The Morning Horsehide Herald — the Ninth of October, Two Thousand and Twenty-Six

Is it spring training yet? No — the pennants are being decided, and spring must wait its turn.

The Game of the Day

TEN MEN TO THE PLATE AND THE SIXTH INNING TAKES THE SOUTH SIDE'S VOICE AWAY — BAILEY RISES FROM THE BENCH TO STRIKE TWICE, RAMÍREZ CARRIES THE FLAME, AND CLEVELAND, TWICE LEFT FOR DEAD IN THIS SERIES, HAULS THE QUARREL HOME FOR A FIFTH AND FINAL SITTING: GUARDIANS 9, WHITE SOX 5

The question Stephen Vogt put to his men before the Chicago leg — whether it is sweeter to madden 40,000 or to hush them — receives its answer in a six-run sixth: held to one hit and trailing 2-0 through four, the Cleveland nine draw level on Patrick Bailey's homer from the bench and José Ramírez's two-run drive, surrender the lead within the half-inning, then send ten batters against the Chicago relay — Bazzana's double past a diving Montgomery, two walks, four singles, and Grant Taylor, the four-inning savior of Game 1, retired not a single man — while Gavin Williams, the putative Game 5 starter, takes the last three outs of a 9-5 verdict that squares the only Division Series to reach a deciding game, Saturday at eight o'clock by the lake, the winner to call upon Tampa Bay on Monday

Stephen Vogt spent the week posing his club a riddle of acoustics. “What do you like better?” the Cleveland manager asked his men before the series removed to the South Side. “Do you like to make 50,000 people go crazy, or do you like to shut 50,000 people up? They're both very different feelings, but they're equally as fun.”³ On Thursday evening at Rate Field, before 39,920 believers dressed in black, the Guardians chose the second feeling, and the sixth inning administered it.

For four innings the evening leaned Chicago's way. The hosts manufactured two runs in the third by the humblest means October knows — Munetaka Murakami's bases-loaded walk and Sam Antonacci's sacrifice fly — while Cleveland managed a single hit and Parker Messick, the rookie left-hander entrusted with the season, walked four men and was gone after two and a third innings. The advertised duel of southpaws dissolved on both ends: Hagen Smith, Chicago's announced starter, lasted two outs and three walks himself, and the game passed into the hands of the two bullpens, where Erick Fedde held Cleveland quietly for three and two-thirds in bulk relief.

The fifth inning turned the ledger over. Patrick Bailey, who had begun the evening on the bench, lined a homer into the right-field seats; two batters on, José Ramírez — whose October revival this paper has chronicled daily — turned on a fly ball to right-center for a two-run clout and a 3-2 lead. Chicago answered in kind and at once, an Antonacci hit-by-pitch forcing in one run and Brenton Doyle's sacrifice fly another, and at 4-3 the home crowd permitted itself to believe. Then came the sixth. Angel Martínez was struck by a pitch, stole second, and scored when Travis Bazzana's double dropped just beyond the dive of right fielder Braden Montgomery — the groan from the grandstand was audible on the wireless — and the next six Cleveland batters all reached against Grant Taylor, the same Taylor whose four-inning save had stolen Game 1. Bailey singled, Rocchio and Kwan walked, and Ramírez, DeLauter and Adell singled in succession: ten men to the plate, six runs across, 9-4, and Taylor charged with four of them without recording an out. The researchers note the six-run frame ties the third-largest inning in Cleveland's postseason history, and that the franchise has now scored nine runs in consecutive October contests for only the second time, the first being Games 3 and 4 of the 1997 World Series.³

Miguel Vargas supplied the South Side's coda, a parting shot to left in the ninth, and it fell to Gavin Williams — the presumptive Game 5 starter, making the first relief appearance of his professional life — to take the final three outs on 18 pitches.⁴ That economy now hangs over Saturday: Cleveland's pitching plans for the decider are frankly unsettled, Messick's abbreviated start having forced seven relievers into service. “I'm good to go,” Williams offered afterward. “If I've got to start, I'll start. If I come out of the 'pen, I'll come out of the 'pen. I'll do anything.” Chicago, by contrast, arrives with its best bulk man, Sean Burke, rested and ready.⁴

