11-10

So last night was both Fleece Blanket Night and Chinese American Community Night at Dodger Stadium. There were some talented martial artists, reportedly monks straight from China, performing on top of the big LA logo. Singers sang and award ceremonies were held.

There was also a baseball game played. You might have heard about it.

As I’m writing this, I keep having to pause as I flashback to last night. My eyes go all blurry, and I lose my grip on time and space.

Suddenly, there we are again. Inner Reserve, Section 20, Row U, Seats 1-4. Jumping up and down, hollering, high-fiving everyone around us. Music blaring, crowd roaring louder and louder, white uniforms clustered around homeplate waiting for…

But let’s step back for a moment and set the stage.

Hopes

We went into the 8th tied at 4-4. The Padres scored a couple of runs, countered by one of our own in the bottom of the inning. So it’s 6-5 going into the top of the 9th, and after a series of comebacks since the 1st, we still felt hope despite the specter of Trevor Hoffman potentially showing up to squash the Dodgers yet again in the bottom of the 9th.

But our hopes were dashed before the Padres left the batter’s box, putting up 3 runs against the normally stellar Takashi Saito. Surely this was the end.

Denyse and Hans wanted to leave, saying it was over, and I nodded. “But,” I said, “how often do we get down here?” They decided to go ahead to the car while I remained, worrying over my scoresheet. It was 9-5. No chance. Alex and his friends stayed behind, a little further down the row. The diehards.

With the four-run cushion, the Padres trotted out reliever Jon Adkins to administer the coup de grace. I readied my pencil over Jeff Kent’s box on the sheet.

Keeping Score

Moments later, the ball flew out over the center field wall. We cheered, though with a tinge of the bittersweet. Even Kent knew it probably wouldn’t matter much except the stat sheet—his face was more or less neutral despite the homerun music playing. I drew a line around the bases and colored in a dot to represent the run. 9-6.

I wondered if Denyse and Hans would hear the roar and decide to come back.

Then J.D. Drew hit one out. Far.

To tell you the truth, I can’t for the life of me remember when they came back, whether just after Jeff Kent’s or J.D.’s homer. But at some point, the family returned. I repeated the scoring in the box for J.D. Drew’s at-bat as the Padres coach came out to pull Adkins. Two diamonds, two dots. 9-7.

Hoffman

Everyone was talking about Trevor Hoffman coming out even before he emerged from the visitor’s bullpen. Sure, there was hope now after we made up two runs, but after his long history of killing Dodger hopes, there’s was no way you wanted to raise expectations too far.

Hoffman warmed up briefly. Russell Martin approached the plate, and my pencil point was probably somewhere near the paper as we watched. Russ hadn’t had that great of a night till then—0 for 4, leaving four on base.

The pitcher reared back and lunged forward. The ball traveled toward the plate. The batter tensed. And moved….

Fly balls

If you’ve watched the game of baseball for a reasonable amount of time, you often have a sense of what’s about to happen when a batter makes contact. Often the sound will give it away, but on fly balls the arc as it tears into the sky will be an even better tell-tale. Sometimes the crowd will freak out for a moment about a ball that you just know is going to drop harmlessly into an outfielder’s mitt.

This also means you don’t want to get excited the first instant a ball flies out of the infield.

Russell Martin hit the ball out of the infield, over left field, and into the stands.

On Trevor Hoffman’s first pitch.

Somehow I managed to get pencil on paper while hopping up and down and yelling. Another diamond. Another dot. 9-8.

Then newcomer Marlon Anderson came up to the plate.

You don’t want to believe, you know?

Ah, but sometimes dreams come true.

One more pitch from the Dodger-killer.

And the ball flew.

Blurs

For the rest of that inning, I had to keep glancing down at my scoresheet to confirm the truth, so surreal was it. Four diamonds. Four dots. In a row.

The scoreboard told it: 9-9. We had tied the Padres in a most amazing fashion.

Hans said he saw Vin Scully in the press box “freaking out.” I can only imagine.

The rest of the 9th and the top of the 10th are blurs to me, so amazing was what happened next. Aaron Sele gave up a run, making it 10-9, but after what had transpired, even that couldn’t squelch the truth.

Taking the lead

After the game, I told Hans that we had taken the lead back from the Padres that night, both in the game and the division. We took it, as Kenny took pitches to get a lead-off walk. We took it, as Nomar took pitches to a 3-1 count.

We took it, as he took the ball out of sight.

Denyse and Hans both called it. “All he needs to do is hit a homer, and we’ll win!” And the moment was so powerful, it was beyond the possibility of any jinx.

I didn’t believe it when it flew, couldn’t believe it. Standing still, I just had to make sure, even as the crowd was melting into ecstatic oblivion around me, that the ball was truly heading out. From our perspective high along the first base side, it was a little tough to tell how far the ball was really going.

Nomar knew. As soon as he hit it.

Gone.

Ovation

As Nomar arrived at the plate, surrounded by his celebrating teammates, I was wiping away tears.

When he was being hailed by the crowd during an interview that had to stop because of the noise, I glanced over to the press box.

Vin was giving a standing ovation.

Exclamation points

I remember screaming “NOMAR!” over and over. Some unintelligible hooting. Occasionally, I threw a “DODGERS!” in. I don’t remember much else except that the walk back to the car was more of a floating hover as fans yelled and honked at each other.

In the car, we would hear Nomar interviewed, spending more time talking about his teammates than himself, more time talking about the 9th inning heroics than his 10th inning miracle.

We heard and loved Charley Steiner’s unabashedly celebratory 9th inning and 10th inning calls replayed on KFWB. We couldn’t wait to get home to hear Vin.

When you’re keeping score, sometimes you’ll mark a particularly spectacular play with an exclamation point.

Last night, there sure were exclamation points.

Equilibrium

The flashbacks occasionally allow me to return to the present, to real life where doctor’s appointments and errands and work still need to happen. There are many things to do, as always.

And there’s Grady Little’s philosophy I wrote about recently (“Equilibrium”) of never getting too high or too low. The Boys in Blue have to keep their feet underneath them tonight as the real push toward the playoffs begins against the spoiler Pirates.

Then the flashbacks start again.

Meaning

As kids and women and men tore up their vocal cords, as the music played, we collectively tried to comprehend what had just happened.

I’m not going to try to put a bow on top of this present, nor try to find any deeper meaning in last night’s game. It contains its own meaning inherent without any interpretation.

You can read the newspaper accounts and blog posts across the Web for how this could affect what remains of the season for both the Dodgers and the Padres, not to mention the playoff hopes of both teams.

During the celebration for Marlon’s homerun, the fourth in a row, a guy from across the aisle yelled to me over the din, “You’re seeing history right here!”

“I know!” I yelled back at him.

Home

When the family got home, greeted the poodle who was beside himself happy we were finally back, and watched through the replay, exhausted and spent and fading in and out of consciousness—appropriately for a dream-like night—we listened for what Vin would say as the big moment arrived at the end of the game. As usual, he let the pictures and sounds speak for themselves for long stretches.

One of the last things he said was “Unbelievable.”

Unbelievable.

Absolutely unbelievable.

So what’s the scorekeeping symbol for a miracle?