One reason birthdays don’t mean as much when you get older is that, when you get older, you’re constantly finding out precisely how old you are. This week I found out I’m the age when teeth crack. I spent the past few days in one kind of agony, and then spent most of today in a different, more optimistic kind of agony, and now I’m fixed! But that all means that you’re not reading the article I thought I’d be publishing by this point in the week.
So please instead accept this short story about the worst baseball-consuming experience of my life, which this week’s events brought to mind. It happened on May 29, 2001. The Giants were hosting the Diamondbacks. Unrelated to the rest of my story: There was a No (Bleeping) Golf Balls sign under the chili:
That day or the day before, I’d driven home for the summer. As I did every night I was home from college, I left my folks’ house around 9 p.m. to meet up with my best friend Daniel and play some cards. We were constantly scouting for places we could sit until 3 a.m.—preferably without our having to buy anything—and Daniel had recently discovered a motel just off the freeway in Gilroy with nice outdoor picnic tables. We went, listening to the Giants/Diamondbacks game on our way. We got out of the car around 9:30. I think it was the seventh or eighth inning, no score.
We played for a few hours. It was incredibly windy. Freeway seating always is. We gave up a little after midnight, a short night for us. We went back to his car, expecting to hear the radio station’s Midnight Replay of the game we’d listened to earlier. But it was the original game. They were still playing, and still scoreless!
So we got back out of his car and stood up against it while we listened to the 16th inning—Barry Bonds batted but the Giants couldn’t put anybody on. Then the 17th inning—Shawon Dunston couldn’t get down a suicide squeeze bunt and the Giants wasted a runner on third with only one out. Then, finally, the Diamondbacks broke though in the 18th to go ahead 1-0. But the Giants stormed back in the bottom of the 18th! A leadoff double by the pitcher Ryan Vogelsong! Then a walk to Rich Aurilia, with Bonds coming up on next!
This was Year 1 of Bonds’ unreal era. It was the year he would hit 73 home runs and break the all-time slugging record, and that month he broke all-time record for homers in a May. The Diamondbacks had already intentionally walked him three times in the game. But they had to pitch to him here. They brought in the old lefty Greg Swindell, who fell behind 2-0. And then Bonds… grounded out to the second baseman. Welp. He was 0-for-5. It would be the worst game, by win probability added, that Bonds would have in his steroidy era, and that’s despite reaching base three times on those intentional walks. His WPA was, in fact, 60 percent worse than the next-worst game he’d have in his steroidy era.
The Giants wouldn’t get Vogelsong home, they lost, and we drove the 20 minutes home. The Giants would ultimately lose the division to the Diamondbacks by…. that game. That one game.
Anyway, the reason I thought about it this week—maybe for the first time since 2001—was that I spent that entire night in Gilroy in just about the worst physical pain of my life. I needed a root canal, which I’d been hoping to avoid, and that night it reached a crisis point. Why it reached a crisis point might be that I had two 20-ounce bottles of lemonade, and I was constantly rinsing my mouth with lemonade thinking it would wash the pain away. Every sip caused an unbearable, 10-minute swell of pain, and if you can believe it I didn’t put lemonade = pain together until after the game was over. I might very well have been crying by that point.
I asked Daniel if he remembers that night. He remembers it all. We never went back to those motel picnic tables again.
I’d love to hear about your worst baseball-consuming experience.
I will never forget my worst baseball-consuming experience, because it is inextricably linked to the eventual curse-breaking core of my favorite team, the Cubs. The week of the wild card game and NLDS in 2015, I had two massive personal and professional breakthroughs that I thought were going to change my life.
I went on a date with someone I was convinced was the one, and it looked like I was going to get a huge promotion at work. I also watched untouchable Jake Arrieta dominate the wild card game, and then the Cubs dominate the Cardinals in the NLDS, complete with an unforgettable Schwarbomb. It felt like everything in my life had just clicked into place in my mid 20s, and I was walking on air all week.
