The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst [127]
“I want to be last,” Ox corrected.
“What? Why?”
“So I can jump on and crush you motherfuckers.”
“You might kill someone.”
Ox smiled at the thought of it.
“You can go first,” I said.
When the inning started, we stopped worrying about exit strategies and stuck ourselves to the fence. A season of getting outs just to have a chance at getting these.
“Come on, Blade!” we cheered, but he couldn’t hear us from the pen.
The Cardinals, who spent the entire game rolling over to our onslaught, suddenly decided to muster some resistance. They singled, then hit a two-run blast to put them on the board.
I’m sure Blade wasn’t happy, but I felt almost charitable about it. I was glad to see the Cardinals didn’t get shut out in the last game of their season, on field, during the championship series. However, my mercy transformed into concern when Blade walked the next two batters and allowed another single.
We were still up ten. In any other situation, there would be no cause for alarm. But this was not any other situation. This was the situation of the year. The emotional, ecstatic anticipation turned into neurotic what-ifs.
The pen phone rang. Abby wanted Moreno up. No sooner did he start throwing than he was in the game, and the score was 3–12 with no outs. A wild pitch brought it to 4–12 and a single, 5–12. Our first out was made after the fifth runner scored, but if the Birds kept this up…
Seven runs was still a huge deficit to overcome with three outs. The law of averages was still in our favor. That didn’t stop the bullpen from graduating to a full-on freak-out. Just a minute ago, we were cruising with a ten-run lead. Now we watched the Birds put up five without recording an out, and there was nothing we could do but watch from the confines of our square in the outfield.
When the score hit 7–12, I started to kick myself. All that talk about having a beer, all the talk about winning, all that talk of Road House! What was I thinking? I felt sick, like all the happy butterflies in my stomach had just died gruesome deaths. Panic hit.
“What the hell did we do?”
“THE BALL BAG!” Dalton screamed.
Some idiot, probably me, had packed the ball bag. A universally accepted no-no that always seemed to warrant punishment from the baseball gods, which I almost started to believe in. Thinking about winning and acting on those thoughts were different. Packing up your equipment in expectation of a predictable ending usually ensured the unpredictable. It was more than stupid—it was heresy!
Dalton grabbed the rosin from the ball bag and threw it back into the bullpen. When another hit was recorded, he took the ball bag and dumped everything out. I stood in front of the pen’s chain-link fence, squeezing the links with my hands.
“This can’t be happening…not again,” I mumbled.
“Come on, Moe! Come on, baby!”
Cheers arose. Futile cheers that came from our bullpen but were trampled over by the Cardinals’ war machine in the stands. They had come alive now, cheering their hearts out for their hometown boys. They were marvelous and horrifying in their intensity. There were no mathematical probabilities to them; no deficits too deep to overcome. I watched the scene on the field play out, completely helpless, feeling like I did those years ago when I watched the Cal League championship slip away.
Turning to the boys I said, “If we lose tonight, we’ll lose tomorrow. There is no way we come back after a heartbreaker like this.”
“They will have all the momentum,” Ox said.
“If we are going to do it, we have to win it here.”
El Gato wound and delivered. The ball was struck, a deep but tilting foul. Venable had a bead on it. We grabbed the links of the fence as we watched him track it, squeezing the fence like a throttle:
“Come on Will! Come on Will!”
The ball came down. Venable’s body was out too far to stay balanced, and he went down with the ball, glove out across the grass, reaching to make the catch! Two outs.
“HELL YA!” we cried in unison. We shook the fence to vent our