I Was There: The Aaron Boone Game

This is Part VI of a series (and a contest) that was introduced here.

2003 ALCS Game #7, Boston Red Sox @ New York Yankees, Yankee Stadium, 10/16/2003: The Aaron Boone Game

It looked like we were going to see the World Series that broke a famous curse. Either the Cubs were going to win their first championship since 1908, or the Red Sox were going to get Yankee Stadium crowds to stop chanting "1918," the year of their last taste of the title. But Babe Ruth and a billy goat proved too strong to submit to the will of the majority of baseball fandom in 2003. (Who knew that the goat would prove to be stronger than the Bambino? Answer: Cubs fans.)

Steve Bartman, Mark Prior, and one of the Alex Gonzalezes had already done their thing, and the Marlins put the nail in the Cubs coffin the night before. It was time for another game seven, and another opportunity for a curse to reassert its power. Fortunately for me, although it may not have been with the Cubs or the Red Sox, luck was squarely on my side.

It all started on a dreary late-September day at Yankee Stadium. I'm not sure what day it was. The game I'd gone to was meaningless. The Yanks had already clinched the division title. But they were playing and I had the day off, so I went. I don't remember if there was a rain delay, or if I was just kinda bored, but I found myself wandering around the stadium. I'm not sure why I hadn't even considered trying to get tickets for the post season. I guess I figured they'd all be sold out in a matter of minutes and it wasn't worth the hassle. But when I came upon an advance ticket sales window with nobody in line, I figured, what the heck, it can't hurt to ask.

As I'd expected, there were no longer tickets available for the Division Series. World Series tickets weren't on sale yet. Nothing was available for games one or two of a potential Championship Series either. But there were a few left for a game six or seven. So I picked up two tickets for a potential game seven, high above third base in the upper deck, and figured that there wasn't much chance that I'd get the opportunity to use them.

But the Yanks beat the Twins in the Division Series and lined up to face Boston in the ALCS. With the Bombers leading the series, three games to two, I was conflicted about game six. By this time I was an unlikely Yankee fan. I didn't want to see them lose to the friggin' Red Sox. But I sure wanted to go to a game seven. In the end, I got what I wished for.

Cathy, my wife-to-be, was also a Yankee fan. In fact, she was a new baseball fan. She'd only arrived in the U.S. from the Philippines about a year before, with no interest in the game whatsoever. But by the time I'd secured these tickets she was already sporting her Hideki Matsui jersey and ready to cheer her team to victory that night.

I won't rehash the game in detail, because you almost certainly know all about it. Grady Little decides to stick with a tiring Pedro Martinez, and the Yanks rally. Cathy gets to see her favorite player slide across the plate with the tying run in the eighth inning and leap into the air in celebration. Mariano Rivera tosses three scoreless innings...

And by this time, I have to report, my Cathy, the new baseball fan, has run out of steam. It's cold. She's tired. It's been exciting, but she wants to go home. I have to inform her, politely but firmly, that there's not a chance in hell that we're leaving game seven of the Championship Series before it's over, even if it goes 247 innings and lasts another week and a half.

Fortunately, on the first pitch of the eleventh inning, Aaron Boone sends us all home happy.

We've got a real barn-burner in the Surreal Seven contest. Here's the leaderboard as it stands at the end of game six:

SURREAL SEVEN STANDINGS	Correct Guesses	Difficulty Points
Al Kawamoto	2	5
Bo @ Baseball Cards Come to Life!	2	3
Nick @ Dime Boxes	0	0
Marcus @ All the Way to the Backstop	0	0

With one game left, Bo has pulled even with Al, though Al currently holds the tie-breaker on difficulty points. Can Nick or Marcus make a miraculous comeback? (Well, no, actually. That would be impossible.) Can Bo overtake Al at the last moment? Or does Al Kawamoto, mysterious hockey fan, hold on to his lead to take the (long-awaited) prize? Stay tuned.

I Was There: 2001 World Series, Game Five, Déjà Vu All Over Again!

