Shakespeare steals epic post-game and rewrites it into all-time tragedy; Angels lose 8-7

I promised myself I wasn’t going to get mad about Spring Training games. This is a time of practice, experimentation, and teachable moments. There is not too much to glean from these skirmishes about the upcoming season, so I should save myself the agony and woe of any and all losses until after March 28th. I swore I wouldn’t get mad.

But the stars had perfectly aligned.

It was a déjà vu moment. The score was dangerously close to 4-2 with the Angels in the lead. The significance of this score can not be overstated, but the Angels had to win at the very least. Fortunately, Kole Calhoun had homered, David Fletcher had swinging-bunted a pitch to right, and Mike Trout had lined a run in in the 3rd. Cody Allen had graciously allowed the precise number of runs we wanted, and this was shaping up to be a grand post-game.

You see, the Angels won 8-4 on Sunday. They had a legitimate shot to win 4-2 today. The last time the Dodgers lost a Game 1 by a score of 8-4 and a Game 2 by a score of 4-2 was in the last series of the 2018 postseason. That’s right. The Dodgers were about to lose to a team in red by the same score for the first two games of both series. As I said, the stars had perfectly aligned.

The post-game title once read as follows:

“Dodgers in World Series form as Angels claim Game 2 and set”

Not even The Bard himself could have written a better post-game title. In actuality, Luke “Shakespeare” Bard would commandeer the title and re-pen it in his own name. Not only did he go so far as to give up a run, but he would be charged with 4 after God-knows-how-many walks from both he and Luis Peña. The title could have still been salvaged had the Angels at least picked up the W.

They did mount a comeback in the bottom of the 9th which almost stilled my heart, but now, it doesn’t matter at all. The Post-game of Destiny is extinct. Let’s just get on with the season...