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.
Love this article and how it immediately took me to Sunday, June 4th, 1989-I was 8, and ate/slept/drank Red Sox. My dad wanted to take me to some department store (Sears?) mid-game, and while I didn’t want to miss the end, I was comforted by the fact that 1) the Red Sox were already up 9 or 10-0 2) my wonderful mother offered to tape the rest on VHS as folks did back then.
Fast forward (pun intended) 3h later, we get home, oblivious to the outcome in those low tech days. My poor mother had a literal stack of tapes (kept using partially used ones since she thought game would end soon) to keep her promise. And despite not knowing any player even on Boston aside from say Boggs or Clemens, starts things off with a “so honey, who is this Junior Felix?”
The first playoff game I ever went to was Giants @ Nationals 2014 NLDS Game 2... the 18 inning game that set the record for the longest game in playoff history...
On a standing room only ticket.
Because of this, we decided we had to be there as gates opened to get the good vantage point from the Centerfield Bar at Nats Park, so we got there at around 3 for a game that started at 5:30 and ran about six and a half hours. The temperature fell to the 40s by the end of it.
So if the Giants win that May night in 2001, it is possible that Luis Gonzalez never makes it to Game 7 of the World Series to hit a bloop off Mariano Rivera.
May 6, 2012. That morning, my grandmother was transferred into hospice care. The day before my family had found out it was going to happen, and we had one more nice day with her in the hospital (watched the Kentucky Derby, which she always liked) before she slipped into what turned out to be her final coma.
I met my family at the facility after work, and it was a fairly gloomy situation with her unconscious and all of us just kind-of sitting there. The Orioles game was on the TV, and after a while we all agreed that we would wait until the game was over and that would be our cue to leave for the day.
As the extra innings stretched on and on, it finally got so late in the afternoon/evening that we had to just leave (we were hungry, had to get ready for the work/school week, etc.). So around the fifteenth inning we said our just-in-case goodbyes and went home. I was listening on the car radio, trying to process my emotions and follow the action, when Chris Davis threw two scoreless innings, striking out Adrian Gonzalez, while Adam Jones threw out the winning run at the plate then hit the eventual-game-winning three-run homer.
My grandmother passed around midnight. And that's the game that (I believe) started the Orioles on their playoff push and five-year run of success in the middle of the last decade.
I'll start this story with the caveat that...it's really not that bad of a baseball-consuming experience. But it had a massive impact on me because it happened at such a young age.
It was 1980. I was nine years old and I lived halfway between Baltimore and Philadelphia; we could get to either team's ballpark in less than an hour thanks to our proximity to I-95.
I was an Orioles fan first, but the Phillies were 1-B for me. My dad would occasionally get free Phillies tickets from someone at his job. And here we were -- game one of the 1980 NLCS. Nolan Ryan on the hill for the Astros...and somehow my dad got free tickets. I was going!
This was a HUGE deal for me. We'd probably only get to maybe 1-2 home games for the O's and Phillies per season at the time. And I had never (in my nine years of existence) been to a playoff game.
So we're driving to the playoff game and my dad, I guess, was unfamiliar with just how much traffic there would be for a sold-out game at Veterans Stadium. We left too late...and there's a bridge just before the exit off of I-95 where you could look down and see the stadium.
We sat on that bridge stuck in traffic -- not moving at all -- during the entire pregame show on the radio. Then the top of the 1st. And then the bottom of the 1st.
This was absolutely killing me. The game was going on -- and I could SEE the ballpark -- but we were stuck in traffic.
Long story short, I think we made it inside in the bottom of the 3rd inning.
I must have absolutely been a terror in that car, because just over a week later my dad scored tickets AGAIN...this time for Game 6 of the World Series. (Sidebar story: I still remember him calling me at home that afternoon asking if I'd be watching the game on TV...and then he said, "No -- you're going to be there. And this time we won't be late.")
So, yeah, I must have been so incredibly annoying in the car for that playoff game that we arrived at least 3 HOURS EARLY for the World Series game. I remember distinctly there was NOTHING happening on the field -- we were that early. Then, finally, there was some batting practice to watch...and ultimately the game, which the Phils won to wrap up the World Series. One of the best nights of my life, no doubt.
But it was the excruciating experience of sitting on that bridge in traffic during the playoffs that somehow made it possible and, ultimately, more enjoyable.