This is Part V of a series (and a contest) that was introduced here.

2001 World Series Game #5, Arizona Diamondbacks @ New York Yankees, Yankee Stadium, 11/1/2001: Déjà Vu All Over Again

I was watching Game 4 of the '01 World Series in the living room of my Brooklyn apartment when Joe Buck and Co. made a big deal of the clock striking midnight and the calendar turning to November. The events of 9/11 had pushed the schedule back by about a week, giving us post-Halloween baseball for the first time. The D-Backs had brought in their closer, Byung-Hyun Kim, to protect a 2-0 lead in the ninth. But with two outs and Paul O'Neill on base, Tino Martinez had hit a dramatic game-tying home run. Now Derek Jeter was being proclaimed "Mr. November," following his walk-off homer in the tenth. I was excited to know that I'd be going to Game 5 later that day, but also a little disappointed that I hadn't been at this historic contest instead. I mean, it couldn't happen again, right?

I'd been out of work for a while, as I was one of the 8.7 billion people who had been working at an internet startup around the turn of the century. Before that particular bubble burst, however, I had been working with a great group of people at the ill-fated Acurion in the SoHo area. One of those people was a programmer named Tony, who was not a baseball fan, but had somehow found himself in possession of two tickets for Game 5 at Yankee Stadium. Remembering that I was a baseball nut, he chose to invite me along, rather than take his wife with him. Great guy. If you're out there somewhere, Tony, thanks again!

We were still just about six weeks removed from 9/11, and the World Series is a seriously high-profile event. We'd gone through that anthrax thing in recent weeks, as well. So it still wasn't the most comfortable feeling being what felt like a potential target. But the added adrenaline served to up the ante for what was already about as exciting as it gets, a World Series game at Yankee Stadium. This is still the one and only World Series game that I've had the chance to attend. And it certainly didn't disappoint.

You know the story, so I won't go into a blow-by-blow account. Just finding myself sitting there with the same situation that had presented itself the night before was surreal enough. Tony and I were both sure that there wouldn't be the same kind of payoff, though. Jorge Posada had doubled to start the ninth with the Yanks down 2-0, but he was still standing at second with two outs.

We were seated in the left-centerfield bleachers. The ball sailed in our general direction off the bat of Scott Brosius. We were able to watch its flight, and at the same time see Brosius thrust his hand into the air as Byung-Hyun Kim dropped into an astonished and dejected squat on the mound. It was truly unbelieveable. That crowd went utterly and completely nuts. The world's insanity was pushed aside entirely in favor of pure joy and wonder over a kid's game. That's the kind of power baseball has.

The rest of the game played out a little differently from the previous night's. It took the Yanks until the twelfth inning to complete their second miracle comeback in a row. This time it was once and future Yankee hero Alfonso Soriano driving in the winning run. The team of destiny, America's team (at least for a few weeks), would be heading to Arizona in the driver's seat, up 3-2 in the series. There was no stopping them, right?

Well, that part of the story doesn't have a happy ending, although it did have the virtue of being as improbable as the rest of the series. The 2001 Fall Classic was the perfect cure for what ailed us.

As for the Surreal Seven contest, this game was the gimme. I had already talked about it briefly on this blog in a Feeding the Habit post that included a nice card of the embattled D-Backs closer from Korea. Strangely, one of my most reliable regular readers, Nick (get a life!), didn't come up with this one. But Al and Bo hit the mark.

SURREAL SEVEN STANDINGS	Correct Guesses	Difficulty Points
Al Kawamoto	2	5
Bo @ Baseball Cards Come to Life!	1	1
Nick @ Dime Boxes	0	0
Marcus @ All the Way to the Backstop	0	0

The mysterious Al Kawamoto, hockey fan, maintains his lead in the Surreal Seven standings with two games to go. It's an exciting race, with Bo picking up a victory to keep pace at one guess behind. Can Nick or Marcus mount a comeback and set up a tiebreaker scenario using difficulty points? Is there time for Bo to leap ahead of Al in the standings, or does Al all but insure victory by correctly guessing game number six? Stay tuned for all of the excitement of a pennant race (or at least a game of checkers).

