Commentary: Dramatic win could be just what Guardians need

Kyle Manzardo looks like a guy whose name is Kyle Manzardo. He also looks like the kind of guy who can hit a home run now and then for an offensively challenged team desperately in need of as many home runs as it can possibly get. Ladies and gentlemen: Mr. Kyle Manzardo. K-Man didn't need to hit a home run Wednesday, so he didn't. Instead, he tortured the visiting — and losing — Tampa Bay Rays in another way: by floating a game-winning parachute into shallow center field, a walk-off, dagger-off, all-bets-are-off 10th inning, game-winning RBI single. Final score: Cleveland 4, Tampa Bay 3. K-dog's game-winning walk-off arrived just in time for the wobbly home team, which has been staggering around in a baseball stuper of late, smack in the middle of the AL Central Division race that, more often than not in recent years, they thought was theirs. Not so this year, however. Thus, the game ended with the home team, almost as desperately panicky as their fans, giving The Land the kind of victory that a baseball team with engine trouble needs this time of year, to revive both themselves, and the ticket-buying ballyard connoisseurs. All that was on display, giving Manzardo's desperately panicky home team, and their hyper-ventilating fans, a glorious 4-3 walk-off/dance-off, victory. Welcome to August-soon-to-be-September baseball. These are not uncharted waters for Kyle Manzardo, or even for a guy who looks like Kyle Manzardo. These types of games, against these (Tampa Bay) types of teams is what baseball, and the lure of playoff baseball, is all about, with or without Emmanuel Clase. Guards Sergeant-at-arms Stephen Vogt, who during his career has been in his share of baseball foxholes, is no stranger to what he and his team are facing in the last month-plus of hardball combat. It's every team's analytics geeks for themselves. May the best exit velocity win. Who knows? It could be that Vogt's televised dugout shouting match with Tanner "The Nanner" Bibee will serve as a springboard for the rush through September. If so, it says here that it could give the team that employs a hitter who not only looks like, but is Kyle Manzardo, just the kind of September to remember that fans could talk about 20 years from now. As the great Yogi Berra, who looked like a guy whose name was Yogi Berra, once said: "it ain't over until it's over, no matter what those guys look like." Meanwhile, Vogt and his staff are on the hot seat, faced once again, as was the case late last season, with the challenge of proving that his team is better than it looks. If that's going to happen, it had to have started Wednesday, when a guy who looks like Kyle Manzardo was Kyle Manzardo, and the rest, perhaps, could be good reading in future baseball history books. For now, however, a good idea for Team Vogt would be to tighten their belts and prepare for some good old-fashioned September hardball. No matter who the hero of the moment looks like. I mean, let's face it. We can't count on the Browns to ... um ... well, you know what I mean. What the Guardians really need the rest of the way is for Jose Ramirez to Jose Ramirez his way to another "don't worry, I got this" kind of September. But who knows? Maybe Parker Messick will be the real deal, right out of the chute. How would that be for a Hollywood finish from out of nowhere? Come to think of it, Parker Messick looks exactly like a guy whose name is Parker Messick. Quick! Somebody call Stephan Spielberg! Stranger things have happened. In the meantime, what we have here is a baseball whodunit? Those baseball gym rats from Cleveland could be on the verge of another one of their out-of-nowhere, nobody saw that coming finishes. The game owes Cleveland that much, don't you think? Not a single World Series champion in over 75 years? Duh! Well maybe we are getting ahead of ourselves. On the other hand, many of the greatest stars in Indians/Guardians history are going to be at the old ballyard Friday night. Shouldn't that count for something? Baseball was built to be remembered. So were baseball stars. I don't know about you, but I get chills imagining a photo of Albert Belle and Kyle Manzardo together. Oh, the stories they could tell. The one story they could tell would be Manzardo's remembrance of the day he floated a parachute into shallow center field at Progressive Field, winning the game that led to Cleveland eventually winning the World Series. You can't make this stuff up. Well, actually you can, because I just did. Just the thought of Belle and Manzardo swapping stories. I don't know about you, but I get chills. Contact Jim Ingraham at (440) 329-7135 or jingraham4@gmail.com.