PL+ Classic Game of the Day Schedule: 4/13 – 4/19

Here’s this week’s slate of games! As always, we’d love for you to join us and let’s watch some baseball together.

4/13 – Cincinnati Reds @ Pittsburgh Pirates, 2013 NL Wild Card Game: One of the things that I’ve never been able to understand is how baseball players are able to completely tune out crowds that are sometimes in excess of 50,000 people. Many players have said that they really don’t hear it or it’s just background noise, but when the entire stadium is booing, or chanting something specific, I just don’t see how the players are able to tune that out. It’s wild. So it makes perfect sense to me that Johnny Cueto would get rattled when the entire Pittsburgh crowd is chanting his name, taunting him, after he gave up a solo shot to Marlon Byrd. Yet it stands out so much because players are able to tune it out, and so Cueto dropping the ball becomes a moment that will forever live in infamy.

4/14 – Kansas City Royals @ Minnesota Twins, Yordan Ventura Strikes Out 11: Nick Pollack will be doing this game because he “misses prime Yordano Ventura,” and that’s totally understandable. Ventura had a bright future, featuring a fastball that sat 97/98 and even touched 101 at times, as well as a curveball that got him plenty of swings and misses as he earned a 16% SwStr rate on the pitch throughout his career. He also had quite a bit of team success right away, reaching the World Series in each of his first two years in the majors, making 9 starts across the two playoff runs. Nick will be doing his typical thing, breaking down Ventura’s game as well as his opponent, Tommy Milone, and just talking pitching as we watch Ventura do his thing right before they made their successful World Series run.

4/15 – Minnesota Twins @ New York Yankees, David Wells’ Perfect Game: From one David (Wells) to another, David Fenko will be broadcasting this one to highlight the level of perfection that Davids can reach. Not only did Wells throw a perfect game, but as he recounted in an interview with Bryant Gumbel, he did so while hungover as he had gone to an SNL after-party the night before.

4/16 – Seattle Mariners @ Boston Red Sox, Mo Vaughn Walks Off the Mariners: This will be our first game broadcasted by our fearless graphics team leader, Justin Paradis, who has done the images for every Game of the Day article you’ve seen on this site, among many many other awesome things. As a lifelong Red Sox fan, he felt that it was his responsibility to do some games to counterbalance all the dang Yankees games that our New York-centric staff has done so far. In his words, “this game features appearances by 4 Hall of Famers (Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez, Ken Griffey Jr., and Dennis Eckersley), one maybe HOFer (A-Rod), peak NOMAHHHH (Nomar Garciaparra), a 15-strikeout game from the Big Unit, and a 5-run comeback, and a walk-off grand slam from Mo Vaughn. After it concluded, Jerry Remy called it, ‘One of the wackiest games you’ll ever see.'”

4/17 – Chicago White Sox @ Boston Red Sox, White Sox Complete the Sweep: There are times that a team just seems like the chosen team of the playoffs, and one year after having a magical run of their own, the Red Sox ran into the chosen team of 2005. The White Sox would only lose one game this entire postseason run, leaving their mark as one of the most dominant postseason teams in MLB history, a mark that everyone remembers except for ESPN.

4/18 – New York Yankees @ Tampa Bay Rays, Game 162: This is how I know this day will never be forgotten. All I had to do was write “Tampa Bay Rays, Game 162″ and you all know exactly what I’m talking about. This was one of the craziest days in baseball history, with the Rays needing everything to break just right for them to make the playoffs. And proving that baseball is just a beautiful story where things always seem to happen for a reason, who else, but the franchise player himself to walk it off properly.

4/19 – Oakland Athletics @ Kansas City Royals, 2014 AL Wild Card Game: Why are all these Wild Card games so insane? This had to have made Bud Selig incredibly happy as in the first three years after expanding the Wild Card to two teams and instituting the one game play-in, there have been three noteworthy and memorable games. Graphic designer JR Caines will be leading this broadcast and he’ll have quite the unique perspective on this game as he was actually there.