The art of fiction? It is dead, felled in 1951 by one swing of Bobby Thomson's bat.
In 2011, the art of tweeting joins fiction in the grave.
After Thomson's walk-off, pennant-clinching home run at the expense of his team's fiercest foe, Red Smith wrote that "only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again."
Utterly impossible? Check. Inexpressibly fantastic? You bet.
Sixty seasons on from Thomson's historic ball to the left-field corner of the Polo Grounds, another player has hit a walk-off home run to the left-field corner in his team's last regular-season game to send his team to the postseason. This has happened two times: Thomson and Evan Longoria. But Longoria's blast was just part of the kaleidoscopic pandemonium unfolding last night in four ballparks last night.
Longoria and the Tampa Bay Rays staged a stunning comeback against the New York Yankees while the Baltimore Orioles shocked the Boston Red Sox. In the National League, the Phillies and Braves played into the 13th inning while the Cardinals waited in Houston to see if their late-season surge would take them all the way to the postseason. Fans thrilled at the unexpected ups and downs of the night, and all the while we were sharing our awe, horror and one-liners via Twitter. The entire sporting public felt as intimate as the bleachers at your local stadium. Staccato quips and reactions came rapid fire. Retweets and replies abounded. It felt unlike any night of sporting action since this social media platform has been widely adopted.
And, that is why it is so sad to report that the art of tweeting is dead. It's been strangled by Robert Andino and thrown into a shallow grave dug by Dan Johnson and Evan Longoria.
Scroll through these tweets -- and some of the highlights that inspired them -- to experience all of the enervating excitement of quite possibly the greatest night in baseball history.
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