I Was There: Pre-and-Post-9/11 in New York

This is Part IV of a series (and a contest) that was introduced here.

Boston Red Sox @ New York Yankees, Yankee Stadium, 9/10/2001, Rainout: Clemens Stuck at 19-1
Tampa Bay Devil Rays @ New York Yankees, Yankee Stadium, 9/25/2001: Baseball Back in the Bronx

It started raining Monday afternoon, September 10. But, along with 50,000 other fans, I expected, or at least hoped, that it would let up enough to get the ballgame in. It was the kind of game you don't give up on lightly. The race for the division title had long since lost any drama. But even with the Red Sox thirteen games behind the Yankees, any visit by their arch rivals to Yankee Stadium was an event, and this was to be the last such opportunity of the year. Making things even more interesting, longtime Boston ace Roger Clemens was to take the mound for the Yanks that night, trying to improve his record to an unprecedented 20-1.

But the rain didn't let up. After two soggy hours of waiting, the game was called.

Games between the Yankees and Red Sox routinely last four hours or more, so even with the long wait in vain for baseball I got home a good deal earlier than expected. I was between jobs at this point in my life, but I had a fairly consistent daily routine. And the earlier-then-expected night meant an early jump the next morning. Each day I would hop on the subway from my apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and head to downtown Manhattan to go to the gym, followed by coffee, bagel and the New York Times on a park bench facing the Hudson River. The subway exit was in the basement of the World Trade Center. The gym was two blocks away. The park bench was in front of the Winter Garden. None of those things would exist by the end of the day.

I was in the shower, getting ready to slip into this familiar routine when my roommate started knocking and shouting something through the bathroom door. I was out of the shower in time to see the second plane hit the World Trade Center on television. Like most of the rest of the world, I spent the day watching the events unfold on TV. It wasn't long after the towers collapsed that the ash began to accumulate on the building entrance's awning outside of my second-floor apartment window.

A lot of people had it much worse that day, obviously. My best friend had to dodge flying airplane parts as he was fleeing from the building when the second plane hit. He and I were both lucky compared to thousands of victims and their families. But the following days were very strange times to live in the City. When they finally resumed flying, airplanes in the sky brought with them a sense of anxiety. Being underground in the subway was no longer a comfortable feeling. But sitting around indoors was also nerve-wracking. By Thursday night, I had to do something, so I volunteered at a staging area for emergency food and supplies in Bryant Park. But by this point it was becoming clear that it was highly unlikely that survivors would be found, so there was nothing at all to do during my overnight shift.

It felt at the time as though there would never be a return to normalcy. Baseball was very welcome when it resumed. I wasn't there at Shea Stadium when the Mets went back to work. In light of Pizza's historic homer, I naturally wish I had been. But when my friend Kevin said let's go when the Yanks come back, I was wholeheartedly in.

I wasn't a Roger Clemens fan at the time, and my opinion of him today wouldn't be surprising to anyone. I wish this story involved someone worthy of respect and admiration, instead. But that's life. And it didn't get much more real than 9/11, so I suppose it's appropriate, in a way.

Clemens had won that 20th game the week before in Chicago, and was on the mound to face Tampa Bay in the Yank's return to the Stadium. Security was high. Everyone was searched thoroughly. Police were everywhere, firearms prominently displayed. I've been to games where there's a buzz in the stadium because of circumstances on the field. On this night, the buzz was simply about being there, about being anywhere in public with a large crowd at a high-profile event. It may seem somewhat silly now, but it really felt like there was some risk involved in being there.

The game itself didn't go well for the home team. Hal McRae's Devil Rays scored two runs in the first, and behind Tanyon Sturtze they never looked back in a 4-0 win. But, of course, this was another of those rare times when just being there was bigger than the game. And victory, of a sorts, did come in the seventh inning when the score between the Red Sox and Orioles became final. The 12-7 Boston loss clinched the American League Eastern Division for the Bombers. The Yankees were going to the post season. Everything was back to normal. Almost.

