MLB.TV puts postseason luck in reach

Tris Speaker, the greatest center fielder of his day, once said, "Luck is the great stabilizer in baseball."

Luck. It's a funny word and no one talks about it enough, but it means so much to baseball and it will mean even more this week.

Luck is being a fan today and finding out that MLB.com has just lowered its prices on its popular MLB.TV packages. It now costs only $9.95 to watch live Major League Baseball games over your computer with MLB.TV for the remainder of the year. It's also now only $14.95 for MLB.TV Premium, and just $4.95 to pay per day.

Luck is a towering fly ball that is going to be either a walk-off home run that generations of fans will talk about -- or a ball that was foul by only inches and giving a thankful pitcher another opportunity to seal the deal.

Luck is a ball that somehow trickles under the glove and between the legs of a normally sure-handed first baseman named Bill Buckner one night in 1986 at Shea Stadium, back in a day when Red Sox glory waited forever. Now there is the possibility for final October drama at that same ballpark where a wrecking ball awaits, and luck will play a key role this week in deciding whether the Mets play on -- perhaps even against those same Red Sox in another World Series.

Dizzy Dean didn't get to the Hall of Fame with luck, but it sure helped. That's what Leo Durocher believed, anyway.

"Luck? If the roof fell in and Diz was sitting in the middle of the room," Leo the Lip once observed, "everybody else would be buried and a gumdrop would fall in his mouth."

Luck is an "at-'em ball" smashed right to a perfectly positioned fielder, again and again as if fate is in full control of your favorite team and you just know after three or four innings that there is absolutely no way the breaks will go your way that night. Until the eighth or the ninth inning arrives and a hero steps forward -- the way rookie Evan Longoria did again on Tuesday night with a homer that started a late comeback for another big victory by Tampa Bay over Baltimore.

Luck was that Johan Santana's broken black bat raged out over the pitcher's mound and then in the way of an infielder's reach, enabling him to reach base and set up a rally. The Mets went on to win that game against the Cubs on Tuesday, and maybe people will remember the broken black bat play as the turnaround for the Mets' fortunes. It was just luck. A stray shard of wood frustrates two fielders, allowing the pitcher to reach base safely and help himself win.

"Those of us lucky enough to be part of the game have a tremendous responsibility. We're charged with giving back to the game all the good things the game has given us."-- Former Tigers manager Sparky Anderson

Ask any Cubs fan about luck. How else could you describe what happened in one bizarre sequence of events on a chilly October night at Wrigley Field in 2003? Those Cubs came back from Florida with a 3-2 National League Championship Series lead and the safe assurance of aces Mark Prior and Kerry Wood ready for Game 6, and if necessary, Game 7. How does shortstop Alex Gonzalez boot that tailor-made double play? While history mostly remembers fan Steve Bartman reaching for a foul ball that Moises Alou couldn't catch, the bigger question is how Prior subsequently implodes and the Marlins go crazy on their way to a World Series championship? What luck awaits the 2008 Cubs?

Luck is what Lou Gehrig talked about one afternoon in a stadium that will never see another baseball game. He called his fatal illness a "bad break." He still believed he was the "luckiest man" in the world. Luck is always part of baseball.

Luck is pitch after pitch after pitch from top closer Dennis Eckersley, until Kirk Gibson gets one that finds a wide chunk of wood and winds up over the wall in right field at Dodger Stadium, leading to the most recent world championship in Dodgers history. What luck looms now on this 20th anniversary of the Miracle Homer? How lucky would you be to be a Los Angelino if you get Dodgers vs. Angels in late October?

Luck is being a baseball fan in 2008. Oh, it would have been amazing to have your choice of players and moments to see through time -- Ty Cobb sliding into third, Willie Mays running with his back to home plate and making "The Catch" in 1954, maybe Babe Ruth going yard or Walter Johnson throwing gas. But all things considered, being right here is an amazing stroke of human luck. Because you are seeing this, you have the capability to watch the legends of tomorrow being made right now, live over your computer with MLB.TV, over a network of pipes called the Internet.

Sparky Anderson felt the same way about being a part of the game in his day as a player and then as a two-time World Series-winning manager.

"Those of us lucky enough to be part of the game have a tremendous responsibility," Anderson said. "We're charged with giving back to the game all the good things the game has given us."

The game gives, and the game takes. It does it with equal parts skill and luck. You can take all the batting practice in the world and work on an inside-out swing to be ready for that moment when a situation requires hitting to the opposite field. But luck has to make it drop. Only once out of every three times or so will a player hit safely. Luck is having that happen at just the right time when it is needed -- like it was a year ago when Jamey Carroll stroked a single to right off Padres closer Trevor Hoffman to bring Matt Holliday in a fraction ahead of the tag. A little luck there got the Rockies into the postseason and eventually into their first World Series.

Luck helps you play in 2,131 consecutive games -- and then some. How did Cal Ripken Jr. avoid a simple injury turning a routine double play at second base on a typical day during his record streak? How did he avoid the kind of flu bug that would keep an ordinary man out of a starting lineup? Luck.

Luck is being born with the natural ability to throw a fastball 100 miles per hour.

Luck is being born with the natural ability to hit a 100-mph fastball over a fence.

"Hello again, everybody," Harry Caray used to say. "It's a bee-yooo-tiful day for baseball."

Luck makes it so. You can watch the rest of the way with MLB.TV and see for yourself, because luck is being able to view MLB.TV for under 10 bucks with lots of innings left. You know what baseball luck is. Luck is what got Spooky93 to 48 games in MLB.com's Beat the Streak earlier this season, and luck is what kept him from 57 straight and a $1 million payday.

As the clock ticks toward another postseason, just remember what Satchel Paige once said:

Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.

And "keep the ball off the fat part of the bat."

That takes luck.