A Bit of Baseball

I woke up this morning to a most unexpected nostalgia. There was the fresh rain on the night prior, reminding me of warm spring rains back in the states, the kind that only really happen during March and April in Central California, the kind I was absent for this last time around, the kind that always mark the end of the winter and the beginning of spring. And Spring Training. It dawned on me this morning that this is the longest I have gone in my life's memory not seeing, listening to, or participating in a baseball game.

Baseball is one of those loves that is impossible to describe in a way that would convince a non-lover that you're not crazy. You have to grow up with it. You have to fall for it. You have to believe in and worship your heroes on the diamond and detest the guy in the blue and white uniform precisely and solely because he wears it. It is the last refuge of accepted institutionalized prejudice. Rare is the person that comes to love baseball in their adult years, it's just too alien, too subtle, too methodical of a sport in a world of fast paced and hard hitting competition.

The last baseball game I saw live was in October 2012 at an Irish pub deep in the heart of old town Barcelona. Just a few days before on our backpacking trip we witnessed the Giants' complete their amazing comeback from two games down against the Cincinnati Reds while eating at an All-You-Can-Eat-Ribs bar in Amsterdam. When Buster Posey hit his grand slam in the middle of the game I threw my hands up in the air and cheered to the bewilderment of the multinational clientele whose only common thread was the grease on their fingers. I brought my hands back down to my meal only to have two gentlemen who were eating at the bar turn around to face us. Turns out that they were from the Bay Area and, like us, searched out the one sports bar in town that had baseball. It was on one of the smaller televisions in the corner of a large bank of flat screens. But that was all we needed.

It would have been a great final game to go out on, but I didn't have the slightest inkling yet that the 2012 postseason would be the last for two years. Instead I ended my baseball addiction with an NLCS loss to the Cardinals in that dank and dirty Catalonian Irish bar. Tragic, but the story ended well: Barry Zito came back the next night and redeemed his entire contract debacle by keeping the Giants alive and they would go on to win the World Series a week and a half later. I would not be witness to any of it, resigned to watching highlights and reading news articles while on a foreign continent.

In most years, a World Series victory, even one witnessed by proxy, would be the highlight of any fan's season. But instead, several months earlier and about halfway through June, the Williford clan decided on a whim to render a visit to China Basin and AT&T Park. Like many other previous pilgrimages, we made our way north along the valley floor, cut over to the coast at the San Luis Reservoir, and then headed up US101 to the parking lots south of McCovey cove and the Cathedral of Summer.

Traffic was horrendous. Minutes ticked by and the KNBR pregame show drew on and on and closer to the end of the 'pre' part. I was antsy, to the point of annoying everyone else I'm certain. If there is one thing that I hate more than anything it is my own tardiness. I don't mind it in the form of other people, but for myself it is nigh inexcusable.

We arrived at the handicapped parking lot just as the National Anthem was finishing up. I was a mess. I hate missing first pitches. My attitude on any other night would have been responsible for the misery of everyone else.

As we unloaded Steven, the pulse of the field indicated that the first pitch had been thrown. The on time fans were no longer just a cacophony of hustle and bustle, but hustle and bustle with sprinkles of synchronized cheers and chants. The game had started and I had missed it. Ugh. I was dejected as we crossed the bridge that connects the southern parking lots to the rest of the city. We were hardly the only tardy fans on that June night and it took us several harrowing minutes to get to the turnstile.

CRACK. A huge roar erupts. After a split second it mellows ever so slightly as the anticipation in the park builds. Another second goes by and the roar boils over into ecstasy. It is the unmistakable sound of a home team home run.

We scored. Excellent. And I missed it. What a horrific mélange of good and bad feeling.

We made our way to the third base line on the first level even with the press box where our seats were located. Matt Cain was on the mound for the Giants that night pitching to the Astros, a once proud and vaunted franchise that had spent the better part of the last half decade on the lower half of the standings. I was still annoyed at missing out on the offensive action earlier in the inning, but as soon as I sat down any feelings of negativity started to fade. I joined the sold out crowd in looking out in the foreground at Cain throwing his second inning warm ups and the San Francisco Bay at sunset fading away in the background. No feelings of malaise or anger, especially of such stupid origin as mine could survive such an atmosphere. It is nostalgia, now, and need all wrapped up into one moment. It was near perfect.