As for the Surreal Seven contest, we ease our way into a leaderboard. I would be hesitant to award Al a victory here if it were going to effect the final standings, because he's a little vague with his guess of "9/11 New York." In fact, if I were a betting man, I'd say he most likely had the Piazza/Mets game in mind. But, like I said, it's not going to effect the final standings, so I'll happily award a win, just to get the leaderboard up and running:

SURREAL SEVEN STANDINGS	Correct Guesses	Difficulty Points
Al Kawamoto	1	4
Nick @ Dime Boxes	0	0
Bo @ Baseball Cards Come to Life!	0	0
Marcus @ All the Way to the Backstop	0	0

Congrats to Al for getting on the board. Now that the ice is broken, I have a feeling we're gonna see some action in the final days of this contest. And, speaking of contests, stay tuned. More free cards a'comin'.

I Was There: Jackie Robinson's #42 Is Retired

This is Part III of a series (and a contest) that was introduced here.

Los Angeles Dodgers @ New York Mets, Shea Stadium, 4/15/1997: Jackie Robinson's #42 Is Retired

This was one of the very few times when the baseball game itself was a forgettable afterthought. For the record, the Mets beat the Dodgers 5-0. Five-and-a-half months later, the season would end with neither team continuing into the post-season, each finishing with identical 88-74 records.

But the sellout crowd of 54,047 on that chilly Tuesday night at Shea wasn't really there for the game. This was the 50th anniversary of the day that Jack Roosevelt Robinson broke baseball's sad and pathetic color barrier, making his big-league debut for the Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. And Major League Baseball had something unprecedented in mind for the occasion.

After Jackie's grandson, Jesse Robinson Simms, threw out the ceremonial first pitch, the game got underway with an anticipatory buzz filling the ballpark. From our seats high above the home plate area, my friend Odin and I had the perfect view of the flashing lights of the presidential motorcade as it made its slow approach toward Shea Stadium during the early innings of the game.

At the end of the fifth inning the game was halted and a podium quickly set up around the second base area. Jackie's wife, Rachel Robinson, Commissioner Bud Selig and President Bill Clinton took the field, the President on crutches following a recent golf-related knee surgery.

Selig was the first to speak: "No single person is bigger than the game. No single person other than Jackie Robinson. Number 42 belongs to Jackie Robinson for the ages. Number 42, from this day forward, will never again be issued by a major-league club."

Then President Clinton: "Today every American should give special thanks to Jackie Robinson, to Branch Rickey and to all of Jackie's teammates with the Dodgers for what they did. This is a better, stronger and richer country when we all work together and give everybody a chance. He scored the go-ahead run that first day in the major leagues, and we've been trying to catch up with him ever since."

Finally, Rachel Robinson: "I believe the greatest tribute we can pay to Jackie Robinson is to gain new support for a more equitable society, and in this heady environment of unity it is my hope that we can carry this living legacy beyond this glorious moment."

Then the game continued. And nobody cared. The stadium was, maybe, 20% full by the time the Mets put three runs on the board in the seventh to put the game away. Butch Huskey, now officially the last player to wear 42 for the Mets, struck out in his final two plate appearances. Maybe the pressure of wearing the number was too much for him.

I've been to many baseball games. But this is the only time that I've been in the presence of a U.S. President. And I was there the night Jackie Robinson's number was retired across all of Major League Baseball for all time. Surreal.

As for the Surreal Seven contest, the shutout continues. Nobody was able to come up with the games at The Big A, Kingdome, or Shea Stadium. But we're about to take up residence in the House That Ruth Built, so you know there's some winning on the horizon. Stay tuned.

I Was There: Bulldog Beats M's in '95 ALCS

This is Part II of a series (and a contest) that was introduced here.

