

THE ARMORY DESK: BOSTON HANDS ITS OPENER TO A MAN YOUNGER THAN ANY SINCE RUTH — COUNSELL SHOWS HIS HAND AT LAST, MATTINGLY SAYS 'START' BUT MEANS 'OPEN,' AND HOUSTON'S DUEL IS A BULLPEN DAY ON BOTH SIDES

The deliberations this paper has chronicled all resolved themselves on the idle Monday, and each resolution repays study. In New York, the manager Tracy passed over his eighteen-game winner Gray and handed Game One to Payton Tolle, three-and-twenty years and three hundred two-and-thirty days of age — the third-youngest man ever to start the first game of a Boston postseason, behind only Smoky Joe Wood of the 1912 World Series and one George Herman Ruth of the 1918. The logic wants no defending: in two starts against these same Yankees the rookie went unbeaten with a 0.69 figure, eighteen strikeouts, and a .093 average against. Opposite him stands Schlittler, who ended Boston's season in last October's Game Three and greets the rematch with relish; Gray takes Game Two.

In Chicago's camp, the hand so long held against the chest — as this paper noted only yesterday — was laid on the table at the eleventh hour: Boyd starts the opener at Petco Park, with Imanaga, Holmes, Peterson, and the sore-shouldered Gausman held in reserve behind him, that last name under the trainers' watch for soreness in the non-throwing shoulder. San Diego answers with its ace King, then likely Pivetta, whose summer was five months lost to a flexor strain. In Philadelphia's camp the word 'start' required amendment: "I should say open," said the interim manager Mattingly of Luzardo, whose whole September amounts to Sunday's four-pitch eighth inning, and whose leash will be short accordingly; Sánchez, fully rested, takes Wednesday's Game Two. And at Daikin Park the afternoon is a bullpen day on both sides of the ledger: Venable's Smith — eight-and-twenty innings of big-league life, and ugly swings induced all the while — opens what his manager plainly calls a bullpen-type game, while Houston counters with Blubaugh as the opener of its own relay, the young man having thrown but fifteen pitches since Friday.

THE CAPTAIN'S CASE: JUDGE PLEADS BEFORE THE ROSTER COURT WITH A CALF THAT WANTS THREE WEEKS AND A CALENDAR THAT GIVES HIM HOURS — 'I'VE BEEN DOING A LOT OF CONVINCING,' SAYS THE MAN, AND THE CONVINCING CONTINUES

The question this paper left open on Monday — whether the Yankee captain's September calf permits him an October — came no nearer its answer on the idle day, though not for want of advocacy. The injury is a moderate strain of the soleus muscle of the right calf, a hurt that ordinarily asks three weeks' healing; the calendar offers considerably less. Judge spent Monday making his case in every available court: four turns at the plate in live batting practice — two walks drawn, a called third strike, a ground ball to the mound — with his running still confined to the anti-gravity treadmill, no stride yet taken on open grass, let alone a cut on the basepaths.

"I've been doing a lot of convincing," said the reigning Most Valuable, "and I'm going to keep doing that." The manager Boone holds the judicial tone — the club prepares as though its captain will not serve, while declining to rule him out; if the medical men give their blessing, the roster has his name on it within the hour. "He's making progress," is as far as Boone will be drawn. The candor of the plaintiff himself deserves entry in the record: "Guys take risks every single day. I understand the risks. I've got it all." The roster is due before this evening's first pitch, and the Herald will report the verdict on the morrow.

THE SPEEDSTER'S DESK: A MAN WHO HAS NEVER PLAYED A BIG-LEAGUE INNING MAY DEBUT IN THE POSTSEASON ITSELF — BOSTON WEIGHS BRAIDEN WARD, HIRED FOR HIS LEGS ALONE, WITH AN OLD 2004 GHOST SMILING ON THE ENTERPRISE

Among the papers Boston must file before tonight's opener is one that would make history of a rare denomination: should the club carry Braiden Ward, the seven-and-twenty-year-old outfielder would become but the seventh man in the game's annals to make his Major League debut in the postseason, and the first of Boston's ever to do so. The résumé is a single sentence long and needs no second: six minor-league seasons, two hundred two-and-seventy stolen bases in five hundred three-and-twenty games, and this summer at Worcester a franchise-record one-and-sixty thefts against nine times caught. He would be carried to do one thing only, and every soul in the park would know the thing, and he would attempt it anyway.

"It's like a dream. It's like a fever dream," said the stringbean — five feet nine, a hundred sixty pounds, and by the beat men's account he talks as fast as he runs. "One day I'm in Worcester, the next day I'm at the nicest hotel I've ever stayed at in New York City with the greatest team, getting to hopefully play in the greatest rivalry." The precedent wants no explaining in that rivalry's precincts: a borrowed pair of legs, a ninth inning in the Bronx, October of 2004 — Roberts stole, Mueller singled, and Boston never lost again. The Herald offers no prophecy, only the observation that history has a weakness for fast men in October.

THE MANAGERIAL DESK: SEATTLE OPENS ITS SEARCH WANTING GRAY HAIRS AND FRESH THOUGHT AT ONCE — AND THE FIRST NAME ON ITS SLATE, THE RUMOR WIRE REPORTS, IS THE VERY MAN WHO ASKED ONLY TO BE WANTED

The vacancy this paper recorded on Monday morning acquired its first candidates by Monday evening. Dipoto, Seattle's baseball chief these eleven years, met the press on the managerial question and set out his specification: unlike Wilson and Servais before him, the next man will have managed in the big leagues — "We need fresh thought," said he, calling for a reset of the culture entire, and adding, with a confidence the 76-86 ledger does not entirely underwrite, that not a candidate in baseball would fail to be excited by the post.

And the first name on the slate, the rumor wire reports through the Seattle Times' account, is one this paper's readers met only yesterday in a San Diego clubhouse doorway: Torey Lovullo, ten years in the Arizona chair, 750-768 with a pennant among the honors, his contract expired and his wish — "I just want to be wanted" — now perhaps to be granted on Puget Sound. Industry men count him among the leading candidates. The remainder of the reported slate runs to Vogt of Cleveland — twice running the American's Manager of the Year, winterer in Olympia, and all but unobtainable, being under contract to a champion; prying him loose would want a trade of the kind not seen since Piniella went to Tampa for an outfielder in 2002 — with Baldelli, Woodward, and Hyde the further names entered. The Herald observes that a man dismissed for finishing 86-76 may yet be hired by a club that finished ten games worse, and that there is a sermon in that somewhere.

THE WAIVER WIRE: ONE SMALL ENTRY ON AN OTHERWISE EMPTY LEDGER — ST. LOUIS CLAIMS THE RIGHT-HANDER HAMPTON FROM WASHINGTON

The transaction column, on a day the whole game held its breath, carried a single line: the Cardinals claimed the right-handed pitcher Chase Hampton off waivers from the Nationals — a winter lottery ticket punched while every other front office in the land was printing October rosters. The Mound City club, its season done these two days, thus fires the offseason's first quiet shot; the Herald enters it in the ledger and moves along to weightier matters.