Sometimes, you CAN recapture the magic (Bonus post, from Chase Field)

 

 

 

You can seldom recapture one of those magical moments in your life, but sometimes you can come really, really close. 

 

This weekend is the last weekend of regular season home games for the Arizona Diamondbacks, and Kerry and I will finish by having seen almost half of them, plus another 21 games in other stadiums, for a total of over 60 MLB and AAA games, a record for us. The Diamondbacks are finishing the home season with a series against the Yankees, a team that a) has a lot of fans everywhere, and b) is hated by anyone who isn't a Yankee fan.  

 

In any case, the weekend opened with a Friday night game in which Yankee fans outnumbered Diamondback fans by nearly 2 to 1 (based on a count of who was wearing which team's gear during a circuit of the concourse before the game), and the Diamondbacks played terribly in a 9-2 loss. This afternoon, I told Kerry that for the first time I could remember, I wasn't looking forward to going to the game today. I was so, so wrong.

 

Today, they celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Diamondbacks' only World Series win, in which they came from behind in the 9th inning of the 7th game to beat the Yankees on a bloop "walk-off" single in the bottom of 9th, the only time in the nearly 125 years of World Series that's happened (one or two other teams have tied it in the 9th, and won in extra innings). Kerry and I were there at 2001 Game 7, and we knew at the time that we were unlikely to ever see a more exciting game. Tonight, we both wore 25-year-old celebratory T-shirts (a walk-off win explains the silly grin in the picture). They've been replaying the highlights of the 2001 World Series all weekend, and my FitBit tells me that every time they come to that 9th inning, my heart rate goes up. 

 

The team gave out 25,000 commemorative jerseys at the gates today, starting three hours before game time, and the lines of people waiting were long. The people who wanted commemorative jerseys were Diamondbacks fans, so tonight, although the crowd had nearly as many Yankee fans as last night, the Diamondbacks felt like the home team. The attendance was only a few hundred short of a sellout in the second-largest ballpark in the majors, so it had the atmosphere of a playoff game.

 

Before the game, the Diamondbacks had a 30-minute ceremony in which most of the players and coaches (and even batboys) for that 2001 team were introduced.  

 

Then came the national anthem, with trumpeter Jesse McGuire. He played the anthem for almost every home game for the Diamondbacks' 2001 post-season, and his performances were enough of a part of the experience that the team gave him a World Series ring. I'm not a fan of the Star-Spangled Banner, which a) celebrates a minor battle in a war most Americans don't know about, and b) is hard to sing, which means it gets sung badly (which I find disrespectful) more often than not. Kerry and I always rate the anthem at every game we go to on a scale of 1 to 10, and our average ratings this season have gone from 1.0 (it would be hard to imagine worse) to 9.5 (truly moving). With a trumpet, the large musical range is not a problem, and with a professional like Jesse, well, let's just say that on the rare occasions when he plays the anthem, in the spot on my scorecard where I list our rating of the anthem, I just put "Jesse!" This time he started, got a few bars in, and hit a wrong note. He tried again, and the same wrong note came out -- his trumpet had malfunctioned, probably a valve failed, or something like that. So he switched to singing, a capella, and it was as moving as his trumpet version, and far more impressive for being improvised.

 

Then the game started, and what I feared that would be a severe letdown turned out to be eerily similar to that Game 7 in 2001. 

 

2001 Game 7 was a pitching duel between the Dbacks' Curt Schilling and the Yankees' Roger Clemens. Tonight, Arizona started pitcher Brandon Pfaadt, who pitched very well in the 2023 World Series as a rookie, then steadily got worse until he was sent to the minor leagues this year, before coming back in the middle of the season, and pitching the best half-season of his career. The Yankees started Cam Schlitter, who was not quite 9 months old when the Diamondbacks beat the Yankees in the World Series, but has been the Yanks best pitcher this season. 

 

Tonight was a pitching duel. If either Pfaadt or Schlitter ends up with a career as good as either Schilling or Clemens, they should be happy, but bear with me. Pfaadt left in the 5th inning with the bases loaded (starting pitchers don't pitch as long as they did in 2001), and the Dbacks fell behind 1-0 soon after, but retook the lead on a 2-run inning whose key play was the pitcher (Schlitter) mishandling a bunt, just as the 9th inning of 2001 Game 7 wouldn't have played out as it did without Hall of Fame relief pitcher Mariano Rivera mishandling a bunt.   

 

The Yankees retook the lead on a home run from an unlikely character. In 2001 it was Alfonso Soriano, a rookie who was later quoted as saying "I hadn't been in the game long enough to understand that that was a pitch I couldn't hit." Tonight it was Austin Wells, a light-hitting catcher that the Yankee fans over the last two nights have been saying is playing to keep a job. But the Diamondbacks tied it up, and that's where it stayed going into the 9th inning. 

 

It wasn't 2001. The World Series wasn't at stake, and the rules and the people are different. And the game was tied going into the bottom of the 9th. But the outcome was similar. 

 

As in 2001, the Diamondbacks' first batter got on base. In 2001, it 37-year-old Mark Grace getting a hit. Tonight, it was 35-year-old Ildemaro Vargas getting a walk when the umpire called strike three on a full count, but Vargas challenged the call, and the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) system said that it was ball four instead of strike three. Like Grace, Vargas is probably near the end of his career, but Vargas' career has not been Grace's. Grace was a great player, who got more base hits in the decade of the 1990s than anyone else in baseball. Vargas, on the other hand, is one of those anonymous baseball lifers. He began playing professional baseball at age 16, but didn't make his major league debut until 10 years later. In the last 10 seasons, he has appeared in the majors every single year, playing for five different teams (including three stints with the Diamondbacks) but never played in more than 100 of the 162 games in a season - until this year. He started the year as a reserve, but started hitting like he'd never hit before, getting at least one hit in each of his first 24 games this season (along with getting hits in his last three games last year, that gave him a 27-game hitting streak, the longest in the majors ever by a Venezuelan-born player, of whom there have been some excellent ones). His hitting has cooled off, but he has played well enough consistently enough that he has set played in 135 games so far, and has had was will most likely be the best season of his career. 

 

In 2001, the winning hit was a bloop single by Luis Gonzalez, who had hit more than 50 home runs that year, and has the career highs for the Diamondbacks in games played, hits, home runs, and a variety of other categories. Tonight, with one out, Pavin Smith was announced as a pinch hitter, and got a few boos from the hometown crowd. The woman next to me, apparently a Pavin Smith fan, kept saying, "Why are they booing Pavin?" She must not have read his statistics for the year on the scoreboard, which are awful. Smith has been on the Diamondbacks' roster most of the time since 2020, with flashes of brilliance, but frequent stays on the injured list and occasional trips to the minors. He started this season injured, finally made it off the injured list, and was woeful as a hitter. The Diamondbacks eventually Designated him For Assignment (DFA'd him, in the lingo), which basically means that they gave up on him. The rules on DFA are complicated, but there are lots of ways from other teams to get a player if they want him. But 30-year-olds who aren't hitting aren't in much demand, no one wanted Pavin, so he accepted an assignment to the minor leagues. But he regained his form in the minors, and was called back up to the majors a couple of weeks ago. On Wednesday, he hit a home run, matching his total for the first five months of the season. On the second pitch he saw tonight, he launched a drive that, from the crack of the bat, was clearly going to be the game-winning home run.

 

It wasn't 2001. The Diamondbacks are unlikely to even make the playoffs this year, but for one evening, I think we all felt 25 years younger.