The narrative that was building in the bottom of the seventh inning was hard to avoid. Soon-to-retire Chipper Jones, whose inexplicable error gave the St. Louis Cardinals a lead over the Atlanta Braves they'd yet to relinquish, stepped up to the plate in the Wild Card play-in game for what could theoretically be the last out of his career with runners on first and second and the score 6-3. A home run off erratic Cardinals lefty specialist Marc Rzepczynski would tie the game.
Turner Field was about to erupt, and St. Louis had its collective heart in its collective throat. And on Rzepczynski's first pitch, a 93 mile-an-hour sinker, the Braves' all-time-great hit an unassuming ground ball directly to Daniel Descalso at second base.
For every postseason moment that we'll remember as long as we remember baseball—David Freese's heroics all the way down—there are 10 or 20 or 100 instances that have all the ingredients necessary for those moments, but don't quite come together. Chipper Jones and the Braves are still dangerous three runs down, but in the seventh inning, at least, the heroics that threatened the Cardinals' three-run lead never quite materialized.