I Was There

In some ways it is ironic that the first post on this website that will have anything to do with baseball has nothing whatsoever to do with statistics.  As far as baseball has been concerned, I have always been a numbers guy.  I generally try to apply a calculated reasoning to everything that’s going on in a game to the point where at times outcomes become secondary.  I cannot stand it when managers attempt to “leave their mark” on a baseball game; all too often that “mark” is simply in the form of an “L” the players and fans of that organization didn’t necessarily deserve.*  I believe in the normalization of numbers, and the use of line drive percentage and batting average on balls in play over “batting average with less than 2 outs after the 7th inning during a full moon.”  I know that just because Ty Wigginton HAD hit a home run in Yankee Stadium and David Wright had NOT a few years ago was not a reasonable argument as to why Wigginton was the better solution to the Mets’ 3rd base woes.  While on a game to game basis there is certainly an extraordinary amount of luck involved in the decision, it is comforting to me that in general the difference between good baseball teams and bad ones are their relative abilities to perform the three fundamental acts of the sport: pitching, hitting, and defending, as opposed to the ubiquitous yet indefinable “grit,” “hustle,” and “edge.”  Over the course of 162 games we learn who the best baseball teams are.

*Jim Tracy’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge the difference between Ryan Howard: Righty-Mashing Demi-God and Ryan Howard: Generally Average or Below vs. Lefties very well could have cost his team two games in the NLDS, a series where only three wins nets you a trip to the next round.  I understand that Howard mashed a home run off of left-handed pitching Randy Wolf in the first inning tonight, but I think his feeble looking strikeout vs. Dodgers left-handed reliever George Sherrill was easily the more telling sequence.  Example 2 here could be everything Joe Girardi did after the 5th inning yesterday.

Perhaps as a result of this, we are sometimes treated to games like last night’s; games between two truly elite teams operating at near peak capacity resulting in a seminal sporting moment.  After Jimmy Rollins hit his game-winning double to plate two runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to win Game 4 of the NLCS for the Phillies, we had just that.  I was looking around at a stadium full of 46,000ish people all going crazy experiencing a feeling I’ve only had a couple of times: an unadulterated, unrestrained, anticipated but unexpected release of mind-stopping exuberance.  This is why we watch sports.  It’s why we follow teams for so long.  It’s why we force ourselves to read the articles all week about how terrible the team is.  It’s why we buy the jerseys, commiserate with coworkers, and overlook the fact that few of these guys are remotely as “awesome” as we make them out to be.  Because when you’re jumping up and down and aren’t even aware of it, when you’re high-fiving people you don’t even know, when you’re hugging people for no apparent reason, and when you’re screaming but not sure what the words are or who they’re actually directed to, you’ve reached the sporting summit.  You don’t care how you got there.  You don’t care that the team had you on the verge of crying alone in your basement two years ago, you don’t care that they traded your favorite player, you don’t care that you’ve dropped upwards of a grand on this team in the past month but decided you had to cut HBO from your cable package because of the economy, and you certainly don’t care that your manager made the most boneheaded decision imaginable only 10 minutes earlier.  Right now it’s not about that.  It’s about the fact that you committed some level of yourself to a team, and now they’re paying you back in kind.  Your reward, of course, is always consistent with the percentage of yourself you were willing to make vulnerable to the team.  For die-hard Phillies fans, then, last night – probably like winning the World Series last season – was one of those payoff moments that signs you up for another lifetime of dedication.  Sports Guy has written about a “5-year grace period” after a championship when you can’t complain about your team.  That’s garbage.  You can always complain about your team, you can always overreact to irrelevant minutia like why haven’t they cut the long-snapper yet, and you certainly never have to apologize or “behave differently” after experiencing a moment like the one last night.  That’s why we watch sports.  Moments like those.  Championship or no championship, it’s that moment of joy that is experienced within yet generated almost entirely from without that will bring the true sports fan back for more forever.  I was there last night, and even though I’m not a true Phillies fan, even though perhaps I wasn’t experiencing the depth of the moment like those in pandemonium around me, it’s still a magical feeling to be a part of.  There are not many moments in a sports fan’s life where his or her mere presence at the event qualifies as “currency” with your friends and family.  Last night was one of them.  And I was lucky enough to be there.  You don’t have to be a Phillies fan to appreciate something like that.