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“An Allegro in Nine Innings: Rangers Conduct a Victory Symphony in Montreal”
By Leonard Bernstein (if he traded the baton for the box score)
In the grand concert hall of sport, where the stakes are written not in sharps or flats but in runs and innings, Wednesday night’s Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals was a performance of dynamic contrast, harmonic tension, and one mighty crescendo. And at the center of it all — as if channeling Mahler’s fifth through a Louisville Slugger — was Eli Grubin.
Now there’s your soloist.
At 36 years old — an age by which most musical prodigies have either aged out or turned to teaching — Grubin didn’t just rise to the occasion. He exploded onto the stage. Two home runs, one in the second, another in the eighth — the latter a dramatic, two-out, two-run opus off D. Hernandez that swelled through the Bell Centre rafters like a brass fanfare in full fortissimo.
The Rangers, like a well-rehearsed orchestra under the crisp baton of Manuel Santiago, were measured in their early movements. A lone run in the second here, silence through the middle movements, and then, in the eighth and ninth, the timpani rolled. A double by Mark Grubin, a walk, and then — a crescendo: a walk from Mark to drive in a run, and Grubin’s second home run of the night, a blast as exact and artful as a Bartók motif.
This wasn’t just a win. It was an architectural performance. The Rangers understood the symphonic structure of a nine-inning narrative — they allowed the dissonance of Montreal’s early soloists (Peterman and Vizcarra each gave a brief but poignant aria with solo homers off H. Macias) — and then retook the motif. With conviction. With harmony. With grace.
Conductors and Cadences
H. Macias, after some early nerves (or perhaps just warming up the reed section), settled in to deliver seven innings of two-hit ball, striking out seven. Not perfection — but neither was Beethoven’s Fifth without friction. What mattered was the transformation: from tentative to triumphant.
T. Vera came in for the final movement — two innings of closing chords, no runs, and a save that was more ballet than brute force.
On the Montreal podium, J. Salgado gave a noble performance — seven innings, only one earned run — but the bullpen faltered. The modulation got lost in the eighth. The baton slipped. And the Rangers took the downbeat and ran with it.
Themes and Variations
K. Kramer contributed a lyrical two-run double — a piccolo part that danced delicately through the eighth-inning swell.
Mark Grubin, that old virtuoso of the gap double, laid down a note-perfect piece of patient, veteran hitting with a ninth-inning RBI walk.
Even H. Kim, normally buried in the brass section, emerged with a two-hit night and a fifth-inning double, setting up tension like a well-placed fermata.
The Coda
This wasn’t just Game 2. This was the second movement in a larger work — a best-of-seven suite where rhythm and pacing matter more than pyrotechnics. And now, the series shifts to Madison Square Garden, that cathedral of spectacle, where the Rangers will return home with a 2-0 lead and a score to settle.
One gets the sense that Eli Grubin has more notes to play. And if Game 2 was his Adagio for Solo Bat and Silence, then Game 3 promises a full orchestral reprise.
Play on, Maestro. Play on.
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Leonard Bernstein
(ghostwritten from the press box, where every double is a downbeat, and every home run, a hallelujah)
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