The sun was bleeding over the concrete cauldron of Busch Stadium, a slow-motion psychedelic nightmare played out on a field of perfect green. This wasn’t baseball; this was a fever dream, a statistical hallucination transmitted directly into the skull. The first act was a grotesque ballet of errors and incompetence. Jung Hoo Lee, a ghost in white, materialized on first base courtesy of a fielding error—a tremor in the cosmic order from some poor bastard named Saggese. Then, the grim choreography of the double play, a hypnotic, soul-crushing ouroboros of a play, a ritual sacrifice of men and momentum, as Adames and Smith were swallowed by the abyss.

Second inning: the narcotic fugue continued. A man named Chapman was assaulted by a pitch, a small act of violence in the middle of this vast

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