The Giants were up 2-0 already thanks to the first inning homerun and Matt Cain was in an absolute groove. Matt Cain despite still being under thirty is the longest tenured Giant and will continue to be for years to come. Always a fan favorite, but never THE fan favorite, his laid back demeanor and historic lack of run support had almost relegated his place among the fanatics as second tier. On this night however, the blade was out and he was carving down the opposition. Or cutting. Or mowing. Pick your sharp related metaphor.

In fact, it was such a lopsided game so early (7-0 after three innings) that the only thing keeping the home crowd invested was the rising strikeout count of Cain. By the end of the 5th inning, Cain had racked up nine Ks, three backwards. Very few people noticed, or at least didn't care to pay much attention to the "0's" in the hits and errors  columns of the line score, and even fewer seemed to notice the "0" on the base-on-balls section of Matt Cain's stat line. Chalk it up to just being too early to really even consider it happening, or perhaps distracted from the offensive onslaught that had by that point scored 10 runs, or even not really believing any sort of feat was even possible. People were not yet buzzing with each pitch, the energy instead ebbing and flowing with each two strike count.

That all markedly changed in the 6th inning. Somehow word got around to the statistical situation that everyone found themselves witnessing. Now, with each windup, 42,000 fans inhaled in unison, held our collective breaths as the ball traveled the several dozen feet from the tip of Matt Cain's fingers to the strike zone in which all of our collective hopes and fears resided and then exhaled as the ball either hit the back of Buster Posey's catcher's mitt or ricocheted off of a three foot length of sculpted wood into or out of the field of play. Church had begun.

CRACK. The crowd falls deathly silent. A few cries of disbelief are heard. Melky Cabrera runs to the wall, stops short of it and jumps up to collect the baseball in his mitt before it touches literally anything else and this statistical impossibility returns to the world of normal. We erupt, in even larger ecstasy than was experienced in the first inning, a rare feat for a defensive play. Somehow a ball that in all physical realities and multiverses should have been a home run decides at the last moment to fall back to earth. If you aren't aware of the situation before this out, you certainly are now. Our continuous cheers delay Matt Cain from taking the mound again and as we realize our error, we politely calm down to a more dullish roar in order to allow him his concentration.

Cain went on to strike out the next batter and exit the 6th inning still chasing the immaculate. One of the ironic parts of this night, that few people would admit at the time but in retrospect cop to as I am now was that everyone just wanted the bottom halves of the innings to be over with. If we didn't root against our offense to get off the field as quickly as possible we certainly yearned for the return of Cain and his defense.

Luckily for us, and Matt Cain's rhythm, the batters seemed to agree and we quickly found ourselves in the top of the 7th. All of the synchronicity of respiration and soul that we experienced in the 6th inning was amplified to even higher levels as play began. A sense of destiny began to overcome us.

CRAAACK. The loudest of the night. Protests immediately erupt from the crowd. No! Not possible! We can't have gone this far only to have it ripped away from us. We are the chosen people. How can one person ruin the feelings of thousands, of millions of people in an instant? It is unthinkable. Moses parted the Red Sea when facing a similar challenge. We have no such shepherd. Hope is lost. The ball is heading only a few degrees to the right of dead center field, far out of the reach of Angel Pagan.

And then: The right fielder comes out of nowhere. The smallest Giant, Gregor Blanco, is already at full speed and somehow finds a little extra in his leg muscles to push him into the air horizontally. Willing his arms to extend just a little bit further he somehow gets his glove in a geometry just perfect enough to catch the ball and keep the faithful together.

Pandemonium breaks loose. The 42,000 faithful who had just visited the depths of disappointment and despair have in a split second transformed that negative energy into positive. The laws of entropy do not have jurisdiction within the halls of this cathedral. We won't let balance come back. Not yet.

The cheers did not die down. The television feed definitively puts it at forty nine seconds of continuous applause. A small break for Matt Cain to calm and chill already iced veins. It felt like hours to us. Should the Vatican ever conduct due diligence on Gregor Blanco's canonization they will find 42,000 willing witnesses ready to testify to his miracle.

Those few doubters that had still been in the crowd dissolved into the flock of the faithful, but arrogance never again entered our minds. A miracle had saved us. However, we were almost the cause of our own destruction. The one word on everyone's mind that no one would dare to utter: Jinx.

