The caprice of October

 Playoff baseball and playoff baseball's month came in together this week, and the usual quirks and eddies came with it. It is both odd and wonderful what October does our former national game, bringing everything odd and wonderful about it into the sharpest of focus after the long slog of summer.

In other words, the Cubs beat the Padres 3-1 in a winner-take-all Game 3 of the wild-card, but not without doing what the Cubs do, which is surrender a leadoff home run in the ninth and then load the bases before allowing their faithful to breathe again.

And your Detroit Tigers?

Blew a 15-game lead and lost the division title to the onrushing Cleveland Guardians in the last days of the season, then eliminated the Guardians by taking two-of-three in Cleveland.

And then, of course, there was Cam Schlittler.

"Who?" you're saying now.

Exactly.

Can Schlittler, rookie arm for the New York Yankees, who suddenly was the very epitome of playoff baseball. He was the 24-year-old kid with 15 lifetime starts and 85 days in the bigs who was thrust suddenly into the spotlight's glare, the full weight of the playoffs coming down on his shoulders the way it so often does.

The kids, the washed relics, the pinch hitters deep on the dugout bench: Playoff baseball somehow finds them all. And then, for at least one afternoon or evening, infuses them with magic.

Schlittler, see, had never pitched a major-league playoff game until the Yankees sent him to the hill last night to save their season against their mortal enemies, the Boston Red Sox. The best-of-three was tied at a game apiece. Every anxious soul in Yankee Stadium was projecting its hopes and prayers and raw nerve endings on Schlittler's 6-foot-6, 225-pound frame. 

So what did the kid do?

Well, not unravel like a cheap sweater, the way a mortal would.

Instead, the young righty pitched the game of his life in, well, the game of his life, striking out 12, walking none and giving the Red Sox straight zeroes for eight fairy-tale innings. Got the shutout win, 4-0, and a piece of history to go with it: According to the folks who keep track of such things, it was the first time a pitcher had ever thrown eight playoff innings with at least 12 strikeouts and zero walks in a postseason game.

The 12 punch-outs were the most in a winner-take-all game in baseball's ancient history. They were also the most in a playoff debut in Yankees history.

Which, includes, you know, some guys. Whitey Ford, Ron Guidry, Andy Pettitte, those kind of guys.

None of 'em did what Schlittler did last night -- against, by the way, his hometown team, Schlittler having grown up in Walpole, Mass., 27 miles southwest of Boston.

The caprice of October rarely has been more capricious. Or more true to its nature.