October Baseball

Bill, a rail-thin, six-foot-tall, clean-shaven, red-haired man in his mid-50s wearing jean shorts, a pair of battered grass-stained sneakers, and knee-high crew socks, scurried to his seat clutching a novelty batting helmet filled to the brim with ice cream in one hand and a large Coke in the other. He carefully put the ice cream down, brushed off some stale popcorn that someone dumped onto his seat thankful the debris wasn’t something more nefarious, and sat down with his heart fluttering with excitement.

Perched just beyond Dodger Stadium’s left field wall in section 303 PL, row A, seat 7, Bill watched the drama unfold as his Dodgers nursed a 4-3 lead in the top of the seventh with two on and two down. He had spent a lot of money on the ticket, too much if his wife Edna had anything to say about it. But to heck with her, he thought. This was their chance to squash the Yankees, a team he loathed ever since he was a kid when Reggie Jackson became Mr. October.

Dodger reliever Joe Kelly inhaled deeply on the pitcher’s mound came set at the belt and fired a 3-2 fastball to Yankee shortstop Anthony Volpe. The home plate umpire Brian O’Nora called the 100 mph heater high for ball four. Volpe walked to first, loading the bases. Kelly, who had a temper to match his fiery fastball, nearly cussed, but bit his tongue and settled on glaring at the gray-haired umpire with a stony gaze that could cut through the thickest fog. “Where was that!?” Bill yelled nearly choking on a chunk of chocolate in his ice cream.  

Dodgers skipper, Dave Roberts, who could all but sense his high-strung, bespectacled reliever on the verge of blowing a gasket, hopped out of the dugout and made a beeline for the mound. Kelly wanted the next batter, but his skipper would never let that happen.

When the final out was recorded, Roberts would either be scorned as the hapless purveyor of the misery emanating from every Dodgers fan worldwide, especially Bill, or forgotten as the perfunctory autopilot who didn’t get in the way. Such was the plight of the manager whose team fielded a roster studded with stars like Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts. It was Roberts’ game to lose not to win. Whether he had been force-fed instructions from higher up the food chain or not, Roberts’ mind was now made up. The die was cast. He snatched the baseball from Kelly and signaled to the pen.

“This clown Roberts is gonna get us all killed I tell ya,” Bill uttered to no one in particular although he could’ve sworn an elderly man with a scraggly beard sitting two seats to his right wearing a coonskin cap, flannel pajama pants, and a Fernando Valenzuela jersey winked at him right after he said it.

Rarely did the baseball season end like it was about to but the stars aligned literally and figuratively for Game 7 of the 2024 World Series. A grand clash pitting two of the sport's most storied franchises, the Dodgers and Yankees, was about to culminate in a face-off between two of the best either team had to offer, who both happened to wear 22 on the back of their jerseys. Not even the world’s biggest bowl of ice cream could prepare Bill for the night’s denouement.

The crowd started cheering at the sight of Clayton Kershaw emerging from the bullpen just to the right of Bill’s section. Bill stood, his oversized Dodger T-shirt now featuring a conspicuous chocolate stain, and clapped for Kershaw as a gargantuan shaggy bearded man who smelt of stale beer returned to the seat to his left toting two giant-sized popcorns.

Father time and injuries had rendered Kershaw’s time as the irreproachable ace of baseball a fading memory. Nonetheless, the venerable left-hander was on the field of battle ready for what might’ve been the most important out of his Hall-of-Fame-bound career. He had had several blunders in the postseason, but this was a chance to right them all a year after contemplating retirement. The batter he was about to face was on the opposite end of the career spectrum. Juan Soto, ten years Kershaw’s junior, was perhaps not even at the peak of his powers and mere hours away from becoming the most coveted free agent baseball had ever seen.

Soto dug into the left-handed batter’s box and waited like a silent menace. Kershaw stood on the mound with his gaze fixed somewhere beyond the first baseman Freddie Freeman’s right shoulder, held his hands high over his head, and delivered. Soto watched the curveball fall just off the outside corner for a ball. Pleased with not having flinched at a ball that lesser mortals would’ve swung and missed at, Soto crouched down and brushed the dirt in the batter's box with both legs, looking like a cross between a crab and a bird in some sort of mating ritual. Soto was a showman. Just like Denzel Washington stole center stage every time the film camera fell on him, so did Soto dictate the pitcher’s attention in each of his at-bats.

Time stood still between pitches. Kershaw tugged at his cap and manicured the dirt on the mound with his cleats. Soto took a hack outside of the batter’s box. But the tedium that made Bill fall asleep in July made the game all the more riveting once the calendar flipped to October. Kershaw’s next pitch was high at the letters for ball two.

Bill thought of reciting the Act of Contrition, but not wanting the Lord Almighty to think him a hypocrite for not having stepped foot inside a church going on thirty years, he thought of something extemporaneous. “God, I know the election is in a couple of days,” he thought to himself. “But if you let Kershaw get this out, I promise to not be that disappointed by my dopey son Kyle the next time I see his grades.”

The heartfelt plea worked like a charm. Soto watched Kershaw’s third pitch, a slider, bristle the outside corner for a called strike. Soto nodded as if to say “Game on.” Kershaw tossed a curveball that fell in the dirt for ball three. The crowd fell silent. Bill closed his eyes and felt as if he were in church again. Kershaw stepped atop the mound ready to deliver the 3-1 pitch, held his hands high above his head one more time, kicked, and fired.

Soto swung a hair late and connected sending a high drive to deep left. The crowd came to their feet. For a split second the ball seemed to hang aloft as if in suspended animation. Some 40,000 pairs of eyeballs locked onto the left fielder Teoscar Hernández, who scampered two steps back onto the warning track his glove aloft and his throwing hand bracing the wall behind him. He took another half step back and now had not an inch to spare. The flyball steamed right toward Bill who gasped as his life flashed before his eyes. But the ball died on the track and fell into Hernández’s glove, unleashing an apoplectic cheer from the crowd.

Bill lost his hearing and then, after joining the crowd with a shrill caterwaul he never knew he had in him, his voice too. The Dodgers were six outs away from winning it all. He left his seat to get a beer.