A fall classic

 This is why we still watch baseball in October, and why we can still sometimes hear it even over the metal howl of the industrial NFL. It's why there's still magic in it, even as its fan base ages and it lives more and more in our memories than in the present day.

They played a baseball game out in Seattle last night, see, and even if our erstwhile pastime lives another 155 years, people will still be talking about it. It was a fall classic,  and it went on for15 innings and just shy of five hours. The Seattle Mariners finally won, 3-2, on Jorge Polanco's walkoff single. In so doing they eliminated but did not bow the Detroit Tigers, who were not only brave in the attempt but damn near indomitable.

The Tiges sent their ace, Tarik Skubal, to the mound to finish the deal, and all he did was strike out 13 Mariners and depart after six innings and 99 pitches with a 2-1 lead. You can argue that was a mistake -- maybe the mistake -- and it probably was. Skubal was still throwing 100-plus when he and Detroit manager AJ Hinch called it a night, and he rung up the last batter he faced. So he still had plenty of juice left in the wing.

What followed was grim, riveting hand-to-hand combat that chewed up both bullpens, neither of which would give an inch. Seattle used seven pitchers, including two other starters (Logan Gilbert and Luis Castillo, who got the win). Detroit burned through eight -- the last of them Tommy Kahnle, who finally surrendered the last run.

"An epic game," Hinch declared when it was done.

"From the eighth inning on, I had a massive headache," said Seattle starter George Kirby, who matched Skubal pitch-for-pitch for five innings. "I am glad that game is over."

Kirby is still a young man (27), so you can forgive him the missteps of youth. Because he couldn't have been more wrong.

That game isn't over.

That game will never be over, so long as baseball and memory both live.