It was about 51 degrees last night in San Jose. There was rain on and off through the night, one of those light-and- misty rains that the wind can pick up and blow under an umbrella. And it was windy. It was the kind of weather that could make someone think, “Man, I’d rather be inside watching basketball on TV instead of at a minor-league baseball game,” before regaining their sanity.
The Game That Wouldn’t End: An Instant A-Ball Classic
There were some people who stayed for all 18 innings of last night's game between the San Jose Giants and Stockton Ports. There had to be. There always are. No matter what the situation -- say, a the home team suffering a 19-1 drubbing -- there are always people who refuse to leave a baseball game. In the bottom of the ninth inning of last night’s Indians/Royals game, there was an audible "Let’s go Royals!" chant right until the last pitch.
There are a variety of reasons for people to stick around for 18 innings, I’m sure. Some people might be cheap; if you pay for nine innings, giving back any of those nine innings feels like throwing cash back at the ticket window, and refusing free baseball is just wasteful. But the reason that most people stuck around is because it was baseball. If there was something better going on than baseball, they weren’t in the loop.
It’s not an original thought to say that baseball is the best sport because it’s the only one without a clock, but it takes a game like the Giants/Ports to remember why that makes a difference. People who stay to watch a quarterback kneel in the grass three times are just stubborn. But in baseball, there’s always time for a comeback. There’s always time for anything. And when the game stretches to 15, 16, 17 innings, there’s always time for one team to break a tie. But after four hours of sitting in wind and rain, there had to be some fans who would have paid some money to get those four hours back when the Ports took the lead in the top of the 11th.
Then the Giants came back with a run in the bottom half. And after four-and-a-half hours of sitting in the wind and the rain, even more people would have paid even more money to get that time back when the Ports took the lead in the top of the 13th. But again the Giants came back with a run in the bottom half.
In the top of the 18th, though, when the Ports scored three runs -- five-and-a-half hours after the game started -- I think I would have openly wept if I were there. You stay at a game that long because you’re hoping for magic. It’s more than rude for the road team to ruin that; it’s downright hostile. When Michael Choice doubled home the ninth Ports run of the night -- in a game that went into extra innings tied at 4-4 -- there were a lot of San Jose Giants fans questioning their own ability to make intelligent decisions.
Well, “a lot” is a stretch. I’m just guessing, but a hundred or so fans would be a fair estimate. It’s possible that there were more people there working. The announced attendance was 1,057, and by midnight you’d think several hundred of those fans had left. And you can’t blame the decision made by those who stuck around on the alcohol; beer sales stopped hours and hours before that 18th inning.
When the Giants rallied for four runs in the bottom of the 18th, when Wendell Fairley scored the winning run on an error, those dozens of fans had the right to celebrate like they had just watched Sid Bream slide across home plate. They had the right to jump around like idiots, stop for champagne on the way home, and turn on ESPN when they got there, wondering where the post-game interviews were. The word epic is overused, but that was an epic baseball game.
So here’s to those fans, those dozens of fans, who stuck around. It’s like they won a lottery that every baseball fan chipped in on. Everyone who stuck around for nine innings of the 19-1 blowout last night chipped in a little bit. Every fan who stuck around for 18 innings only to watch his or her team lose chipped in a little bit. And last night, the pay-out was pretty sweet.
The moral of the story: Baseball is cool. Really cool. It doesn’t take a lot to remind us of that fact, but something like last night’s Giants/Ports game grabs us by the lapels and smacks us around with it for a while.
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