So a series that has refused every tidy script gets the ending it deserves: two games apiece, each club having won twice in the other's yard, Game 5 Saturday at eight o'clock Eastern at Progressive Field — the only Division Series of the four to go the distance.²⁴ The arithmetic of history calls it a coin flip: of the eighteen prior clubs to drop the first two games of a best-of-five and win the next two, ten went on to take the fifth, and home teams in winner-take-all games stand 70-68 all-time.³ Cleveland, chasing the longest active championship drought in the game — no title since 1948 — could become only the fourth club to climb from two games down in a Division Series after losing the first pair at home. Chicago, which as this paper noted yesterday has still never shown its home crowd an October victory this fall, must now win its fifth straight road scrap of the autumn to reach a first pennant round since 2005. “We kind of let the home crowd down those first two games,” said Steven Kwan. “So hopefully it's another chance at redemption.”⁴ The winner's reward: the rested Rays, Monday, at their dome.

News Around the League

THE BARGAINING DESK: THE OWNERS SLIDE A PAPER ACROSS THE TABLE — A SEASON SHORN TO 154 GAMES, A MONDAY OF REST, A LONGER OCTOBER, AND THE TOP SEEDS TO CHOOSE THEIR OWN PREY

While the Division round supplied the week's noise, the quieter table got a new document. Major League Baseball's latest proposal to the players' union, delivered Thursday, would return the game to a 154-game schedule beginning in 2029 — a figure the sport kept almost without interruption from 1904 to 1960 — with a scheduled off-day every Monday, four split doubleheaders per club, and a season ending a week earlier. The Division Series would stretch from best-of-five to best-of-seven, and, most novel of all, the highest seeds would choose their opponents: the third seed selecting its Wild Card quarry immediately after the regular season, the first seed naming its Division Series foe once the Wild Card round concludes. The league stipulates that no downward adjustment would be made to salaries for the shorter season, with bonus and option thresholds scaled proportionally.⁵

The league's case, in the words of its spokesman Glen Caplin, rests on player health and spectacle alike: a weekly off-day “good for player health,” a new national broadcast window, “fewer weekday afternoon games, a longer Division Series and more opportunities to see the game's best pitchers on the biggest stage.” The proposal's own prose, it must be said, confesses the box office as candidly as the training room — the added October off-days are commended for “increasing ratings and enhancing the value of the sport's media rights,” and the 2029 commencement happens to coincide, to the year, with the start of the league's next national media agreements.⁵

The Herald's sympathies on matters of the purse are a matter of public record, and it weighs the paper accordingly. A weekly day of rest and a schedule shortened at full pay are concessions the workingman's side of this game has sought since the deadball days, and the paper credits them as genuine. The choosing-of-opponents is theater — bulletin-board material by design, as the league's own wire cheerfully admits — and theater sells at the gate and on the air, where the owners keep the till. No formal answer from the union had reached the wires consulted by this desk when the edition went to press; the Herald will read it, when it comes, with its customary interest.

THE OVERTURE DESK: SUNDAY'S CURTAIN IN MILWAUKEE PROMISES A DUEL FOR THE AGES — THE YOUNG FIREBALLER OF THE CREAM CITY AGAINST THE TWICE-LAURELED LEFT HAND OF LOS ANGELES

The National League's pennant quarrel opens Sunday evening at eight o'clock Eastern in Milwaukee, the second sitting follows Monday at five, and the argument removes to Los Angeles on Wednesday — a rematch of last autumn's Championship Series and a meeting of the league's first and second seeds.² Neither club has formally named its Game 1 pitcher, but the wire finds every sign pointing to the matchup of dreams: Jacob Misiorowski against Tarik Skubal.⁶

The credentials require little embroidery. Misiorowski, the 24-year-old to whom Milwaukee entrusts its loudest evenings, finished the regular season atop the entire major leagues in earned-run average (1.80), strikeouts (252), walks-and-hits per inning (0.80) and opponents' batting average (.157), and in the Division round his fastball touched 104.8 miles the hour while averaging 101.2.⁶ Skubal, the two-time reigning Cy Young man of the American League,⁹ crossed leagues at midsummer in the blockbuster that made him a Dodger¹⁰ and scarcely broke stride — a 2.61 earned-run average in the Los Angeles colors despite surrendering 44 days of his summer to elbow surgery, and six innings of one-run work in his National League postseason debut against Atlanta. The wire's reasoning for the pairing is sound: Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the other candidate, worked Tuesday and would be on short rest Sunday; Monday suits him naturally.⁶

The scribes call it perhaps the finest Game 1 matchup the bracket could have drawn. The Herald, having watched both men terrorize the summer from opposite leagues, declines to argue, and counsels its readers only to be seated early.

