PHILADELPHIA -- Fire everyone.
Do it for the dozen years of incompetence that have kept Pittsburghers from enjoying — no, rightly expecting — more magical mano-a-mano baseball moments like the one seen here Tuesday night.
Yeah, the Pirates prevailed over the Phillies, 5-4, and Steven Brault stayed sturdy, and Bryan Reynolds and Colin Moran homered, and Kevin Newman's hustle just might have forced the Philadelphia mistake that flagged home the decisive run in the ninth inning. I cover all that and more in another column I've filed.
But this finish, this singularly spectacular final out between Felipe Vazquez and Bryce Harper, possibly the ultimate left-on-left matchup available to Major League Baseball, this rises above anything that came before.
As Clint Hurdle would word it, succinctly as ever, "That's one of the better battles you'll see ... anytime."
Or, as Bryan Reynolds would tell me more colorfully, "There were actually some people in the stands I saw get up and leave. And I was thinking, 'What are you doing?' I mean, you've got these two guys going at each other, Flip throwing 101, and Harper up swinging for the fences ... yeah."
Yeah.
To set the stage: Vazquez was summoned for the final out of the eighth, Francisco Liriano having put a runner at second. Facing pinch-hitter Scott Kingery, he'd need four strikes -- home plate umpire James Hoye was an adventure for both sides all night -- but froze him eventually. And in the top of the ninth, the Pirates pecked and clawed their way to a run that put them up, 5-4.
As was the case Sunday against the Reds, Vazquez would be asked to get four outs. Hurdle hates doing that. He, Ray Searage and all concerned are proud to have gotten Vazquez to this point in the season hale and hearty, despite what simply must have been a raging temptation to call his number ... oh, three or four times a game.
Philadelphia's first two batters, Rhys Hoskins and J.T. Realmuto, each worked a 3-0 count. Each saw Vazquez then run it full. And each flied out to Starling Marte.
Up came Harper. The $330 million man with six home runs in his previous eight games, one just the previous night.
Two pitches into this at-bat, it was plainly clear, with his team down a run and down to its 27th out, what he hoped to do ...
... but it was equally clear what Vazquez was doing. Those fastballs clocked at 99.4 and 101.3. The second was a go-ahead-and-hit-this gutter ball blasted right into Harper's red zone. If he connects, that ball clears Independence Hall.
Didn't matter. Too fast means too fast.
"I'm gonna go right at you," Vazquez would tell me later. "It doesn't matter who you are."
But going at people, as he'll often lay out in our talks, mostly means never letting them get comfortable. So he'll show the fastball. He'll blow one or two by them. He'll send up his flare, let 'em know who he is. And then, he'll start toying.
He'd come back at Harper with more heat for the third pitch but way off the plate, then a slider a mile further out that Harper also took. Followed by two more blazers that were fouled back. And to close it out, pitch No. 7 down there on the matrix:
Pitch No. 7 would wind up, of all things, a curveball.
An 85-mph curveball, or exactly 14 mph harder than the curves being put forth earlier in the evening by Philadelphia's lefty starter, Drew Smyly. Because with a Vazquez arm and the accompanying arsenal, even his distant fourth-best pitch can be pulled down from the top shelf when needed.
Look out below:
Oh, my.
There's no chance. To adjust the bat speed, the eye, the angle ... any of it.
"First of all, Vazquez's stuff is ridiculous," Josh Bell would tell me after having maybe the sharpest vantage point from first base. "Breaking off that curve there ... I mean, you can't cover both. As a hitter, you just can't."
Unfair, huh?
"No. No, it's not," he replied with a grin. "I'm fine with it. He's the best in the world, and I'm glad we've got him."
Who called for the curve, Vazquez or Elias Diaz?
Vazquez grinned when I asked.
Wow, why?
"I don't know. It made me happy."
Glad wouldn't begin to paint Vazquez. Not just after the whiff, when he whirled around toward right field and let out a primal scream. But during the actual at-bat.
No kidding.
"I know Harper. He's my friend," Vazquez said, referring to their time together in D.C. "As soon as he came up, he knew it was gonna be fun."
Catching himself, he clarified, "Well, it was fun for me. I was laughing. I was looking over at their dugout and they were looking at me, and I hear them, and I was laughing. I was like, 'I love it. I love this.' "
Dude really does. All summer long, he's lit up like a firecracker upon facing the opponent's biggest, baddest dog.
Steven Brault, the Pirates' starter on this night, seems to admire that trait almost as much as Vazquez's arm.
"If I had one word for him, it'd be elite," Brault would say. "The things he can do, what he brings out there ... he has this different kind of confidence. It's almost a cockiness that's just, 'Hey, I'm the best player on the field.' When he's out there, he believes he's the best player."
After a breath, Brault amended, "Because he is."
It's been a deeply disappointing season for the Pittsburgh Baseball Club, I don't have to tell you. But Bell, Reynolds, Marte, Newman and chiefly Vazquez have been anything but. He's 23 of 25 in save opportunities with a 1.71 ERA, 77 strikeouts against 12 walks over 52 2/3 innings and a mindblowing 0.97 WHIP. On this night, he was credited with the W rather than the save, though logic would point toward earning both.
That's why those around him daily are running out of adjectives.
"He's a special guy, Felipe is," Hurdle would attempt when asked yet again. "But you don't even need to quantify it. Just watch the hitters' reaction. That tells you everything you need to know."
Harper's reaction?
Well, he wasn't available to reporters after this game, but check out this closeup:
Again, I've got a ton more on this game in another column.