That very same trauma, I might add, turned me into one of those people who arrives way too early for things (ballgames, movies, the airport, etc.) to this very day. My kids probably hate it -- but I've told them the story many times of where that habit originated from.
I don't think the expression "FOMO" existed back in 1980, but I've never had a worse FOMO experience in my life.
I was just about to start my freshman year in college and my parents and I took a family vacation to Niagara Falls. A bonus of the trip was going to Toronto for a couple days to see a baseball game, as it remains a family goal of ours to see a game in every team’s home park (as of today we are up to 21 completed).
Earlier in the day, we had eaten at a restaurant attached to Rogers Centre and watched batting practice take place, as it overlooked the park. We went to the game that night and I was ready for some Canadian style baseball.
Before the game, I had already visited the facilities twice for……issues. Those digestive issues persisted into the game and I made it to maybe the second inning before having to leave the game and go back to the hotel. Luckily we were staying in the hotel attached to the park, otherwise it would have been an even worse night.
I still to this day have not been back to Toronto, or even eaten at that chain restaurant (we have locations of it in the US as well). I really did enjoy Toronto, the CN Tower being my favorite building I’ve ever been in. Maybe I’ll make it back one day.
2005 World Series game 2 Astros at White Sox. Long suffering Astros dad takes his oldest son (me) up to Chicago with his friends to experience the fall classic. We're on the first flight up in the morning from Houston.
Come game time it's cold and raining, not hard enough to ever stop the game or dim the spirits of the well lubricated crowd, but I remember the cold wetness. It's a goofy game that ends with a Scott Podsedik walk off HR versus Brad Lidge. The memory of the walk down the ramps (more like an escape) from the rafters of the upper deck was memorable for the mixture of emotions as we descended. The hostility of the locals was jarring. Watching my Dad and his friends process the loss and subsequent chaos was tough. And I left my girlfriend's fancy binoculars under my seat when we made our dash out of new comisky.
Just about all my Worst Baseball Nights are weather-related. I took my kids to Fenway to see David Ortiz before he retired in 2016. Ortiz homered and the Red Sox won (yay) but it was July in Boston and must've been about 100, both degrees and percent humidity. To make things worse, we were seated by a brick wall up behind third base, and as such there was no air movement. The overall effect was unbearable. We lasted until the eighth inning, which was the earliest I would allow myself to leave a Red Sox game.
Also at Fenway, I took my then-girlfriend-now-wife to a game back in 2006. It was an evening game, and stupidly I was underdressed to start with. I was cold when I got there, and absolutely freezing by the middle innings. With things only promising to get worse, I big the bullet and bought the heaviest coat I could find at the team store. I think it was $150. I can't imagine what that coat would go for now, but it was so worth it at the time. I remember putting it on and thinking, okay, I'm not going to die tonight.
As far as I can track down, it was May 14, 2002. If so, I was nine years old. I was at the Guardians game with my family, who were not as baseball-obsessed as I was. They were cold, and we were losing to the Orioles in the middle innings, so my dad decided we would leave. In one of the brattiest moments of my childhood, I fiercely protested: How could we leave a game early? I was fuming mad the whole way back. When we got home I ran up to my room and turned on my radio just in time to hear Tom Hamilton call Matt Lawton's walkoff home run.
My dad later did some much worse things, but there are few I remember as vividly as him dragging me away from the stadium that night.
One of my best friends and I went to a Phillies game in early June 2006, I believe against the Mets. It was one of those rainy early June nights that are somehow colder than mid December. We were seated 3 rows from the top of the stadium and in the 5th(?) inning they called a rain delay. We were both broke and just barely underage so we couldn't go grab a couple beers. We were shielded from the rain so figured we would stick in out in our seats. But the wind was howling and just sat there, miserable. They put a Marlins game on the jumbotron and for some reason each time the ball the scoreboard at old Pro Player stadium it made the loudest crack from the speaker just behind us. After about 90 minutes they restarted the game,the Mets immediately scored 6 runs and we left.
