And that’s pretty astonishing in and of itself. So no matter what else happened, people would remember the Nola brothers for the rest of baseball time. This is the 118th postseason in baseball history. Yet before this day, no pitching brother had ever faced a brother with a bat in his hands in any postseason game. Now let’s review the history that unfolded in that remarkable moment in baseball - and Nola family - time. And Austin Nola did the rest.Īustin Nola gets the best of his little brother Aaron as he gets a base hit to get the Padres within one. As Aaron stretched and unleashed one of his hardest sinkers of the day, Kim bolted for second. Then Aaron tossed his fourth pickoff throw of the at-bat over to first, just to hold Kim close. He got a piece of a darting two-seamer and fouled it off. It was now Austin’s job just to stay in this at-bat and survive as best he could. He jumped ahead in the count, 0-2, on a fouled-off cutter, followed by a sizzling four-seamer that Austin swung through helplessly. On the mound, Aaron Nola kicked at the dirt and peered in at his brother. There was one out in the fifth, and Padres shortstop Ha-Seong Kim took a lead off first base. “I was like, I wish I could just press pause on the time button and just live it for much longer than what it lasts, because it happens really quick.”Īh, but that game-changing, life-changing at-bat, on the other hand? That one did not happen really quick, not in actual time - as opposed to Nola family time. “And I’m sure he would say the same thing, that stepping in the box and you get your brother in a situation, you know … just facing him in a big-league game is enough to just hold the moment. “I wish I could have taken a snapshot and just held the moment for like a day, you know, because that’s how fun it is,” Austin Nola said Wednesday after the Padres had tied up the NLCS by basically ruining his brother’s day. Not merely in the landscape of October baseball - but in the landscape of stuff that happens to real people in these games - in their very real lives. But let’s first take a step back and just savor how cool that moment was. Oh, and also - (did we wait too long to get to this part?) - rewrote the history of baseball. A big-league player getting a hit off his brother … in a playoff game … on an 0-2 pitch … and driving in a run against his brother that flipped so many scripts:Ĭhanged a game. So let’s reflect on the meaning of what we saw in the fifth inning at Petco Park. But a trip to the World Series was never riding on it. At the plate: His big brother, Padres catcher Austin Nola. On the mound: Phillies pitching stylist Aaron Nola. So there they were Wednesday afternoon, in sunshine-baked San Diego. Once every century or so, they get to bat against each other in a postseason game! They play Wiffle Ball in the same backyard. So where should we begin this episode of the NLCS Weird and Wild extravaganza? With a tale of two brothers.
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