Shit’s changed, y’all.
But even as life has gone on, what hasn’t changed is how I feel about baseball. I may not have been posting but I was still watching. I could never stop watching this game. I survived the 2010 bullpen - a bullpen so historically bad you have to go back decades to find anything worse. You could still recognize Diamondback fans from that year by the haunted look in their eyes. We went through some stuff.
I was watching in 2011, the year of the Never-Say-Die-mondbacks. I started the year hoping we wouldn’t come in last for a third year in a row and ended it listening on my phone while travelling in a shuttle bus between Tucson and Phoenix as the Diamondbacks took the Brewers into the tenth inning of game five of the NLDS and holding in my reactions lest my fellow passengers start wondering what’s with the crazy girl.
2011 was a gift. An unexpected ride from a team no one predicted to do much of anything and when it was over, I was grateful that I got to be a part of it, even in my own small way. Watching the boys scale the outfield fence to jump in the pool after clinching the West will remain one of my favorite moments from the year.
One of. Not top.
My top moment is game three of the NLDS. I was there.
The day didn’t start well. The 90-minute drive between Tucson and Phoenix took four hours thanks to a dust storm that completely shut down the highway and had me convinced I was a going to die. Seriously. I damn near called my mother to tell her I love. That was one of the most frightening experiences of my life. The landscape was alien when we could see it, as if we were travelling along the surface of the moon. There were times when visibility was reduced to zero. Driving down the freeway in a 15-passenger van in pitch blackness is something like going swimming with sharks while wearing Lady Gaga’s meat dress: terrifying on an absolutely primal level.
But I lived. And I made the game on time.
The seats were about 10 rows behind the Diamondbacks dugout. I went with my mother. I loved being able to explain who all the players were and why I love them. I loved explaining in-jokes and nicknames. I loved telling her that if she does nothing else, she had to boo when Prince Fielder came up to bat.
I loved chanting Goldschmidt’s name as the Brewers walked Miguel Montero to get to him. The bases were loaded, the crowd clamoring for magic. And it began. “Gold-SCHMIDT. Gold-SCHMIDT. Gold-SCHMIDT.” I was there when Paul Goldschmidt launched that baseball over the right field fence and became a legend.
The place became unglued. I’ve never heard a crowd yell like that. I was screaming, jumping up and down, I turned and hugged my mother because I was so happy, I felt like it was spewing out of me, like vampire sparkles in a Twilight movie. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen and the ultimate gift on the ultimate unexpected season.
Life still goes on but I’ll remember that moment forever.