May 14, 1988. My team, the Cardinals, were locked in a 5-5 tie through 7 against the Braves at Busch Stadium. Much like your game, Sam, the game remained tied through the 8th, the 9th, into extras. By the 16th inning the Cards had run out of pitchers. So they turned to their Secret Weapon/Swiss Army Knife, Jose Oquendo, to pitch the top of the 16th! It didn't start well. He gave up a leadoff double, then a walk, then a single to right - but Brunansky threw the runner out at home! A sliver of daylight! Oquendo wriggled out of the inning with no runs. If the Cardinals could score Oquendo would be the first non-pitcher with a decision in 20 years. My brothers and I were watching the game together, all of us crazed with anticipation. But the Cards didn't score. So Oquendo went back out for the 17th, and again got out of it with no runs - but in their half, the Cards again didn't score. Onto the 18th. Again no runs from Oquendo! In the bottom half, the Cards loaded the bases with one out. Duane Walker at the plate. A simple flyball would've given Oquendo the win! Instead he hit a broken-bat lineout to short, and the runner was doubled off third. In the 19th, Oquendo turned into a pumpkin. With two outs, he finally broke, giving up two runs. The Cards went down 1-2-3 in the bottom of the 19th, and the Cardinals, and Oquendo, lost. A frustrating game, to be sure, but the next morning I found out my grandpa - a rabid Cardinals fan - had died the night before, in front of the TV set, watching the Cardinals game. In my imagination he died sometime around that broken-bat double play. Damn you, Duane Walker.
I think it's gotta be the 2004 ALCS Game 7 for me. I was 14 years old, fully convinced that the Yankees were destined to always be good forever, and the relentless unambiguous pounding they received that game feels like a clear inflection point in how I approached fandom from that point forward. The only other candidate I can think of would be the 2015 wild card game against Houston since I was actually at that one, and it was my first ever in-person playoff game. Feeling the energy in Yankee Stadium start at a height I'd never felt, and then completely deflate as Dallas Keuchel shut them down inning after inning was a uniquely depressing baseball watching experience.
I was also at the 4th and final game of the 2018 ALDS against the Red Sox, where Craig Kimbrel did his best to blow it before getting Gary Sanchez to fly out to the warning track, but a close loss doesn't feel nearly as disheartening to me as a game that never felt competitive.
Very different from some of the other experiences here, but in April 2002 I happened to find myself in Montreal for work and I really wanted to see a game at Olympic Stadium.
I showed up a little bit late to game, and there was literally no one outside - absolutely no atmosphere. Further, I'm not kidding when I say that I walked completely around the entire stadium trying to figure out how to get in - I don't recall any signs being in English. Finally I found my way into the game, and sat down to watch and it was just a very weird experience. First of all, I was by myself so I had no one to talk to. Second, I would have swore that there were less than 2,000 people in attendance (B-Ref says they played 9 weekday home games in April 2002 (excluding opening day) and their greatest paid attendance in those games was 5,295). Third it was in a dome and it just felt cavernous and empty and completely sterile. Lastly, everything was in French. It was like they engineered a scenario that removed everything I like about seeing a game in person.
Again, not painful or tragic, but very weird and definitely not enjoyable.
Some buddies and I decide to skip the first day of classes for my sophomore year in college to take in a "businessman's special" up north in Milwaukee. Four of us pile into a car and head to County Stadium, settling into the left field bleachers on lovely afternoon. This game had some great layers - wild card implications, battling for the only NL Wild Card against both NY Mets and SF Giants, in the midst of a magical 1998 homerun chase for the ages.
Game advances well for the Cubbies - Sosa had been stalled out for a week without a HR and he jumps (literally) to life with a homerun in both the fifth and sixth innings. Heading into the bottom of the ninth, the Cubs are leading 7-5. Sosa is tied with McGuire with a handful of days left. Good times.
Rod Beck comes in to close and ends up loading the bases with two outs and that same 2-run lead. Geoff Jenkins lifts a high fly towards left field that we can see perfectly from our vantage point is warning-track power at best, so the four of us start high-fiving each other as the ball disappears out of our sight below the left field wall. As we glance across the field, it's clear that the base runners have only increased their intensity in rounding towards home. A ball come shooting out from below the fence towards home plate, but much too late to intercept what turns out to be the winning run for the Brewers, serving as a walk-off spoiler for their arch-rival Cubs.
The Brant Brown game, that instant change from the sweet taste of victory to bitter defeat, is the one that came to mind as the worst baseball-consuming experience.
This Ron Santo moment is burned into my memory ... we heard that WGN replay on the radio too many times to count as we shuffled through traffic on our way back to Chicagoland. Poor guy - no one will ever love the Cubs as much as Ron Santo.
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.
