Turn of Events

For a class I was asked to write about why I love sports, and to include a moment that made me realize it. Seems like an easy assignment right?

One panic attack later I found out that I was nervous with overbearing expectation to write why I love what I love. Favorite sports moment was like asking what my favorite breath of air was. Would I pick 2004 Red Sox? Any of the dazzling Alabama championships? The millions of amazing highlights I've seen along the way?

It even surprised me what I finally chose to write about. Because if this was like choosing between what breath of air was my favorite, I chose the moment that was the equivalent of being sucker punched to the chest and had no air left.

Because after that, my next deep breath seemed pretty sweet.

I have one dirty baseball that sits quietly on my desk. When I touch it, I do so carefully- in order not to rub too much of the game off its slightly browned and tarnished skin. It’s the only ball I’ve had the fortune of catching at a major league baseball game.

The odds of catching one are already rare. This one is not from a batting practice; it is not from a player who tossed it up mercifully to the closest begging fan. No, this ball saw the game. And it saw one of the most interesting games in baseball history, one of several games that happened to all fall on one moonlit night. This ball belongs to September 28^th, 2011. Game 162, where everything fell apart.

That night I was lucky enough to get tickets to Phillies v. Braves, and they were good seats too. Like most annoying fans of my first true love, I wore my Red Sox jersey into Turner Field. Its important to note that I am a Red Sox fan, complete with a side of my family who drops their ah’s and comes from the wrong side of Worcestah tracks. But living in Alabama for school I learned bits and pieces of Braves culture, and it would be fate that I had this experience at Turner Field, watching the Braves lose in person, and my Sox lose on the Around the League scoreboard that showed victory and defeat by simply runs, outs and innings.

That night was a must win ball game for the Atlanta Braves. It was also a must win game for my Red Sox facing the Orioles in Baltimore.

Also in the American League East, the Yankees were facing the Tampa Bay Rays, who had become the biggest thorn in the Red Sox side this side of 2004. No matter the outcome, the Yankees had already clinched. With a win, and a Red Sox loss, the Rays could go to the playoffs, but also even up a score to two teams at once by pulling off what is rarely said in baseball- “the upset”.

The beginning was slow and so much of this night started to indicate it would be a night like the rest.

By the bottom of the third, the Braves were winning 3 -1. Not a comfortable lead, but the energy was chugging through all of Turner field. In Florida, those awful Yankees were at it again, by the top of the fifth they had gotten off six runs.  The game in Baltimore seemed to fly by. In the eighth, the Sox were winning, but barely, 3-2.

Little did I know baseball had another plan.

The crack of a bat meeting ball broke my focus on the Red Sox score. It was a forgettable fifth inning Philly foul ball into the section above me. The ball claimed no owner there and in a bounce of fate it fell to my feet. I clutched it in awe, nothing like this had happened to me before. But nothing about this night had really happened before.

In the bottom of the sixth the Indian chant roared to the back drop of the night and fans were on their feet because they sensed another Braves run. But on a slide to home, Uggla was tagged out, retiring the side and the air was sucked out of Turner Field. To make matters worse, in the top of the ninth Chase Utley gave a sacrifice fly that tied the game.

Meanwhile, in the bottom of the eighth in Tampa, a Yankee pitching breakdown lead to a base jam, followed by a hit batter that turned into a 7-2 game. Nothing to be alarmed about, especially when you’re reading simple numbers light up on a scoreboard thousands of miles away. But then it was 3-7, then all the sudden 6-7. Oh my gosh, I thought, “they’re pulling a Red Sox.”

For some reason the Red Sox score wasn’t changing and they were perpetually stuck in the eighth inning. My phone had died, so I was dependent on that unchanging score board till I too was stuck in the eighth inning of a one-point lead. Ie: baseball purgatory.

In Atlanta another purgatory was unfolding and we lived out by out, as extra innings became inevitable. But when the others were stuck in stalemates, Tampa Bay bats came alive and in the bottom of the ninth a home run teased the foul pole to stay fair and tie the game.

Soon, I overheard a rain delay in Baltimore was the reason I didn’t see a change. I learned that before the tarps went out, Dustin Pedrioa rallied the troops in an effort to create distance between the pugnacious Orioles. Yet, with the rain, another x factor came to support a turn of events.

Watching the Braves, we didn’t know when it would end, until, suddenly in the 13^th, a Braves’ error lead to a 4-3 final, ending Atlanta’s season. 

When the rain stopped, the game in Maryland resumed and in the bottom of the ninth it was tied and soon it was decided by a clear winner. Before that F illuminated next to the Boston/Baltimore score, I knew. When it did show up I debated if it should represent final or fail, and I wrestled with which one was worse. Sure enough, the sox lose by a familiar score, 4-3.

But Red Sox nation wasn’t out of it yet. We frustratingly had to rely on the Yankees to win in order to stay alive past this up-to-the-wire Judgment Day.  They were torturously tied 7-7 in the bottom of the 12^th when a Tampa batter hit a hard ball to left field. I had stayed glued to that scoreboard in Atlanta but once I saw 8 and an F, the coffin was officially nailed shut. The season was dead after being dragged out to its last possible breath. 

I started writing this about the 2004 Red Sox beating the Yankees and going on to win the World Series. That was what made me fall in love with baseball, and with it, sports. But that’s an overused fairy tale.

 

So I started writing about this day, this night as a whole. To me this night was about loss and demise- until I saw Rays fans “we believe” signs later and I realized that for others, it was a night where even more people fell in love with this game that is so much more than a game.

When we look at wins and losses in sports, we attribute them to several tangible factors of production. In essence what I witnessed were several teams that didn’t produce as many runs as their opponent and in the process ran out of time and chances.

Scoreboards will tell you that. They break down the moments of a game into numbers and quantities. But the game will tell you that even when you want to define it by what you see, it is impossible because of all the things you don’t see.

In the end, the rain does come, the comeback does stun even the most talented, and in the end the breakdown was so perfect, the goal was slipping away and in a matter of hours on that one night, everything we thought we knew slipped away and I couldn’t help but smile. Smile for the Orioles, for the Rays, and for those damn Yankees.

“As you know baseball is a very difficult game,” Theo Epstein once said. “As soon as you’re convinced you’ve got the right answer, that’s when it humbles you and you realize you didn’t know as much about the game as you thought.”

Baseball is my favorite metaphor to life. One this night, we had been humbled because the game was bigger than us. And on this night I remembered why I fell in love in the first place; because the diamond is a place of possibility even if it’s not always in your favor… and its up to you to have faith in that.

Epstein went on to say, “I think you’re either born with a love of baseball or you’re not.”

For those who were born to love it, we are sometimes granted the gift of remembering why we do.

And so, my ball sits. Imperfections where it slammed into, first, the top deck, then bounced to me. From the pitchers hand to the baseball lover’s desk, it was the sport’s will. And it sits as a reminder.