I missed last night's wild Game 6, where St Louis rallied back twice to win a wild 10-9 game to force a game seven tonight. That was despite Ranger slugger Josh Hamilton, a devout Christan and recovering substance abuser, getting what they'd call a word of knowledge in some of my old churches as he got up in the 10th.
"He told me, 'You haven't hit one in a while, and this is the time you're going to,' " said Hamilton, who had gone 65 at-bats in the postseason without a home run. "You know what? I probably had the most relaxed, peaceful at-bat I've had of the whole series at that moment. It's pretty cool. You ought to try it sometime."
As Hamilton recalled the sequence of events in the Texas clubhouse after Game 6, he ruefully took note of the missing piece in the discussion: God promised him a four-bagger, but made no mention of the Rangers' bullpen collapse or Freese's game-tying triple in the ninth inning and game-winning homer in the 11th.
"There was a period at the end of [the sentence]," Hamilton said. "He didn't say, 'You're going to hit it and you're going to win.' "
That reminds me a bit of the old Monte Clark story, where he was praying for a winning field goal that missed; when he was asked whether his prayer wasn't answered, he said it was answered, but the answer was "no." Here, there was divine guidance (I'll take Hamilton at face value), but not to the point of a win.
Occasionally God does sweat the details. How many strings He pulls in the process is an open question. As a Lion's fan, I wouldn't mind if He let Tim Tebow fend for himself on Sunday and not pull off a improbable rally again.
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