Matt Cain rolled through the rest of the 7th inning, but his calm and distant demeanor was beginning to show cracks. If it bothered him he didn't show it in form. Not even a robot could suppress the emotions of the moment, much less those with a pulse. For the next thirty minutes, there were three entities in the building: Matt Cain, his defense, and the unified hopes of thousands willing them to perfection.

The eighth inning arrived with more zeroes marking the top of the linescore than most people will ever see. The first out went to Joaquin Arias, the third base defensive replacement, who deftly handled a ground ball up the line. Little did we know at the time that it would foreshadow our conclusion.

A full count marked the second batter of the penultimate inning. Blood pressure throughout the stadium reached near-critical levels. The possible outcome of the entire night would rest on the result of this next pitch.

POP. The catcher's mitt closes around a fastball that hugged the inside corner of the plate, past the knees of the stationary Astro hitter. The umpire punches out the batter as the crowd reacts fanatically. The buzz doesn't die down by the time the third out is recorded, a grounder up the middle fielded by a rookie shortstop with long caveman like hair.

The ninth inning arrived. The Giants offense had remained quiet since the middle of the game, existing seemingly only to give a bit of respite to the stress of the elevated parts of the innings. Everyone who wasn't already on their feet rose as Matt Cain made his final trek to the mound for the night. One way or another, it would soon be over.

The only unknown for the first two outs was whether or not Melky Cabrera would trip on his already tied shoelaces on the way to the spot of the outfield where physics dictated the balls would land. It would have been anticlimactic had either been the final outs, but instead they only built to the final moment.

One out to go. The situation had long ago won over its largest cynic, Steven, the middle child of the Williford family, for whom sports exists only as a minor annoyance and an excuse to play Gameboy. It had been shut off for several innings.

My legs would not stay still, my arms would not stop shaking. I yelled "Let's go Matt! Come on kid, you got it!" over and over again with as much conviction as anyone has ever yelled anything. In retrospect it seems juvenile or even childish, but in the moment nothing felt more right to say. Those of you in the Love Baseball camp will understand. Those of you not and still reading, I'm honestly shocked you've stuck around this long.

Matt Cain gazed around the park, not forgetting the upper deck, and then took the mound for the final time. The count was 1 ball, 2 strikes. He wound up, and fired:

SLAP. The ball inside-outs off the bat with enough english to make an 8-ball blush. It makes its way up the third base line, it's unholy spin catching Joaquin Arias off-guard. He awkwardly positions himself to scoop the ball which is spinning and skipping so much that only evil incarnate itself could be responsible. The mitt gathers the ball, defeating the apocalyptic spin, but the devil isn't done yet.

With about as far of a throw a third baseman can make still between the Giants and perfection, Arias stumbles ever so slightly. As if the infield dirt suddenly became molasses, Arias' legs fail to give him the usual power needed to heave the ball 140 feet. In desperation, he wills his right arm around and lasers the ball towards first base, beating the runner by several steps, a feat that seemed impossible just milliseconds ago. Tension that had been building over the course of an hour and a half is finally released.

They mobbed the mound. It was like winning a World Series, except instead of everyone congratulating everyone, it is everyone congratulating one man. And one man congratulating everyone. No one wanted to leave. No one cared to beat traffic. No one wanted the moment to end. Cain was interviewed and gave his profuse thanks to the crowd. No one would take him for granted again. It was a perfect night.

It took eons for fans to finally start making their way to the exits. People took pictures of the scoreline, of the field, of each other. We were guilty as well, but eventually we made our way to the southwest exit. On the way back to the car, after crossing the bridge, the lights and colors of the stadium made for a terrific photo. One of the more beautiful nocturnal sights in the world for my biased money.

Of the thousands and thousands and thousands of games played in all of baseball history, we were witness to something that had happened less than twenty five times. A perfect game. 27 batters come to the plate. 27 batters get sent back to the dugout. 3 batters per inning for 9 innings. All because we Willifords decided on a whim to go to a baseball game.

We have a little family joke about Williford luck and it goes something like this: If something small can go wrong, it probably will go wrong. But the converse is also true. If something big can go right, it will go incredibly right. It's a dichotomy that we have made our peace with.

So here I am in Madagascar. 12,000 miles and 18 months from my next baseball game, but it's coming. Now is the time for work and for progress. Baseball will have to wait. The silver lining? Not having to hear Joe Buck and Tim McCarver for two years.