MILWAUKEE -- Once upon a time, right here in this very House of Horrors, the Pirates had this pinch-hitting hulk by the name of Michael Restovich -- and please, please put down your hand if you remember him -- who was taking some big warmup swings in the visiting clubhouse during the game. And just as he was in full torque, around the corner came one Jack Wilson, trotting back from the dugout to ... you know, do his duty.
Boom!
And by the time Jumpin' Jack was fortunate enough to spring up off the floor with no more than a few woozies, he offered this gem: "Man, what is it with this place?"
The answer, of course, then as now, is that this place is death and taxes. It's the Earth on its axis. It's the Pope being Catholic, a CNN anchor boasting 'BREAKING NEWS,' all the suns setting beyond all the West End Bridges.
It's Brewers 7, Pirates 4.
It's all that and so much less ...
What, you wanted actual analysis of this game?
Please. This particular matchup in this particular venue stopped meriting any such treatment right around the time Randall Simon clubbed a little girl dressed as a human sausage and, the next day, all the happy people on the morning shows invested real thought in whether or not it involved malice.
So what of an analytical bent would anyone want to read about how a team 30 games over .500 got taken to town by the team 20 games under .500?
That Gerrit Cole was flatter than the I-94 expressway linking this city to Chicago?
Sure, he was. He was flat-out miserable, actually. He lasted four innings, labored to throw 49 of 77 pitches for strikes and left with a line of five runs, eight hits, two strikeouts and four groundouts.
"It was a rough night," Clint Hurdle was musing, almost under his breath, afterward. "I took him out when I did because he just didn't have it."
Cole hardly disputed it: "Poor execution on my pitches. They weren't very crisp. A lot of quick damage. I just got beat up, and it didn't take long."
It's worth noting that the crispness Cole cited couldn't have included velocity. If anything, from this vantage point, it appeared he overthrew at times, reaching back for 97-98 mph ... and getting hit just as solidly:
OK, all of that's legit. It's almost analysis.
But you can't discuss Cole being lousy Tuesday without the more complete context that he was coming off two superlative starts against the Giants and Marlins, that he mowed down Milwaukee at PNC Park in April and that, you know, he was at least in the Cy Young conversation before pulling into this particular lot.
Amazing how that happens.
You also can't discuss the Brewers' starter, Jimmy Nelson, holding the Pirates to a run, four hits and zero walks over six mostly silent innings ... this right after walking eight in his previous start in Cleveland.
Wow, who walks eight?
How does that even happen with the manager in a non-comatose state?
No matter. Not here. The Pirates tried early to outlast Nelson, figuring he'd flail eventually. Nothing of the kind happened, as he kept pounding and pounding and pounding the zone, 72 times out of his 101 pitches.
"He was just great," Milwaukee's dynamic shortstop, Jean Segura, was saying after a strong night of his own with two singles that totaled three RBIs. "He had his sinker. He threw strikes. He did everything against the Pirates. And they're a good team."
Yep. Not here.
Look, if I'm being totally honest, I dare say I rather robustly enjoyed this evening in a weird bigger-scope sort of way.
Pardon the digression from the super-serious pennant race and why the Cardinals never lose and the Cubs never lose, and why it's positively nuts that the Pirates and Cubs will face each other in a playoff format only the NFL should endorse, but this is what hit me on this night: Not everything in sports can be quantified, and almost none of it is predictable.
And that, my friends, is simply awesome. I love it.
This is the game's way of showing us it's bigger than us or our self-important analysis -- mine, too -- or angst -- yours, too -- and that it still knows who's boss.
For all the data that powerfully suggests outcomes, there's always that psychological, maybe even supernatural element to sports that I hope we never stop finding fascinating.
For all the data that supported that the Pirates being the very best team in baseball heading into the All-Star break -- they were on a 13-2 roll capped by those crazy comebacks over the Cardinals -- they still came to this place and dropped all three out of that break.
For all the data that should bolster the Pirates as immense favorites in this series, especially with Hurdle sending his ace and his A-lineup out to the field, especially with the urgency attached to the next stop at Busch Stadium, plus everyone feeling all refreshed from a day off, there again was that team so low in the standings that it sold off its third baseman for peanuts to the opponent on this night ... still doing what it always does.
I'm sorry, but that's fun. That's part of the charm of baseball and sports, in general.
It's embracing the chaos, if you will.
And don't think for a second the participants would underplay the factor, even if they can't stand it in the slightest.
"This place," Josh Harrison was telling me afterward, "it's not just that things don't go well ... it's that they're strange, that there's no flow. I don't know what it is."
"No idea," Neil Walker said. "I have no idea."
Hurdle used to laugh off this topic when I'd bring it up in his first year with the Pirates. That was no laugh when I did so again after this.
"I thought we kind of worked it out of our systems back in April," the manager said, referring to taking two of three by scores of 6-2 and 10-2. "But then it seems like it's crept right back in."
The witchcraft, I'm guessing he meant.
Which also is awesome.
No sport in Americana is romanticized as baseball is, not in film, not in life even now that it's long since lost its status as the national pastime. We love our baseball heroes. We love our baseball tales. And we love them with men walking out of cornfields, socks pulled high, spitting tobacco and always getting the girl.
This one doesn't have Costner or Redford, to say the least, but I'll take it. It's a wonderful little whodunit in which the final scene is foreshadowed by the Bernie Brewer's pregame slide, the home team always finds a way over a bitter rival, everyone rises up in the seventh to croon "Roll out the Barrel!" all smiling and celebrating, and only the names change.
Except Restovich's name. Oh, please, let that one stick.