He exhales. This will take a moment.
In the midst of the best start of his career, Elvis Andrus is about to go back in time. He is going to relive his personal nightmare. He is going there. To Toronto. Back to Game 5 of the AL Division Series last October and the bizarre seventh inning. He's going to revisit his two errors, other assorted misplays, the Jose Bautista home run and bat flip, the beers raining from the upper decks, the benches clearing and the searing sting of his own tears _ tears like he hasn't cried, he says, since he was a baby.
The Rangers traveled to Toronto on Monday, the site of the surreal ending to their surprising 2015 season. That means a return to the 54-minute seventh inning that might be the strangest in postseason history. It included the go-ahead run scoring when a routine throw from Toronto catcher Russell Martin back to the mound hit off the bat of Shin-Soo Choo and bounced into the infield. It included a 13-minute delay while umpires sorted through the rules and while fans were finally convinced to stop throwing trash on the field.
And then came the bottom half of the inning.
Andrus was at the core of the Rangers' collapse. His two errors led to Toronto loading the bases and eventually scoring four runs, the last three on Bautista's homer. The homer and the ensuing bat flip from Bautista created the iconic moment of the series and maybe the postseason.
There is another vivid image. It is Andrus. He is sitting on the bench alone at game's end. He is trying to wish himself somewhere else. Anywhere else.
"I wanted to disappear," he said, then gives a half-hearted nervous laugh. "Maybe back in my room in my old apartment in Venezuela. You feel like you just want to hide for a year. You feel bad for your teammates, for the organization, for the city. It's a really uncomfortable place. You are ashamed."
___
An innocent start
It starts so innocently, so routinely, so _ dare we say it _ easily. Maybe easily.
Cole Hamels gets ahead of Martin, the inning's first batter. At 1-2, Hamels comes inside with a 94 mph two-seamer. It bores in on Martin's hands. He has no choice but to protect the plate. The bat breaks upon contact.
Maybe the ball glances off the back of the pitcher's mound. Maybe. But it certainly doesn't change its path. Maybe the hop is a little faster and lower off the artificial turf. Whatever it is, it isn't anything extraordinary. Andrus takes four steps to his left, is there in plenty of time, but the ball hits the heel of his wrist and ends up at his feet.
He starts down at it, then shakes his head once, as if waking himself out of a day dream.
"I was just amazed and surprised," he says now. "It was so easy. I've made that play a thousand times. For me to just kind of take my eye away, not even for a second....
"It's part of the game," he continues after a few seconds. "It's something I have to live with."
It only gets worse.
Next batter: Kevin Pillar. Another weak grounder off the end of the bat at two strikes. A double play ball. First baseman Mitch Moreland fumbles the grip, though, and his throw to second bounces. Andrus can't hold on. Two ground balls and all Hamels has on his hands is a jam.
The Blue Jays pull back pinch hitter Justin Smoak and decide to leave No. 9 hitter Ryan Goins in the game. He is going to bunt. The Rangers are ready. Adrian Beltre crashes from third and Andrus breaks hard toward the bag. Beltre, bad back and all, is agile, grabs the ball, spins and fires a strike to the base to get the lead runner. Wheel play. Perfectly executed.
Andrus drops the ball.
"We had made that play six or seven times during the season," Andrus says. "I can see it right now. He gave me a good throw. It was in the middle of my body. It was right where you either go with the glove up or kind of cup it and catch it underhanded. I was in between. I started to move my glove a little [to cup it]. As soon as I did that, it hits me right on the wrist."
Beltre winces, spins back toward home, staggers two steps forward and clasps his hands behind his head in full surrender cobra pose.
"Elvis and I timed it perfectly," Beltre says after first pleading he's 37 now and can't even remember last week. "We read it. I just couldn't believe he dropped it knowing how sure-handed he was. The whole thing was weird. I saw it happen, but still couldn't believe it. It's just some weird stuff that happens in baseball."
The bases are loaded. There is nobody out. The Rangers have given away three consecutive outs.
"Unimaginable," Rangers voice Eric Nadel says on the radio.
