You can run the script through the shredder now, as Robert Lara flings his helmet toward New Haven. It’s a “B” movie trying to shake hands with “C.” It’s the love child of Oh, Come On and Don’t Be Ridiculous, as radioactive in Hollywood as Dick Cheney.

Up there on the scoreboard as I write this, half an hour after Lara went deep to the blankets on the lawn and was swallowed up by a sea of red at home plate, the big video board here in Parkview Field announces that tomorrow’s game will be the TinCaps vs. Burlington. Underneath it reads “Midwest League Finals.”

Midwest League Finals.

Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus. He summers at Robert Lara’s house.

He summers at the home of a backup catcher who was – wait for it – oh-for-15 in the playoffs when he came to bat in the bottom of the 10th Monday night. In his previous three at-bats, he had lined out to second base, grounded to short and struck out. So of course he worked the count full against Great Lakes pitcher Cole St. Clair.

And of course he stayed alive by fouling off one pitch and then another and then another. And after he did all that, of course he hit a leadoff, game-ending home run to win 4-3 and take the series for a team that once more felt a familiar cold presence between their shoulder blades.

Backs to the wall, or so the cliché has it. Something else entirely, their history suggests.

Backs to the trampoline, perhaps? Backs to the Serta Perfect Sleeper?

Something about this team, surely, disdains prosperity, and finds comfort and motivation in desperation. It lost four leads in Game 1 and went down 11-10 in 11 innings. Then it came home to even the series Sunday with a 9-4 win. Then, Monday night, it trailed 2-1 with nine outs to go and 3-2 with two outs and two strikes against it in the bottom of the eighth – and rallied both times to tie. Despite managing only one hit in six innings against Loons starter Aaron Miller. Despite managing only four hits all night long.

“It’s really unbelievable, because we’re really never out of a game,” said designated hitter Vince Belnome, as a very loud celebration filtered into the hallway from the clubhouse. “Ever. Like, I mean, we were down a couple times tonight and came back and scored. Just the energy in the dugout, there’s no negativity at all.”

And Lord knows there could have been, as Miller mowed them down. But they scraped out a run on the second on a single and a sacrifice fly.

And they scraped out the 2-all run in the seventh when Justin Baum – who batted .200 with only 22 RBI in the regular season, and now has seven in three playoff games – tapped a gimme double play ball back to the mound, and somehow Geison Aguasviva threw wildly over second base into the outfield.

Error, Great Lakes. Run, Fort Wayne.

In the eighth, Great Lakes was one strike away from getting out of the inning when St. Clair plunked Jaff Decker. Belnome then smoked one over the center-fielder’s head to chase Decker home, and it was 3-all.

Backs to the wall. Backs to the trampoline. Choose your metaphor.

“Sometimes it’s gonna happen, we’re gonna give up the lead,” Belnome said. “That’s where we’ve just got to … scratch runs across every chance we have.”

Welcome to one more chance.