Each game this season is worth 2.7 games in a normal season. The first time I heard that fact, I assumed people were just rounding it to 2.7, and the real number was something like 2.7182818284. There would have been something extremely satisfying about having the value of each baseball game be worth e, but then I did the math: 162 ÷ 60 actually equals exactly 2.7, no rounding needed.

I now know the number 2.7 in my head as a fact, but I still haven’t quite accurately calibrated my emotions to this idea. Sometimes this season, I’ve watched games with the normal detached indifference of a regular season game being just one in 162, and sometimes I’ve watched like each game is worth 27 games, not 2.7, and a single loss would mean the season is basically over.

But then again, the pandemic could bring an end to the season at any moment. Today’s game was the eighth game of the season, and if the season did end today, each of those games would have been worth 162 ÷ 8 = 20.25 games.

So perhaps my emotions haven’t been wrong after all. Perhaps my intensity will just ratchet down as the season goes on, along with the certainty of how valuable any particular game can be. Today’s game was 20.25 as intense as a normal game, the next one will be 162 ÷ 9 = 18x, the following one 162 ÷ 10 = 16.2x, and so forth.

But then again, baseball is meaningless right now if you think logically. Place baseball for even a second in its proper perspective in the world, and your intensity ought to rachet back down to zero.

And it does, for me, in those moments of clarity and perspective that I have. But the honest truth is, most of the time, when I think about the meaninglessness of this baseball season, it’s not because I’m trying to be rational. Really, what I’m doing is thinking about it that way because my team is losing, and I’m looking for an emotional escape from the pain of that failure.

I’m an emotional yo-yo, is what I’m saying. And also an intellectual fraud.

Be that as it may: yesterday, in a moment of compartmentalization over perspective, I felt very annoyed at how crappy the A’s have played so far this season, and how they were playing in this game. The A’s were listless. The A’s should be better than this. From the first inning through the ninth, I felt certain the A’s were about to lose and thereby fall another 20.25 games behind the first place Astros. I was full of despair.

But somehow, the A’s managed to squeeze out a 3-2 victory in 10 innings over the Seattle Mariners. Instead of going 0-for-infinity with runners in scoring position, the A’s went 2-for-infinity instead. The Mariners left a left-hander in to face the extreme platoon-splitty Chad Pinder for some reason, who homered with Mark Canha aboard to tie the game at 2-2 in the 7th. Then in the 10th, Robbie Grossman, who might have pinch-hit for Pinder had the Mariners brought a righty in to face him in the 7th, pinch hit in the 10th instead, and doubled home the winning run. Along with some pretty good pitching, and the Mariners going 0-for-infinity themselves with runners in scoring position late in the game, that was enough, barely, for the A’s to win.

As the Astros also played extra innings but lost, the late evening felt like it had suddenly turned into a huge 40.5-game shift in the standings. It felt like the A’s went over the span of a couple of innings from being virtually eliminated from the playoffs to being tied for first place instead.

What a moment of sheer, fraudulent joy that was!