The rare Game #163

Summer is not over yet. Baseball will push the sun up one more time, and give us one more day of regular season baseball. Tomorrow is the real first day of Autumn, as after tonight, the final game of the season will be played, and the state for the playoffs will be set.

But tonight, we as baseball fans, get to witness something that hasn't been seen in the better part of a decade - Game 163.

For one night only, Jake Peavy will take the mound, and the visiting San Diego Padres march into Coors Field in Colorado to take on Matt Holliday, Todd Helton, Troy Tulowitzki, and the rest of the upstart Rockies, where everything, is on the line.

Padres vs. Rockies. Think about it, that doesn't sound like a game any of us would watch, unless we're a die-hard Padres fan, or a die-hard Rockies fan. Unless there are absolutely no other games being played in DirecTV's MLB package, I wouldn't think about sitting down to watch this one. Not even if it were Peavy/Maddux vs. Jeff Francis or something marquee.

But tonight's match-up is something special. For one of these teams tonight, this is the last game of the season. The winner is the National League Wild Card, and is guaranteed three more games, and more if they can ride this wave longer. The loser will probably suffer the worst defeat possible - on the cusp, the bubble, right on the edge - of a chance at the post-season, only to fall short. And then a winter of questions will begin:

• What if Trevor Hoffman didn't blow the save against ______?
• If Holliday's warning-track hit were in Colorado instead of Philly, wouldn't it have gone out?
• Why did we get Michael Barrett??

On any other given night throughout the summer, I wouldn't care about this game. Personally, I have my own reasons for watching this game tonight, and I intend to be in front of my television at 7:35 EST to see this.

• Probable NL Cy Young winner Jake Peavy vs. Probable NL MVP Matt Holliday who also happens to be the current batting champion. Peavy wins tonight, he gets 20 wins, a perfect compliment to the AL's Josh Beckett. But in order to get that win, I would ideally like him to 0-fer Holliday, whom with a theoretical 0-4 or 0-5 performance tonight, would solidify Atlanta's Chipper Jones as the batting champion for 2007. Yes, regardless of the award balloting goes, the votes are already in, contrary to what MLB.com wants you to believe. But in terms of statistics, Game 163 IS a regular-season game, and yes, these stats DO count.

• TBS is broadcasting this game - yesterday marked the final Braves broadcast on TBS, which was kind of a melancholy thing for me. I don't agree with the direction of the station, and they're doing everything to eliminate the past from the present from me, the dismissal of WCW pro-wrestling, and now the killing-off of Atlanta Braves baseball. They're even changing the channel number, from the "Channel 17" most people have grown accustomed to throughout the last three decades. Furthermore, with the killing of Braves on TBS, but the beginning of Postseason on TBS, I am curious to get a preview of the new crew - from what I know, it is Chip Caray and Cal Ripken, Jr. among a cast of who-knows-else. Like 'em or hate 'em, tonight's the night to get a sample of what we're going to be hearing for the next two weeks.

• It's Game 163. When was the last time we saw one? 1999? This is it, if there was ever one game to watch where two teams are going to leave it all out on the field, that is tonight. It's a playoff game, and yet it isn't. Tonight, loser goes home, and winner takes all. But winner taking all still means they have received nothing at all, except for a chance.

God, baseball is a wonderful thing.