Baffoe: Profiles In White Sox Heroism -- Matt Albers

By Tim Baffoe--

"Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality. Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of 'the rat race' is not yet final." -- Hunter S. Thompson

(CBS) These have been a rough last few weeks for the Chicago White Sox. A five-game lead in the AL Central was blown in 11 games. There was a seven-game losing streak culminating in a sweep at the hands of the Kansas City Royals that ignited the torches at the gates U.S. Cellular Field. Robin Ventura's head is being called for. What was baseball's most pleasant surprise so quickly about-faced into its biggest nightmare.

On Wednesday,the stage was perfectly, if not desperately, set for a hero to appear in New York, the setting for so many comic book stories of the improbable and the unlikely savior.

Extra innings. A depleted White Sox bullpen coupled with an emptied bench. A manager with a hand forced. A recently much-maligned overlarge dude called upon to awkwardly save the dying party that is the 2016 season.

White Sox reliever Matt Albers entered at the start of the Mets' half of the 12th inning as presumably the guy who would give up a walk-off run in some comical fashion in the latest chapter of this tragicomedy. Nothing about an extra-inning game on the road for a scuffling team like the White Sox felt winnable.

That was even less so after the dreaded lead-off walk that Albers promptly issued. But he escaped as clean as if he'd donned a tarp to gorge himself at a ribfest, presumably free of blame for this impending doom. And yet…

"Right as I was coming off the mound, I knew I was up first," Albers said at his locker afterward, apparently either fresh from a shower or still sweating or both. "And Robin's like, 'You're hitting,' and I'm like 'All right,' ya know."

Almost chilling in its bravery.

The atypical adonis had only two career hits entering his at-bat in the 13th inning, both coming for the Houston Astros when they were still a National League team. He's played for seven teams, and not a one for whom he had clubbed an extra-base hit.

I didn't quite lose consciousness as the ball left the bat, as everything went into slow motion while still at regular speed, as Hawk Harrelson's voice of pure death suddenly became filled with a youthful pleasantness of serendipity not heard in a decade. But my senses were awash with classic soundtracks of moments of greatness -- the theme from The Natural, the theme from Chariots of Fire and Drowning Pool's "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor." At that moment when Albers nearly committed vehicular manslaughter on the Mets' Neil Walker at second, I could taste colors.

"I was thinking about it and then I was like, I'm not sure if I can do this," the pitcher-turned-allegory told Newsday, like any true hero who experiences a period of self-doubt of whether or not to accept the calling. "I almost ran Walker over. I was like, 'Sorry, man, I don't know how to slide.' ... It was just a mess, but I made it."

A beautiful, jiggling, heroic mess, damn it.

The White Sox bench let all the weight of late May slide off their shoulders right then. It was a new month, and Fat "Bat" Albers had taken their burden, swallowed it whole and squatted a digested version of it into the outfield gap in Flushing. The team had learned how to laugh again, how to find that inner child that their stepdad had locked in a closet until the bottle of scotch was finished.

"Any time you're in extra innings it gets a little weird," stepd- ... er ... manager Ventura said afterward, "but when a pitcher gets a hit and gets on base, it gets fun.

"It's like Little League. It really is. I think they enjoy it just as much."

Albers would advance on a wild pitch and gracefully touch home on a sacrifice fly before pitching the bottom of the inning for a White Sox win, one that could only happen if an unlikely pear-shaped figure chose to rise and run like a chubby kid for the ice cream truck.

No hero is born without a mentor, without a sage to impart wisdom as well as stoke the tiny flame the hero never acknowledged was within. That inspirational figure is often all that different from the hero himself.

"I grab a left-handed helmet," reminisced Albers, "and (catcher Dioner) Navarro's like, 'You got the wrong helmet,' and I'm like, 'Well, I'm allegedly left-handed.'"

Yoda. Uncle Ben Parker. Dioner Navarro.

"Really super happy for Albers," Navarro told reporters. "Sometimes stuff like that has to happen to bring the team even closer."

Maybe we look back at the Matt Albers Game as the pivotal moment for the 2016 White Sox. There was the cathartic release of laughter from the bench as he chugged into second and then to third and then eventually home. Maybe it's a kooky baseball thing that swings a season from glass half-empty to half-full.

"A reliever hits a double, then scores and pitches two innings?" Albers said. "That's not going to happen every day."

Because heroes don't happen every day, Matt.

Perhaps this weird hero has proved the rat race of what was the brink of a lost season is not yet final. This much is for sure: nothing brings a team, nay, the world together quite like a fat guy overexerting himself.

Tim Baffoe is a columnist for CBSChicago.com. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimBaffoe. The views expressed on this page are those of the author, not CBS Local Chicago or our affiliated television and radio stations.