The Josh Innes Show - JIS and Wake Up: Chasssss

Episode Date: November 4, 2022

Hello All!! Wow, Wow, Wow! Game 5 was incredible. Chas and Trey played hero. Who would have imagined this? I've got tons of thoughts but I'm also busy doing stuff at the radio station. I'm going to pump out segments as I get them done throughout the morning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Go, go, Astros! Well, here we are, one win away from the World Championship. Here come the Astros, burning with desire. Here come the Astros, breathing orange fire. Here come the Astros, with winning on their mind. Oh, what a game. Here come the Astros, number one every time. Go, go, Astros number one every time. Go, go, Astros.

Go, go, Astros. Unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable. What a baseball game. What a baseball game. What a series. What a baseball game. What a baseball game. What a series. What a season. And now one went away from winning another world championship and shutting

up the people. Well, let's put it this way. You're never going to shut up naysayers because they're going to be naysayers and they're always going to call you cheaters. They're always going to say 2017 didn't matter, but it doesn't matter. What matters is this. Winning right here, right now. Now you're back home.

Got to win one out of two with arguably your best pitcher going on Saturday. Holy cow, what a time to be alive! Oh, what a ball game that was last night. The drama of it. The stress. We've been waiting for a game in that series where there was real legit stress. I know

Game 1 had drama, and I know the diving catch in game one that robbed the Astros. Then the home run happens. I get all that, but this was true, tense, playoff drama, and it was bananas and it was fun. And there were big plays and clutch hits and great decisions and bad decisions and everything you need in a baseball game and it was awesome and chas my man chas you now live in houston sports history i was thinking about this today as i was sitting at the radio station where does that catch that Chaz made rank among the greatest plays in the history of sports in Houston? Ninth inning. If that ball goes, that's probably a triple. Hey,

that thing may be an inside the park homer because if he jumps, misses that ball and it bounces off that weird chicken wire fence, who knows which direction it bounces? Who knows? And at the time, it's a one-run game. You're thinking that, uh-oh. Like, as the ball's going off the bat, I didn't think it was anything. And I'm watching it off the bat going, okay, it's a fly ball, fly ball. But that ballpark is just an easy place to hit home runs. They built that ballpark for guys like Ryan Howard, dudes with left-handed power. I know that was an oppo shot, but you get my point. That ball sails out of that ballpark.

So just off the bat, I thought, okay, it's well tagged and maybe it's in the gap, but I didn't think that that was a ball that was going to get out. And then as I'm watching Chaz go back and back and back, I'm thinking, oh shit, it's going to keep going. Like I was so stressed. Let me tell you a story. When I get stressed during sporting events, I have to perform some sort of task to take the attention away from the stress. I'll still watch, but I can't sit there. I can't handle the stress of certain situations. So I'll start cleaning or something. Last night, we were drinking some pumpkin beers and watching the game.

So I had about five or six bottles of pumpkin beer that were empty around my chair and maybe a can, maybe a bowl sitting around the chair. So in the ninth inning, I really started kind of pacing and stressing and getting nervous. So I grabbed all my bottles. I went and grabbed a garbage bag, started cleaning up the bottles. Jilly's like, what the hell are you doing? You know what I'm doing, Jilly. I get stressed out during these games in a big moment. I don't like big moments. I like the outcome of the game, but I do not handle stressful moments well. I pace. I rock back and forth. I bite my nails. I do it all. I rock. I do all that. So I went into the kitchen where I could still see the TV, but I started performing tasks. So I threw all the bottles away. Then I started cleaning off

the counter. Then I started doing the dishes. and I would just turn around and see what happens on the pitch. Then continue cleaning dishes. Got the scrub daddy out there. I'm scrubbing that shit. Like it is so stressful in that moment. And when the ball came off the bat and Chaz goes back, I'm thinking, okay, this is no big deal. I think he's got it. But then it carries and it carries and it carries and it keeps going. And I'm like, oh my God, he's going back on this thing. And if he doesn't make this play, the tying run is on base and the tying run is in scoring position. Uh-oh. But then of course, Chaz plays the hero, like just a legend. And you know what made it even sweeter? What made the Chaz play even more beautiful is that all game long, all series long,

they've talked about how Chaz is a Philly guy, grew up a McDougal, going to all the ball games, big Philly sports homer, all that stuff. And he burns his childhood team by robbing them of an extra base hit out of the shoot in the ninth. And then, of course, the drama happens. And, of course, Harper gets on base. And it was the right move to put him on base. Because they can talk about how Castellanos has been better.

He still sucks. He's batting 150 in the series. He's no good. He's been bad all year. You made the right decisions. Every decision that made. Now, I don't know if they went into that Harper at bat planning to walk him, but they eventually walked him. And I think they made the right decision there.

