Michael's Corner

A brainstorm, an open pasture, a few good friends, and whatever became of Alexander Joy Cartwright?

Baseball is not a fast-paced game, but it is sudden. Often, we can’t see baseball coming; it just happens—the game’s defining moments come and go like a flicker of light, bringing instantaneous and unexpected joy and crushing heartbreak without warning or any way to prepare. What sort of villain or sadist would invent a game that places Heaven and Hell on opposite sides of so thin a razor’s edge?

Because baseball’s defining moments don’t develop over the course of a possession or series of plays, but instead burst upon us in an instant, time tends to hang in the balance with unparalleled anxiety and fraughtness. Why? Because in baseball, the defense has the ball, and thus the game comes at us one pitch at a time—intervals that leave just enough time to exhale so that we can reboot our anxiety. Thank you, Mr. Cartwright. I hope you’re satisfied.

An autumn to remember, the end of a drought, a transistor radio, and whatever became of the Pied Piper?

The year was 1980. The month was October. The Phillies were locked in an epic battle with the Astros; it was a five-game series that would go the distance, with four of the five games going into extra innings. I walked briskly from Wilfred Academy to the bus stop; I was on my way home to see game four, already in progress. At the bus stop, a modest crowd stood in a circle. In the middle of the circle stood a young man with a transistor radio broadcasting the game. No sooner had I approached the circle than it readily accommodated me; and thus there we stood, a group of strangers brought together over a shared passion. And then the bus rolled to a stop, its door flung open, and the circle morphed into a line that filed inside a bus, where it huddled around a radio—some managed a seat while others stood. As the bus departed for its preset destinations, a crowd of strangers wrung together its nervous hands. Before long, the bus rolled to one of its stops. The boy with the radio stood. Where was he going? It was the seventh inning; the game was hanging in the balance!

A group of strangers, none of whom but one lived where the bus had stopped, followed the Pied Piper—it mattered naught where he lived or was leading us, for the next pitch could prove the defining moment.

The piper led us down an avenue and then turned onto a side street. He stopped and sat on a set of cement steps that led to a typical Philadelphia rowhome. Our attentive ears and nervous bodies leaned toward the piper’s radio. The 8th inning came and went. So did the 9th. The Phillies would win it 5—3 in the 10th—a game that lasted three hours and fifty-five grueling minutes, its most tension-filled moments I had experienced with perfect strangers I shall never forget.

A nation thrown from its axis, many moments of silence, a roar on a chilly November evening, and whatever became of Tino Martinez?

What can baseball do? After all, it’s only a game. Or is it?

There has raged many debates over the greatest sports moments—which were among the best or most impactful? Babe Ruth’s fabled homerun, he allegedly called; Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier; Joe Namath boldly predicting a victory in Super Bowl III; the Thrilla in Manila; Miracle on Ice: those are all worthy of being listed among sports’ greatest moments. For me, there’s a moment few mention, but it should rank as the overarching reason we watch sports.

On an early November night in 2001, an anxious New York crowd had become grim; they had lost hope. The Yankees were down 3—1 in the bottom of the ninth with two outs. They were down to their last strike and facing a series deficit that mimicked the score. The nation was mere weeks out from 9/11, and New York was still trying to regain its equilibrium. And then it happened, the crack of a bat. A ball went sailing through the brisk November air and landed in the right field bleachers. The Yankees had new life; the game was tied. The crowd erupted like no crowd before or since. Were they cheering Tino Martinez’s game-tying home run after clinging to their last ray of hope? The obvious answer would be yes. But those who watched understood that they were cheering something much deeper, much richer. They had cheered for themselves and for their lives. It was a euphoric release, an outpouring for those who had created terror on an unparalleled scale: “You can’t take this from us! You may have taken a lot, but you won’t take this!”

We can’t see baseball coming. And that November night at Yankee Stadium, the euphoria that baseball’s suddenness brought to bear wasn’t just joyous; it was restorative. No other sport is built to do what baseball did that night.