Baseball's beautiful.
Yeah, I'll bet it didn't feel that way to the first-place Pirates or their 12,396 faithful at PNC Park on this Easter Sunday at roughly, oh, 4:24 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Because that's when Jung Ho Kang was thrown out at the plate for the final out of a 3-2 loss to the Giants, and he was out by such a broad margin that the fans' groans were legitimately audible even before Buster Posey's tag.
Seriously, check out Posey's eyes up there in the Matt Sunday photo. This is the figurative lion licking lips for the feast.
Then watch the actual sequence:
With two outs in the ninth and Kang at first, Bryan Reynolds oppo'd a double into the base of the Clemente Wall. And when the ball took a wild bounce upward, a tie seemed assured. But San Francisco's right fielder Steven Duggar impeccably handled the bounce, relayed to second baseman Joe Panik, and the next throw was equally precise to Posey. Kang, running as if he'd had his reconstructive knee surgery ... an hour before lunch, was out by 20 feet.
Game over.
But the game within the game, the baseball-based chess that incessantly takes place ... that never ends. And that's what's beautiful in this scene, regardless of outcome.
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