This is arguably the most exciting moment in all of baseball history: Jackie Robinson stealing home during Game 1 of the 1955 World Series vs. the New York Yankees. 

 

 

Good base stealers make it look easy.  The pitcher knows you're going, the catcher knows you're going, everyone in the ballpark knows you're going, and you still manage to sprint those 90 feet to safety without getting tagged out. Yes, good base stealers make it look easy, and Robinson was one of the best.  Robinson was always a dynamic and magnetic force on the basepaths, and with the Dodgers trailing in a late inning with two outs, all eyes were on Robinson dancing off third.

 

 

This 30+ second YouTube clip can't really capture the excitement of this moment.  The only way to fully appreciate  a moment like this is to experience the two hours of tense play that lead up to it.  Baseball doesn't translate well into highlight reels.  We didn't see the Dodger's lose the lead in the third inning. We didn't see them threaten to retake the lead in the fifth.  We didn't see the rally that got Robinson to third in the first place.  No, you can't experience the excitement of baseball by watching a highlight reel.  In a World Series game, with a championship at stake, each pitch is meaningful.  Each pitch can change the game.  

 

In fact, that's what's so wonderful about the game of baseball.  There's a certain pacing of the game that I like: a slow unraveling punctuated by the occasional flash of excitement.  It's the slow unraveling that makes those flashes so exciting.  Even a game in the middle of May can have the intensity of a late September pennant race.  Maybe it'll be the sixth inning and you'll realize your pitcher is pitching a no-hitter.  Perhaps the middle reliever loads the bases with no outs in a tie game, and the manager turns to the only rested arm in the bullpen: an untested rookie with electric stuff.  With the winning run in scoring position, maybe your team's best hitter, suffering through an injury, gets called upon to pinch hit.  The worst teams still beat the best teams sometimes.  Underdogs can prevail.  Empires can topple.  Cinderella stories abound.  Successes are framed by failure: even the greatest hitters of the game fail to hit seven times out of ten.   With a thirty percent success rate, these men are heroes, giants of the game.

 

The Tampa Bay Rays: worst team in baseball in 2007, American League Champions in 2008

 

Yes, the baseball fever is boiling.  Monday is Opening Day.  I have papers dues and midterms to study for and a sonnet to write, but all I can think of are starting lineups and relief pitching and squeeze plays.  With Opening Day a long weekend away, I'm cheating a little bit: in twenty-four hours I'll be in a car on my way to Flushing, NY to see the New York Mets take on my Boston Red Sox in an exhibition game at the new Citi Field/U.S. Treasury Field.  My cousin, a diehard Mets fan,  managed to get us the tickets.  It's rare that our two teams ever meet in the regular season.  Twenty-six hours until the first pitch.

 

 

I don't think I'm going to get much work done today.