Sum of the Parts
As the haters love to point out, there’s a lot of downtime at a baseball game. Unlike other sports where the players are constantly in motion (or at least the replays are), baseball is a game of discrete moments. I think this makes appreciating baseball different. You don’t have to gush over a player’s talent, or a whole game, or a drive down the field. You can appreciate tiny events bound by common beginnings and endings – pitches, catches, slides, and swings. You can appreciate them in the context of an entire season, a career, or an inning or you can admire them alone, as isolated routines. Here are some of my favorite baseball moments (that I witnessed in person).
Pokey Reese hits an inside the park homerun: My sister and I were talking about how unlikely it was that Pokey would homer and send a ball anywhere near us in the bleachers. We were right, but wrong. He dropped one into the triangle and sped around the bases.
Lance Blankenship hits a double: My first game ever. I remember sitting in the seat at the back of my Dad’s bike heading over the bridge to the game. I got picked up early from preschool. The Sox were playing the A’s and all I remember is that Lance Blankenship hit a double.
Heathcliff Slocumb strikes out Frank Thomas: The White Sox were playing the Red Sox. Frank Thomas had hit three homeruns to the exact same spot over the Green Monster in left. I couldn’t decide if I wanted him to hit a fourth so that I could say I saw that, or if I was holding out hope for a Boston win. Slocumb, known more for giving up homeruns than striking out homerun hitters, came in the 8th and shut him down.
Darryl Strawberry hits the foul pole: 1999 ALCS. Not a happy series. We were sitting in the roof deck, closer to the building across the street than the field. Every time Darryl Strawberry had come up, Boston fans had jeered “Just Say No!” until the stadium vibrated. This time he connected and the ball sailed high towards right. Clang. Strawberry rounded the bases as the Pesky Pole, waved back and forth.
Manny Ramirez hits a homerun in his first at-bat as a Red Sox at Fenway: 8th grade. The home opener. My friend and I convinced our parents to let us leave school early and we walked to Fenway in a cold drizzle. We bought loge box seats from a scalper. It was probably the most money I had ever spent on anything – $45! As we handed over the cash we could hear the crowd roar, Ramirez hit one into the net above the Green Monster.
Sam Cohen appreciates the proper way to keep score.