Just when you think you’re numb to tough losses, you can’t catch a break on a night off
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Enough time has passed now for this story to be told in a way that protects the innocent. That’s the tragedy of it: Everyone involved is innocent. They were all integral to what happened that fall night and yet still bystanders, caught up in a twist of fate they’ll find hard to believe when they’re older.
It’s an even longer story how I found myself at a Little League field this fall, so without revealing any names, dates or locations, suffice to say we joined a few other neighbors in supporting one of the boys on our street at what could potentially be the final game of his season.
It was an elimination game under a blue sky and setting sun, and it turned out to be the worst way to lose I’ve ever seen.
Ever.
I should hasten to add, in this profession, that’s a bold statement to make. You do this job long enough, you’ll see enough of the agony of defeat to curate a gallery of it. You can’t make a living on covering wins alone. For every joyous celebration, there’s a quiet locker room where Harrison Barnes drapes a towel over his head for 17 minutes, having played his final college game.
You come to recognize all the different flavors and timbres of bad losses, from the self-inflicted collapse to the insurmountable force to the dogged victims of inexorable fate, as one of my predecessors once wrote. You end up parsing the resonant details the way a food critic can sense a specific citrus in a marinade.
Everyone remembers Kris Jenkins’ shot at the buzzer to win a national title. Few remember Marcus Paige crumbling into the arms of UNC video coordinator Eric Hoots on the court. Does anyone remember Knightdale’s graceful Ronnie Ash, who came so far only to trip over the final hurdle in Rio?
Imagine what Igor Larionov’s triple-overtime goal early in the morning to essentially win the Stanley Cup looked like from the perspective of Bates Battaglia, sliding on his stomach on the ice in a futile attempt to stop the inevitable.
You don’t forget the look on Zion Williamson’s face when he was denied a chance to go to the Final Four in his one season of college basketball, and without even taking Duke’s final shot. Or the pain lingering in Ralston Turner’s voice when he was told, a week after Raleigh native Anton GIll came out of nowhere to knock N.C. State out of the NCAA tournament, that Gill had already transferred from Louisville.
Over the years, you see enough of this to get numb to it. Almost. There’s always still a nerve to touch, whether by sheer improbability or pure pathos. You shake your head and you breathe in the emotion and you write about it, again.
What happened on that Little League field, though, was that moment when the lidocaine wears off and the dentist just keeps drilling. It was an elimination game. Someone’s season was ending that night, and that moment had arrived in the bottom of the fifth inning, the final inning.
Our heroes were clinging desperately to a one-run lead, with two outs and the bases loaded and a full count — your basic baseball tachycardia-inducer, at any level, with a game and a season hanging in the balance.
The batter swung at the next pitch. He made contact. It was a soft pop-up right back to the mound, a bloop. The pitcher got under it. Time slowed. One can only imagine what was going through the minds of the infielders. Reaching for their caps to celebrate, presumably. The pitcher extended his glove and the game was, imminently, over.
The ball hit the pitcher square on the cheekbone. It’s Little League. It happens.
The poor kid went down like a pile of laundry while the ball skittered toward the opposing dugout. By the time the catcher and third baseman shook off the stun, the winning run scored from second base. Game over. Season over.
As coaches and parents rushed out to the mound to tend to the pitcher, the winning coaches desperately tried to quell the celebration by their ecstatic players. The joy went out of their moment almost immediately as they turned back toward the field. Their cheers faded, replaced by ominous silence. The losing team just stared, faces blank. Even by Little League standards, this was jarring.
The pitcher, thankfully, was fine, in shock as much as anything. Apparently he ended up with a black eye and a bruised ego. Maybe he’ll tell his kids the story someday. Maybe he’s already forgotten it ever happened. Little Leaguers are resilient that way. They have many more games to play and short memories.
Adults do not. No one who was there that night will forget it. It wasn’t a Super Bowl or a Final Four. The Stanley Cup or an Olympic medal weren’t on the line. There wasn’t much at stake. But even in those moments, no matter how bad it is for the losing team, at least someone almost always gets to celebrate. There is joy somewhere even when there is not in Mudville. There was none of that here. It was all just … over.
Sports, at any level, never really lose their capacity to amaze. I’ve seen, watched and written about a million bad losses. I did not expect, on a night off, to witness the worst of them all.
This story was originally published November 20, 2020 at 3:19 PM.
