Wild Card Era

Another round of playoffs meant another night when five outs, or one walk to the mound, was the season. The cameras were closer. The person left holding the mistake was sometimes a fan, sometimes a manager, and sometimes the umpire standing on top of the play.

A perfect game ended on a call that replay would later have fixed. A popup in the ninth ended a game the Mets had already won, until they had not. The chapter is the first long stretch of baseball in which almost nothing happened unwitnessed.