Love this article and how it immediately took me to Sunday, June 4th, 1989-I was 8, and ate/slept/drank Red Sox. My dad wanted to take me to some department store (Sears?) mid-game, and while I didn’t want to miss the end, I was comforted by the fact that 1) the Red Sox were already up 9 or 10-0 2) my wonderful mother offered to tape the rest on VHS as folks did back then.
Fast forward (pun intended) 3h later, we get home, oblivious to the outcome in those low tech days. My poor mother had a literal stack of tapes (kept using partially used ones since she thought game would end soon) to keep her promise. And despite not knowing any player even on Boston aside from say Boggs or Clemens, starts things off with a “so honey, who is this Junior Felix?”
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS198906040.shtml
The first playoff game I ever went to was Giants @ Nationals 2014 NLDS Game 2... the 18 inning game that set the record for the longest game in playoff history...
On a standing room only ticket.
Because of this, we decided we had to be there as gates opened to get the good vantage point from the Centerfield Bar at Nats Park, so we got there at around 3 for a game that started at 5:30 and ran about six and a half hours. The temperature fell to the 40s by the end of it.
So if the Giants win that May night in 2001, it is possible that Luis Gonzalez never makes it to Game 7 of the World Series to hit a bloop off Mariano Rivera.
May 6, 2012. That morning, my grandmother was transferred into hospice care. The day before my family had found out it was going to happen, and we had one more nice day with her in the hospital (watched the Kentucky Derby, which she always liked) before she slipped into what turned out to be her final coma.
I met my family at the facility after work, and it was a fairly gloomy situation with her unconscious and all of us just kind-of sitting there. The Orioles game was on the TV, and after a while we all agreed that we would wait until the game was over and that would be our cue to leave for the day.
Turned out it was this game: https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS201205060.shtml
As the extra innings stretched on and on, it finally got so late in the afternoon/evening that we had to just leave (we were hungry, had to get ready for the work/school week, etc.). So around the fifteenth inning we said our just-in-case goodbyes and went home. I was listening on the car radio, trying to process my emotions and follow the action, when Chris Davis threw two scoreless innings, striking out Adrian Gonzalez, while Adam Jones threw out the winning run at the plate then hit the eventual-game-winning three-run homer.
My grandmother passed around midnight. And that's the game that (I believe) started the Orioles on their playoff push and five-year run of success in the middle of the last decade.
I'll start this story with the caveat that...it's really not that bad of a baseball-consuming experience. But it had a massive impact on me because it happened at such a young age.
It was 1980. I was nine years old and I lived halfway between Baltimore and Philadelphia; we could get to either team's ballpark in less than an hour thanks to our proximity to I-95.
I was an Orioles fan first, but the Phillies were 1-B for me. My dad would occasionally get free Phillies tickets from someone at his job. And here we were -- game one of the 1980 NLCS. Nolan Ryan on the hill for the Astros...and somehow my dad got free tickets. I was going!
This was a HUGE deal for me. We'd probably only get to maybe 1-2 home games for the O's and Phillies per season at the time. And I had never (in my nine years of existence) been to a playoff game.
So we're driving to the playoff game and my dad, I guess, was unfamiliar with just how much traffic there would be for a sold-out game at Veterans Stadium. We left too late...and there's a bridge just before the exit off of I-95 where you could look down and see the stadium.
We sat on that bridge stuck in traffic -- not moving at all -- during the entire pregame show on the radio. Then the top of the 1st. And then the bottom of the 1st.
This was absolutely killing me. The game was going on -- and I could SEE the ballpark -- but we were stuck in traffic.
Long story short, I think we made it inside in the bottom of the 3rd inning.
I must have absolutely been a terror in that car, because just over a week later my dad scored tickets AGAIN...this time for Game 6 of the World Series. (Sidebar story: I still remember him calling me at home that afternoon asking if I'd be watching the game on TV...and then he said, "No -- you're going to be there. And this time we won't be late.")
So, yeah, I must have been so incredibly annoying in the car for that playoff game that we arrived at least 3 HOURS EARLY for the World Series game. I remember distinctly there was NOTHING happening on the field -- we were that early. Then, finally, there was some batting practice to watch...and ultimately the game, which the Phils won to wrap up the World Series. One of the best nights of my life, no doubt.
But it was the excruciating experience of sitting on that bridge in traffic during the playoffs that somehow made it possible and, ultimately, more enjoyable.
