I went to the Braves game Wednesday night. It was fun, the Braves lost, but it was a blustery night that wasn’t too cold, and the sky, although threatening, never fell out. There is something I absolutely love about sitting in Turner Field with a beer and good friends under the lights. I love how the Atlanta sky line is larger than life in the background and it is one of the few things that makes me want to move to an enormous city and live among the buildings.
We stayed till the very end, although we were making our way out of the stadium when the game actually ended, but since we were sitting up in the cheap seats it took us a while and we did watch the bottom of the ninth from the lower level while Staci and Taylor bought t-shirts. But over all, it was a lackluster night of baseball as far as the braves were concerned.
But last night there was a better show. I was in the car with my mom, and we listened to part of the game on the radio, but I wasn’t listening when Brian McCann hit his three run homer Roger Clemens.
Seriously, click on that link, and read the whole article, because it gave me chills and brought a tear to my eye. I am so happy for McCann, I don’t even know the kid, haven’t ever even heard his name before this morning, but I’m just so excited. Here are some quotes from Jayson Stark’s article on ESPN.com:
"When a 21-year-old rookie catcher hit a home run that will be traveling for his entire lifetime off a 43-year-old living legend…"
• Never in history, according to SABR home run historian David Vincent,
had any previous player hit a postseason home run off a pitcher who
made his big-league debut in the same year that the hitter was born.
• And never, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, has there been a
bigger age difference in history between a home run hitter and the
pitcher who served it up than the 21-year, 200-day gap between Clemens
and McCann.
• Never, either, has a catcher younger than McCann (21 years, 6½ months) hit a home run off anybody in a postseason game. (Previous record-holder: Someone named Yogi Berra — at 22 years, 4½ months.)
That is just the beginning, there is a lot of amazing stuff in that article, but let me leave you with my favorite part:
Asked if he could put that feeling into words, McCann responded with a laugh.
"Well," he said, "I don’t remember running around the bases."
the thin line between optimism and delusion... 