The Sporting Life:
The Public Professor’s
Saturday Sports Column
I was at Camden Yards on Wednesday night. My good friend Brad is moving to California and he wanted to see one more game before he split. So three of us went down, stood in line, and got some cheap seats. Then I found my neighbor who wor
ks as an usher and he got us better seats in left field, about a dozen rows back. Those seats were good enough to catapult us into the moment, not just metaphorically, but also literally: when J.J. Harding hit a two run shot to put the Orioles up 2-1, the ball tipped off the hands of the guy in front of us and then skipped behind us.
If you watch the highlight, you can see Brad falling over and spilling my beer amid the flurry; I’m in the blue shirt, white hat, beard.
But not catching the home run was the only thing that went wrong, so let me tell you about this magical night.
The press has already trumpeted Wednesday as one of the greatest nights of regular season baseball ever, and rightly so. They’ve covered every detail of Tampa Bay’s historic September comeback (one noted statistician put the odds it at 278,000,000:1) and Boston’s unprecedented month-long collapse, all of which culminated with two unbelievable games of epic proportion.
But to be there, on the ground, and watch one of those games unfold in person was something else altogether.
I’m a dyed in the wool Yankees fan, born and raised in the Bronx. So for me, the night was not only joyous, but truly bizarre. I was rooting against my own team, hoping they would lose down in Tampa, and that Baltimore could pull out just one more improbable come from behind upset of Boston.
Why root again
st my own team? It’s simple.
Hate before Love.
The Yanks had already punched a ticket to the postseason, so this last game of the regular season was meaningless to them. But a Tampa Bay victory over New York would go a long way towards getting the TB Rays into the playoffs at the expense of the Red Sox. So all I really wanted at this point was to keep Boston out of the postseason. Because as a Yankees fan, i fucking hate the Red Sox, as in, way more than a rational adult should. Yes, I know I have a problem and that this is a sign of immaturity and maladjustment. I recognize that. But it’s hold on me is much too powerful to overcome at times, and quite frankly, on a night like this I just don’t care. I revel in it.
What’s more, the surreality of rooting against my team for the purpose of spiting their rival was compounded by observing the unimaginable: Red Sox fans rooting for the Yankees. That alone was worth the price of admission ($19).
But beyond the Yankees-Red Sox angle, there was also the local dynamic.
Boston fans always pack Camden Yards when the Red Sox are in town. It was a 50-50 crowd on Wednesday to start, which is actually pretty good for Baltimore; with the economy in the shitter, New Englanders aren’t coming down as much as they used to. However, the crowd leaned more heavily for Boston after the hour and a half rain delay. So when the game resumed in the 7th inning with Boston leading 3-2, Sawks fans were a fair bit louder than the hometown fans. Bostonians had more on the line: many of them had come all the way down from that fetid, provincial backwater, and after 14 consecutive losing seasons, Baltimore fans are beaten down, angry, and quiet like an abused child.
But as a New Yorker who’s been living in Baltimore for ten years now, I was the happy pivot point, eager to root against both of the Orioles’ hated rivals, the evil, evil Red Sox and even my beloved Yankees.
There I was, sporting my floppy O’s hat, which I’d picked up as a freebie at a prior game, and supporting the hometown team of my adopted city. At least for one night, I really was part of Baltimore, standing back-to-back with the locals.
Every step of it was tense. Even the rain delay was riveting as the Diaomond Vision, or whatever the hell they call big stadium TVs these days, was simulcasting the overshadowed 
but still amazing Atlanta-Philadelphia game, and also cutting in with highlights from Tampa: notably Evan Longoria’s first home run, which capped off their six run rally that got the game from 7-0 to 7-6, and then Dan Johnson’s two-out, two-strike game tying shot in the bottom of the ninth.
Absolutely everyone was scoreboard watching, and all the O’s fans were fired up by the Rays’ legendary comeback, hoping their black and orange Birds would also come back and play a vital role in Boston’s destruction.
But of course our game was the centerpiece, and it was absolutely gripping. The outstanding defense, the key double plays, the plays at the plate, the overturned ump’s call, the home run just out of my grasp, Jonathan Papplebon’s fantastic collapse in the bottom of the ninth, Robert Andino’s glorious, game-winning heroics, the last place Orioles mobbing the field and jumping up and down like they’d just won the World Series, and every single one of those god damned Boston fans, who’d been chanting and clapping and cheering and screaming and high fiving from start to finish, each and every one of them shutting the fuck up on cue, dutifully filing out of that beautiful, storm-drenched stadium, and quietly shuffling up the aisles while Brad and I thrust our fists into the night skies, beat our chests, and thundered in celebration.
No sooner were we walking through the concourse when we heard the roar go up. Three minutes after the finish
of the Orioles’ victory over Boston, the Rays had managed a once in a decade come back of their own, after being down seven runs in the 7th inning. Word filtered out quickly, and Brad confirmed on his phone. Once again it was Evan Longoria. Home run in the bottom of the twelfth. Over.
The bull took one final spear point and collapsed. Boston was done.
I never knew I could be so overjoyed by my beloved Yankees losing a game.
Hate before Love, people. Hate before Love. And don’t you fucking forget it.