And, yet, the unimaginable is not over. The Rangers allow the game-tying run on a floater over the glove of backpedaling Rougned Odor, but get two outs in the process and are on the verge of leaving the disastrous inning with a 3-3 tie.
The inning comes down to this: Sam Dyson, the Rangers' best reliever, against Jose Bautista, the Blue Jays' biggest power threat.
In the Rangers dugout, a thought briefly flashes through manager Jeff Banister's head: Should we walk Bautista with a base open? He weighs the options, concludes that putting an extra runner on is too risky and that Bautista is more vulnerable to Dyson's hard sinker than upper-cutting Edwin Encarnacion.
Dyson throws the first sinker down and in at 98, exactly the spot the Rangers want. Bautista is late on it and fouls it off. The next one is 98 and away; Bautista won't chase. Bautista steps out, sucks in a deep breath, snorts it out and gets set again.
It comes in at 97 mph. It leaves at 113.
The ball is deep into the left-field seats. The Blue Jays are leading. Bautista is still at home plate. He glares at Dyson, then turns to the Rangers dugout and slings the bat in that direction.
"It sounded like an explosion, like a gunshot," says catcher Chris Gimenez, who was behind the plate. "I still see it. I'll never forget it. I'll never forget where I set up, how the ball released out of [Dyson's] hand, how it is tracking right into his barrel.
"It's so loud and my jersey is literally vibrating," he adds. "He's standing there. My brain is telling me I've got to say something, I've got to do something, but I'm just frozen. You can't believe everything that just transpired and that's went down."
And it gets stranger, still.
The crowd is throwing things again, though this time in celebration rather than frustration. Encarnacion steps away from the batter's box, raises his hands asking for a cessation. Dyson comes in from the mound. He hadn't seen the bat toss in real time _ he knew the ball was gone and already turned his back_but did see it in replay on the scoreboard.
"Tell him not to do that ever again," he tells Encarnacion of Bautista.
The Blue Jays rush the field. The Rangers join them.
"It's not the first time he's done that," Dyson says now. "Obviously, I didn't like it. Everybody stares people down. I stare people down. But I'm not going to throw my glove up in the air; why is he going to throw his bat in the air?"
The inning ends officially when Troy Tulowitzki pops out to Gimenez in foul territory. But the drama doesn't. Dyson taps Tulowitzki on the butt with his bare hand on the way back to the dugout. Tulowitzki goes ballistic.
The benches empty again.
___
A defining moment?
It ends when Will Venable chases a slider from Roberto Osuna.
The Blue Jays swarm the field. As is typical, the vanquished Rangers watch for a few moments, then one by one make the short walk to the cramped visitors’ clubhouse.
Andrus spends a moment longer in the dugout. He holds a baseball in his right hand, staring at it. Why did it betray him?
He goes to his locker. He buries himself in it. Banister is about to get the team together to say a few words. But first Andrus. The manager squats to where Andrus is seated and puts his arm around him.
"This will not define who you are as a player or who we were as a team," Banister says. "We will rebuild this together. I'm with you, no matter what."
The tears are beginning to sting the back of Andrus eyes. Not here. Not in front of teammates.
Banister talks to the team. The comments are short. The wait for Andrus is an eternity. When Banister is done, Andrus goes to a room alone in the back of the clubhouse.
He doesn't have to hold back any longer. The tears flow.
"I'm a proud person," he says. "I didn't want anybody to see me like that."
"It was just a feeling of letting the whole year go," Andrus adds. "It was not the error. It wasn't the first. It won't be the last. It was how hard it was for us to get to that moment. Then the mistakes. Everything just disappeared. That's the part that was so tough for me."
Here, Tony Beasley finds him. The third base coach had bluntly told Andrus at mid-season he wasn't a very good shortstop and had challenged him to improve. Andrus responded to the challenge and the two developed a close bond.
"I couldn't possibly put myself in his place," Beasley says now. "But I felt his pain. It was real."
"This, right now, feels like the worst moment of your life," he tells Andrus. "But this is going to be the best thing that happens. You will never allow it to happen again. It will make you better."
He returns to Toronto with one error through his first 20 games.
Beasley was right: Andrus returns to Toronto a better player.
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