CHAOS VANISHED ALMOST in an instant Sunday afternoon, as if Thanos snapped his fingers and restored order to the baseball world. For much of the past week, as the American League contenders bunched together closer and closer at the top of the wild-card standings, we had been dreaming of a madcap, pandemonium-filled day. And for a few hours, we got it. But suddenly, almost before we had time to mourn its loss, the game's superpowers were back where they seemingly always are, the upstarts were readying themselves to nurse a winter's worth of wounds and our dreams of days filled with win-or-go-home October games yielded to a far less inspiring reality.
MLB playoffs 2021: Game 162 didn't bring us chaos, but it brought us great baseball