But my God, the stress of that moment. That's what you live for, though, isn't it? Like in the moment, it's the worst. It truly is, and it's a lame comparison, but it is like riding a roller coaster. You have this buildup, and you're nervous about it the whole time. You wait in line. You get more nervous, more nervous, more nervous. You get to the front of the line. You're up next. They put you in the cart. You're like, I don't know if I want to do this. I don't know if I want to do this. I don't know if I want to do this, but they put the little strap over your shoulders, your hydraulics, you're in, and now you're stuck going.

So what are you going to do? There it starts. You're nervous. It's got that slow climb up the ramp there. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick up the tracks. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick until you get to the top of it. And then you go down. And as you're going round and round, you're excited. You're happy. You're celebrating.

And then by the time you get to the end of it, you want to do it again. You say, that was great. That's what a game like that was like last night. It had all of that. Like you didn't want to watch. You wanted to avert your eyes. You were nervous. You were scared.

And then the drama, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, up the roller coaster, tick, tick, tick. And then as you go down, you see that catch and you're making all the rounds. And then by the time the game finally ends and you secure the 3-2 win and the 3-2 series lead, you say, hell, let's do it again Saturday. And that's what it felt like. That ninth inning, that drama, the eighth, the ninth, all of that, it was unbelievable. It was bananas is what that game was. Listen, man, there have been some great postseason moments. There have been some great postseason games. But that game had extra pressure and it was tense. And I think the fact that it was in Philly made it even more tense

because they've got the last crack at it. It was similar to that playoff game the Phillies played in 2011 in Game 5 of the Division Series against the Cardinals. The Cardinals won that game 1-0, and they scored their run in the first inning and it held up, but that doesn't mean the Phillies didn't have shots. I think Chase Utley hit one to the wall. There were a couple of wall bangers out there, a couple of big defensive plays. I mean, we sit there and we talk about Chaz, Chaz, Chaz. What about Mancini? What if Mancini doesn't make that play? If Mancini doesn't make that play, what happens? Just everybody who

needed to make a big play made a big play. When Schwarber came up in the bottom of the eighth inning after they just cut it to one and a base hit definitely ties it and maybe gives them the lead. And Mancini, who's been an afterthought in this series and has really been an afterthought for most of his time in Houston. He had a couple of games where he bopped a couple of home runs. For the most part, non-factor. He comes in because Uli suffers an injury. His head's all rattled. What happens? Mancini makes the giant play at first. Mancini,

Chaz, unsung heroes. Because when you look at the Astros lineup, it's not littered with incredible offensive talent once you get to the bottom four or five. You got Bregman. He's great. Jordan, who hasn't been great in this series, but Jordan's a threat, obviously. Tucker's a threat. Altuve's a threat. You've got Uli, who's been decent in the playoffs, but for the most part, a non-threat during the season. Ledmese Diaz, a non-threat this postseason. Chaz, a non-threat.

Hensley, for the most part, a non-threat. A lot of guys who are just kind of there. Maldonado, a non-threat. Vasquez part a non-threat. A lot of guys who are just kind of there. Maldonado a non-threat. Vasquez a non-threat. There are tons of dudes in that lineup who are just non-threats at this point. But two dudes who have been out of sight, out of mind offensively for the most part came up and made the two biggest plays of not only this series and this season, but in the history of the franchise.

You can count on one hand, two hands, how many franchise-altering plays have been made that just completely changed the world. And you can think about some of those in 2017, and you can think about Bregman's base hit in Game 5 that puts him up 3-2. You can think about all the curveballs from Lance McCullers Jr., and you can think of Charlie Morton doing what he did. But if you look at individual plays that have altered the course of history for a franchise, if that play isn't made at first by Mancini and Chaz doesn't make that play in right field, it's more than likely three-two the other way and you're going back to

Houston needing to win two to win the championship. Now that second World Series is in your grasp with your best hurler arguably, at least going now, your best hurler going now out there on the mound with a chance to win it. And I'm trying to think of franchise-altering plays. There aren't that many of them. You don't get too many of those. And it's a bigger deal also when you talk about franchise altering things that change the game. Why plays matter more situationally for the franchise, why they matter more.

And that play matters on such a huge scale, on such a huge level for the perception of this franchise, for the reputation of this franchise. It was a monumental play. Obviously, the Chaz play is the bigger one, based on how sexy it was, and it was the ninth inning, and that was a no-doubt double, maybe a triple, who knows. But the Mancini play was huge as well. Holy shit. Holy shit. All right, I'll get into that in a second. I got to do something here. I'm at the radio station, so I got to do something. I'll get into the significance of that moment, just how it changes everything. All right, I'll get into that in just a second as if you're waiting on time. You'll get the next podcast when you get the next podcast. I'm at work.

I got a lot of shit I'm doing. All right, I'll get to that in just a sec.