THE PADLOCK DESK: THREE-AND-THIRTY SAVES WITHOUT A STUMBLE — BAKER, THE SELF-MADE LOCKSMITH OF THE NINTH, CARRIES THE GAME'S SUREST THING INTO THE PENNANT ROUND

While Tampa Bay rests and waits upon Saturday's survivor, the wire pauses over the man who shut each door of the Division round behind him. Bryan Baker, the 31-year-old All-Star in his first season as the Rays' closer, saved all three victories of the sweep of New York — ten batters faced, four strikeouts, one lone walk the only man to reach — and became just the fourth pitcher since the save entered the official ledger in 1969 to nail down each of his club's first three postseason games, joining Manny Corpas, Mark Wohlers and Dennis Eckersley. He is the only one of the four to do it without allowing a hit.⁷

The season behind the October is of a piece: 41 saves to share the major-league lead, a 1.44 earned-run average, a .161 opponents' mark, and — the figure that says the most — 33 consecutive save chances converted since the 17th of May, the longest such run in the franchise's books. All of it managed on two pitches, fastball and changeup, by a former Oriole the Rays did not even plan to employ as a traditional closer when spring camp broke. “He's a rock, man. He's a maniac,” testifies the veteran Nick Martinez; manager Kevin Cash puts it as a question — “Is there a team that should feel better than us?”⁷

The Herald notes one filigree the wire supplies: the man with whom Baker shares the save crown, at 41 apiece, is Cleveland's Cade Smith — who worked an inning in Thursday's Game 4, and who may yet bring the argument into the Championship Series in person, should Saturday by the lake fall the Guardians' way.⁷

THE NURSERY DESK: THE PASTIME RECRUITS FROM THE CRADLE — MR. FALLON TEACHES THE SMALLEST FANS THEIR FIRST WORDS, AND THE WORDS ARE 'DODGERS' AND 'YANKEES'

The game's longest campaign — the one for the next generation — opened a new front this week. Jimmy Fallon, the late-night host and best-selling author, has partnered with the league on two board books for the very youngest prospects: Your Baby's First Word Will Be Dodgers and Your Baby's First Word Will Be Yankees, illustrated with amiable farm animals by Miguel Ordóñez, to be published by Macmillan's Feiwel and Friends imprint on February 2, 2027, and available now for the pre-ordering.⁸

“Parents spend months trying to get their baby's first word to be 'Mama' or 'Dada,'” Mr. Fallon explains. “This book is for parents with bigger dreams.”⁸ The Herald observes without malice that of the two titles, one arrives rather better timed than the other — the Dodger infant may yet babble his first word during a third consecutive championship parade, while the Yankee household, its October concluded on Wednesday, has until spring to rehearse.

The travel trunks own this Friday — not a contest on the continent — and then the calendar crowds: Saturday at eight o'clock, the fifth and final sitting of Cleveland and Chicago by the lake; Sunday at eight, the National League's curtain rises in Milwaukee; Monday, the American League's opens at Tampa Bay while the senior circuit plays its second at five o'clock.² One series alone of October's first four went the full distance, and it is the one between two clubs who met thirteen times in the summer, settled their division by a single game, and now cannot be told apart at two games apiece.⁴ The Herald knows better than to predict it, and would not spoil it if it could. Until the morrow's dispatch, keep your scorecards near and your enthusiasms nearer.

~ THE HERALD ~

The Herald Acknowledges Its Debts

MLB Box Scores — Friday, October 9, 2026 — Boxscore
Baseball-Reference.com — Upcoming Schedule and Upcoming Dates — Baseball-Reference
Tim Stebbins, Not done yet! Guardians storm back to force Game 5 in Cleveland — MLB.com
Tim Stebbins, Scott Merkin and Anthony Castrovince, White Sox-Guardians ALDS Game 5 FAQ (Sat., 8 ET, TBS/HBO Max) — MLB.com
Mark Feinsand, MLB proposes 154-game schedule, new playoff features — MLB.com
Max Ralph, All signs pointing to a dream Skubal-Miz showdown for NLCS Game 1 — MLB.com
Adam Berry, 'Maniac' Baker is on the most dominant run a Rays closer has ever had — MLB.com
Brian Murphy, Jimmy Fallon partners with MLB to write children's books — MLB.com
Cy Young Award Winners — Baseball-Reference
Tarik Skubal Stats — Baseball-Reference