1995 ALCS Game #2, Cleveland Indians @ Seattle Mariners, Kingdome, 10/11/1995: Bulldog Beats M's

There had been no post-season baseball in 1994. Plus I avoided a too-soon and too-wrong marriage, breaking up with my girlfriend and moving back in with my grandparents in Southern Oregon. I made the most of my freedom in '95, especially from a baseball perspective. I was not one of those to show my displeasure about the strike by avoiding the game when it returned. On the contrary, I appreciated its return so much that 1995 would be my biggest year as a fan in attendance. But most of the story (a multi-state, multi-country, eastern baseball tour) will have to wait for another time.

I don't live close to Seattle, by east-coast standards. The 900 round-trip miles that I drove that October would be enough to catch a game in Boston, Queens, the Bronx, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. And I slept in my car at a rest stop to save cash. Ah, to be young again. It was certainly worth the hassle, though. This was the first time I had the chance to attend post-season baseball. And I was in the company of some seriously delirious fans.

This was the year that saved baseball in Seattle, the year when the Mariners would "Refuse to Lose," surging late as the Angels faded. The two teams ended the regular season in a tie, setting up a memorable one-game playoff for the division championship, which Randy Johnson won with a complete-game three-hitter. The magic continued in the first-ever (regularly-scheduled) Division Series, as Seattle rallied from down 0-2 to beat the Yankees in the five-game series and advance to the ALCS.

The Mariners had taken game one of the ALCS the previous night in improbable fashion, with rookie Bob Wolcott besting the veteran Dennis Martinez, 3-2. So as I arrived in Seattle, Mariners fans were riding an unprecedented high. The Kingdome that night was, without question, the loudest place I have ever been, and probably will ever be, in my life. I'm not sure how many people there were in that building who, like me, were rooting for the Indians, but it can't have been many. Of course, I wasn't so much rooting for the Indians as I was rooting for my favorite player of all time, Orel Hershiser.

The Bulldog was definitely in his element. Already established as one of the best big-game pitchers in baseball history, Hershiser weathered the hurricane of M's fans to hold the Mariners to just one run on four hits in his eight innings of work. The only blemish on his record was a sixth-inning leadoff homer by Ken Griffey, Jr., which was a fun thing to see. But another young slugger, Manny Ramirez, hit two homers of his own as the Indians built a comfortable lead. Jay Buhner added a solo homer in the bottom of the ninth against Jose Mesa, but Cleveland held on for a 5-2 win to even the series.

Hershiser would also win game five, and series MVP honors, as the Indians would advance to the World Series to face the Braves. The Bulldog would split two decisions head-to-head with Greg Maddux in the Fall Classic, with the Braves winning the only championship of their '90s dynasty.

Of the Surreal Seven, even though it's a Championship Series contest, this is probably the least "famous" individual game. So it's not surprising that nobody guessed that I was at this one, to which I'd assigned the highest difficulty level points. Therefore, we still have no contest standings. Don't worry, we do have a couple of Carnacs out there. But we'll have to wait until the action shifts to the east coast before our contestants start tasting a little success. Will that happen next week? Tune in for the next installment of "I Was There" to find out.

I Was There: George Brett's 3000th Hit

This is Part I of a series (and a contest) that was introduced here.

Kansas City Royals @ California Angels, Anaheim Stadium, 9/30/1992: George Brett's 3000th Hit.

It seemed very unlikely that I would witness history that Wednesday night in Orange County. And I wasn't the only one who thought so. Attendance that night was just 17,336, the smallest crowd for the Angels in Anaheim Stadium in more than 13 years. The only one of Brett's three brothers in attendance was Ken, the former big-league pitcher, and that's because he was an Angels broadcaster at the time. George needed four hits to reach the magic mark of 3,000. And it wasn't even likely that he'd play that night. He'd missed the first two games of the series with a bum shoulder. And the Royals would be returning home to finish the season against the Twins following Thursday night's series finale in Anaheim. You know that everyone involved was hoping for Brett to reach the milestone in Kansas City.

But the season was coming to an end. The Dodgers, who had been pathetic in '92, were on the road and were done playing at Chavez Ravine until next year. And the weather was nice. So I thought, why not? Fortunately, I was able to convince my roommates, who weren't baseball fans, that we had nothing better to do, and we hopped on the Artesia Freeway, taking the route that normally meant we were going to Disneyland when we were kids.