That very same trauma, I might add, turned me into one of those people who arrives way too early for things (ballgames, movies, the airport, etc.) to this very day. My kids probably hate it -- but I've told them the story many times of where that habit originated from.
I don't think the expression "FOMO" existed back in 1980, but I've never had a worse FOMO experience in my life.
August 25, 2009, Rays at Blue Jays
I was just about to start my freshman year in college and my parents and I took a family vacation to Niagara Falls. A bonus of the trip was going to Toronto for a couple days to see a baseball game, as it remains a family goal of ours to see a game in every team’s home park (as of today we are up to 21 completed).
Earlier in the day, we had eaten at a restaurant attached to Rogers Centre and watched batting practice take place, as it overlooked the park. We went to the game that night and I was ready for some Canadian style baseball.
Before the game, I had already visited the facilities twice for……issues. Those digestive issues persisted into the game and I made it to maybe the second inning before having to leave the game and go back to the hotel. Luckily we were staying in the hotel attached to the park, otherwise it would have been an even worse night.
I still to this day have not been back to Toronto, or even eaten at that chain restaurant (we have locations of it in the US as well). I really did enjoy Toronto, the CN Tower being my favorite building I’ve ever been in. Maybe I’ll make it back one day.
2005 World Series game 2 Astros at White Sox. Long suffering Astros dad takes his oldest son (me) up to Chicago with his friends to experience the fall classic. We're on the first flight up in the morning from Houston.
Come game time it's cold and raining, not hard enough to ever stop the game or dim the spirits of the well lubricated crowd, but I remember the cold wetness. It's a goofy game that ends with a Scott Podsedik walk off HR versus Brad Lidge. The memory of the walk down the ramps (more like an escape) from the rafters of the upper deck was memorable for the mixture of emotions as we descended. The hostility of the locals was jarring. Watching my Dad and his friends process the loss and subsequent chaos was tough. And I left my girlfriend's fancy binoculars under my seat when we made our dash out of new comisky.
Just about all my Worst Baseball Nights are weather-related. I took my kids to Fenway to see David Ortiz before he retired in 2016. Ortiz homered and the Red Sox won (yay) but it was July in Boston and must've been about 100, both degrees and percent humidity. To make things worse, we were seated by a brick wall up behind third base, and as such there was no air movement. The overall effect was unbearable. We lasted until the eighth inning, which was the earliest I would allow myself to leave a Red Sox game.
Also at Fenway, I took my then-girlfriend-now-wife to a game back in 2006. It was an evening game, and stupidly I was underdressed to start with. I was cold when I got there, and absolutely freezing by the middle innings. With things only promising to get worse, I big the bullet and bought the heaviest coat I could find at the team store. I think it was $150. I can't imagine what that coat would go for now, but it was so worth it at the time. I remember putting it on and thinking, okay, I'm not going to die tonight.
As far as I can track down, it was May 14, 2002. If so, I was nine years old. I was at the Guardians game with my family, who were not as baseball-obsessed as I was. They were cold, and we were losing to the Orioles in the middle innings, so my dad decided we would leave. In one of the brattiest moments of my childhood, I fiercely protested: How could we leave a game early? I was fuming mad the whole way back. When we got home I ran up to my room and turned on my radio just in time to hear Tom Hamilton call Matt Lawton's walkoff home run.
My dad later did some much worse things, but there are few I remember as vividly as him dragging me away from the stadium that night.
Get well soon!
One of my best friends and I went to a Phillies game in early June 2006, I believe against the Mets. It was one of those rainy early June nights that are somehow colder than mid December. We were seated 3 rows from the top of the stadium and in the 5th(?) inning they called a rain delay. We were both broke and just barely underage so we couldn't go grab a couple beers. We were shielded from the rain so figured we would stick in out in our seats. But the wind was howling and just sat there, miserable. They put a Marlins game on the jumbotron and for some reason each time the ball the scoreboard at old Pro Player stadium it made the loudest crack from the speaker just behind us. After about 90 minutes they restarted the game,the Mets immediately scored 6 runs and we left.