The very next week, all of those good things fell apart in the same four days. The one decided our first date was also the last, my career breakthrough fell apart, and the Cubs scored eight runs in four games en route to getting swept by the Mets. I will never, ever forget the feeling of watching game four of that series alone in a hotel room in the Westin Peachtree Plaza hotel in Atlanta on a work trip feeling completely numb inside, like my entire life had been turned upside down.
The funny postscript to that story is that in March, 2016, I started dating my current wife and the mother of my kids, and she and I watched Game Seven of the 2016 World Series together. She was drinking out of a wine glass in my apartment when Rajai Davis hit the home run, and she was so surprised she bit down on it and broke the wine glass in her mouth (fortunately there were no injuries, and the Cubs obviously won in extras).
I will never forget either the 2015 or 2016 postseasons - they changed my outlook on baseball and life. They make me determined not to take things for granted or wallow in self pity when bad things happen. They're my personal version of the parable of the Chinese farmer.
A good friend and I argue all the time about whether the Twins-Yankees game we attended on July 23, 2019 was a great game or a terrible game. I am the "great game" side of the argument, but in Mike's honor, I'll report out on that one.
In 2019, the Twins were 18 years into what would become a 23-year streak of losing the season series to the Yankees. Going into that game, the Twins were 35-83 against the Yankees since 2002. They were also 61-39 on the season and having their "Bomba Squad" year, leading the MLB in home runs and on pace for the all-time home run record.
I told Mike, "We've got to catch a game when the Yankees are in town." He was adamant he had no interest in paying to see the Twins lose in person. Somehow I twisted his arm and we got tickets.
A few hours before the game I got some sort of seat upgrade email and in exchange for arriving early to listen to a Twins ticket rep give me a season ticket holder spiel, we got GREAT seats--right behind home plate, probably 20 rows back.
Twinslayer Didi Gregorius knocks a 2-run double in the top of the first and Mike only half-jokingly says, "If we leave now, we can still beat the traffic."
But the Twins mount a series of charges and plate runs over the next few innings, capped off by a 3-run jack from Miguel Sano in the bottom of the 4th that puts Minnesota up 8-2. After every Twins run, Mike shakes his head sadly and says, "It's not enough."
In the top of the 5th, my pocket buzzes. My wife has sent a text to our extended family group chat that says, "Everyone turn the game on. The Twins are destroying the Yankees!" I wince; Mike is in my head now, and this seems ill-advised. I look up in time to watch Twinslayer Didi Gregorius answer Sano's homer with a 3-run bomb of his own. Mike nods knowingly.
Minnesota leads 9-5 in the top of the 8th, when the Twins bring out their marquee bullpen acquisition of the offseason, Blake Parker. Parker goes: Walk, double, double, strikeout, double, removed from the game to never again pitch for the Twins. Score is now 9-8 Twins. Twinslayer Didi Gregorius hits a 2-run double. Score is now 10-9 Yankees.
Bottom of the 8th, Miguel Sano blasts a 2-run bomb off Zack Britton to go up 11-10. I have never felt so good in my life. Top of the 9th, former Twin Aaron Hicks launches his own 2-run bomb. New York leads 12-11. Bottom of the 9th, Twins tie it on a Jorge Polanco sac fly. We're going to extras.
Top of the 10th, Yankees score two (Twinslayer Didi Gregorius is one of the runs scored). Minnesota enters the bottom of the 10th down 14-12. Twins go: Strikeout, walk, walk, groundout, walk. Max Kepler steps to the plate, and on a 2-1 pitch, drives a hard liner into the left-center gap that should be a walk-off, bases-clearing double... except former Twin Aaron Hicks achieves what will turn out to be his highest sprint speed of the season and lays out to catch the final out of the game.
Mike and I walk back to the car. We don't say a word until we're in the parking garage, car in sight. That's when I say, "Man, that was a great game." Mike looks at me like I've grown a second head and says, "What are you talking about? That was a terrible game." And we haven't agreed since.