The Angels still shared "The Big A" with the Los Angeles Rams (what is it with teams playing in Anaheim thinking that they're in Los Angeles?), so the seating capacity at this point in their history was 64,593. With the sparse crowd it felt like watching a ballgame in the Grand Canyon. As was customary, given the sad state of our finances, my friends and I sat in the cheap seats, high above third base.

It wasn't much of a game. Brett doubled and scored in the first inning. And it was the only run the Royals would need, as Rick Reed shut down the home team completely. A fifth-inning homer by Anaheim favorite Wally Joyner extended the KC lead to 3-0. That was immediately followed by Brett's third hit of the night, which took the chances for history from unlikely to quite hopeful.

The opportunity presented itself when Brett came to the plate with one out and nobody on in the seventh, with Angels reliever Tim Fortugno on the mound. Brett smashed the first pitch he saw toward second, where the ball exploded past Ken Oberkfell for the milestone hit. The people at the Big A showed some class by setting off fireworks to punctuate the historic moment, as Brett's teammates rushed onto the field to congratulate their captain. And I was among the few who were there in that Anaheim crowd that night to share in the moment.

Of course, as you probably already know, Brett would add a humorous coda to the event, managing to get himself picked off of first base to end the inning, as he was distractedly conversing with the Angels' first baseman, Gary Gaetti. The Royals would tack on another run in the eighth, to make it 4-0. Brett would reach on an error in the ninth and then leave the game to another rousing ovation.

From cheers and hugs and fireworks, to laughter and a bewildered Brett returning to his dugout shrugging in disbelief... it wasn't much of a game, but it was a great night to be at the ballpark.

None of the four contestants in The Surreal Seven contest guessed that I was at this game, so there are no standings to report this week. Tune in next Friday for part two of this series to see if anyone gets on the board.

I Was There! Seriously!

There were about 1.3 million people in Dodger Stadium the night Kirk Gibson homered to beat the A's in game one of the 1988 World Series. Not really, of course. But people like to exaggerate. The official attendance on that fateful Saturday night at Chavez Ravine was 55,983. Some of them had their car's taillights immortalized in the endlessly replayed scene of Gibson's unlikely blast sailing into the bleachers. I'm not sure of the number of people over the years who have said that they were there that night. But I'm guessing it may be closer to my sarcastic figure than the real one.

I won't lie. I was not there that night, as much as I wish I had been. (Though listening to Vin Scully call the game on television was certainly an acceptable alternative.) But I am very lucky to have been in attendance at more than a handful of games that baseball fans will instantly recognize, including some of the most famous contests of the previous decade. I am well aware of my good fortune, and those memories have served me well as it has now been a little over six years since I last had the pleasure of attending a major league baseball game.

Considering my good fortune, it's appropriate that the number of games on my "I Was There!" list is seven. As a way of reliving those precious experiences, and sharing them with you, I plan to launch a series of posts about those games. And to continue with the theme of having good luck, I'm also going to have a little contest.

Just a second...

FREE CARDS!!

Okay, I just wanted to increase the chances that people actually read this post and don't miss out on the opportunity.

Here's all you have to do (not that there's any chance of actually accomplishing this): Guess which seven games I'm talking about. I'll give you a few hints.

1) If you're one of the three people who follow this blog regularly, you've already read about my attendance at one of these games. If you haven't been reading, enjoy digging through the archives!

2) These seven games all took place between 1992-2004, some on the west coast and some on the east coast.

3) Astonishingly, none of these games took place at Dodger Stadium, and only one included the Dodgers at all.

Naturally, nobody's going to come up with anything close to the complete list. But whoever has the most correct guesses among their seven by the time I begin this series (Friday, 8/2) will win a PWE with cards connected in some way to each of the seven games in question. Sounds fun to me, anyway.

Might as well give it a shot. Comment below with your list. The winner will be revealed after the final post in the series. Good luck!