May 14, 1988. My team, the Cardinals, were locked in a 5-5 tie through 7 against the Braves at Busch Stadium. Much like your game, Sam, the game remained tied through the 8th, the 9th, into extras. By the 16th inning the Cards had run out of pitchers. So they turned to their Secret Weapon/Swiss Army Knife, Jose Oquendo, to pitch the top of the 16th! It didn't start well. He gave up a leadoff double, then a walk, then a single to right - but Brunansky threw the runner out at home! A sliver of daylight! Oquendo wriggled out of the inning with no runs. If the Cardinals could score Oquendo would be the first non-pitcher with a decision in 20 years. My brothers and I were watching the game together, all of us crazed with anticipation. But the Cards didn't score. So Oquendo went back out for the 17th, and again got out of it with no runs - but in their half, the Cards again didn't score. Onto the 18th. Again no runs from Oquendo! In the bottom half, the Cards loaded the bases with one out. Duane Walker at the plate. A simple flyball would've given Oquendo the win! Instead he hit a broken-bat lineout to short, and the runner was doubled off third. In the 19th, Oquendo turned into a pumpkin. With two outs, he finally broke, giving up two runs. The Cards went down 1-2-3 in the bottom of the 19th, and the Cardinals, and Oquendo, lost. A frustrating game, to be sure, but the next morning I found out my grandpa - a rabid Cardinals fan - had died the night before, in front of the TV set, watching the Cardinals game. In my imagination he died sometime around that broken-bat double play. Damn you, Duane Walker.
I think it's gotta be the 2004 ALCS Game 7 for me. I was 14 years old, fully convinced that the Yankees were destined to always be good forever, and the relentless unambiguous pounding they received that game feels like a clear inflection point in how I approached fandom from that point forward. The only other candidate I can think of would be the 2015 wild card game against Houston since I was actually at that one, and it was my first ever in-person playoff game. Feeling the energy in Yankee Stadium start at a height I'd never felt, and then completely deflate as Dallas Keuchel shut them down inning after inning was a uniquely depressing baseball watching experience.
I was also at the 4th and final game of the 2018 ALDS against the Red Sox, where Craig Kimbrel did his best to blow it before getting Gary Sanchez to fly out to the warning track, but a close loss doesn't feel nearly as disheartening to me as a game that never felt competitive.
Very different from some of the other experiences here, but in April 2002 I happened to find myself in Montreal for work and I really wanted to see a game at Olympic Stadium.
I showed up a little bit late to game, and there was literally no one outside - absolutely no atmosphere. Further, I'm not kidding when I say that I walked completely around the entire stadium trying to figure out how to get in - I don't recall any signs being in English. Finally I found my way into the game, and sat down to watch and it was just a very weird experience. First of all, I was by myself so I had no one to talk to. Second, I would have swore that there were less than 2,000 people in attendance (B-Ref says they played 9 weekday home games in April 2002 (excluding opening day) and their greatest paid attendance in those games was 5,295). Third it was in a dome and it just felt cavernous and empty and completely sterile. Lastly, everything was in French. It was like they engineered a scenario that removed everything I like about seeing a game in person.
Again, not painful or tragic, but very weird and definitely not enjoyable.
Wednesday 9/23/1998. Cubs at Brewers.
Some buddies and I decide to skip the first day of classes for my sophomore year in college to take in a "businessman's special" up north in Milwaukee. Four of us pile into a car and head to County Stadium, settling into the left field bleachers on lovely afternoon. This game had some great layers - wild card implications, battling for the only NL Wild Card against both NY Mets and SF Giants, in the midst of a magical 1998 homerun chase for the ages.
Game advances well for the Cubbies - Sosa had been stalled out for a week without a HR and he jumps (literally) to life with a homerun in both the fifth and sixth innings. Heading into the bottom of the ninth, the Cubs are leading 7-5. Sosa is tied with McGuire with a handful of days left. Good times.
Rod Beck comes in to close and ends up loading the bases with two outs and that same 2-run lead. Geoff Jenkins lifts a high fly towards left field that we can see perfectly from our vantage point is warning-track power at best, so the four of us start high-fiving each other as the ball disappears out of our sight below the left field wall. As we glance across the field, it's clear that the base runners have only increased their intensity in rounding towards home. A ball come shooting out from below the fence towards home plate, but much too late to intercept what turns out to be the winning run for the Brewers, serving as a walk-off spoiler for their arch-rival Cubs.
The Brant Brown game, that instant change from the sweet taste of victory to bitter defeat, is the one that came to mind as the worst baseball-consuming experience.
This Ron Santo moment is burned into my memory ... we heard that WGN replay on the radio too many times to count as we shuffled through traffic on our way back to Chicagoland. Poor guy - no one will ever love the Cubs as much as Ron Santo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlxpo9sTIC4