Dispatch from the Rockies, Or: The Best 16-1 Loss I Ever Saw

It was, on the scoreboard, the Ballers’ worst loss of the season. And not by a little. It broke the (second) twelve-game winning streak. The B’s didn’t score a run until the ninth.

And it was all my fault.

It might have been the advance team work preparing for the B’s visit to the Rocky Mountain Vibes while I was up in Rocky Mountain National Park.

It might have been me chatting with our esteemed manager before the game, refusing his humble suggestion that the team’s success had something to do with luck. “One twelve-game winning streak is luck,” I said. “But not two.”

It might have been me going into the broadcast booth in the third inning, talking about grandparents and grocery store carts when I should have been praying to the Ball Gods or sacrificing my voice, Ariel-and-Ursula style, for a few extra runs.

It might have been me putting my rally cap on too early or too late, or it falling inside-out into my Vibes Fries™, which we know negates any effect.

However I let us down, I did, and I apologize to B’s Nation.

But.

Apart from that score, one that will be flushed away tomorrow regardless of that outcome, such is the impatient glory of baseball, it was one of the best nights I’ve ever had at a ballpark. Sitting next to Ballers fans from Colorado, meeting B’s fans from the Bay like me who were visiting family here along the Rockies, a Vibes fan asking what a B is (like, the alphabet?). Contemplating the weirdness of the “In-N-Out double(double)-play” outside of California or the poop bags near the dugout before realizing the bat-dog was not working tonight. Seeing a broadcast come together with a Cullenesque effortlessness: a few prison scratches on a scorecard, an open laptop, a head full of knowledge. My parents, perhaps using streaming YouTube for the first time, listening as rapt Watson to Graham Bell, and then sending, to me, this email:

We have been, take your pick—lucky, blessed, fortunate, rewarded, entirely-appropriately-compensated-for-our-talent-and-grit—with an unbelievably successful season on the field. We’re the best team across all professional baseball, and losing now feels strange, like waking up from a too-long nap. But if you’re a B’s fan, if you’re an Oakland sports fan, you know that’s only part of the game. As my friend Russ—who made me love baseball to begin with—noted, the players were up on the rail of the dugout the whole game this balmy Colorado night. No one checked out, but no one panicked either. Standing up and talking to each other and watching close mattered. (I sat behind an MLB dugout a week ago for a team with one of the best records in that league and famously bad chemistry and none of the players spoke to each other. The whole game.) Tonight, it might be a favorite position player tossing two innings up on the mound or the parade of persistent hustle down the first base line, another eagle-eyed coach’s challenge or a whip-throw that didn’t get the runner but might next time, or the million things I couldn’t see sitting in the second row as a guy who stopped playing baseball when he was ten, became a writer, and then unwittingly cursed his team, all this that is not lost in a loss.

I went to my first B’s away game in the preseason, down to San Jose for the Battle of the Bay 2.0. Then, as now, I am reminded through absence of all that is special about Raimondi Park. It’s not just a diamond but a block, Campbell and Wood and 18th and 20th, with spires down Willow and over to Prescott Market and all the places the Ballunteers and players touch around the Town; it’s a game and a party and a dance-off and a summer camp and food crawl and farmer’s market and an adoption event and a bike auction and a music video and comic con and a chess tournament. This we have seen all year. Raimondi as feeling, Raimondi as (lowercase) vibe.

But as this magical season rolls on, even and maybe especially over a bump like this, I think more about how this team brings us together even when we aren’t together. We are bound now not just by the results or even by the park but by the accumulation of all the little things that start feeling like something big. Players and coaches talk about flushing the bad game, the bad at-bat, the error in the field. So much of the game and of life we can and must forget to make room for something better. But when you’re at that better, when we are here, now, rubbing our eyes to make sure this steady magnetism of wonderful moments is not forgotten, we get to hold tight and forever. When they talk about a season to remember, they’re talking about when and how you were too. You (probably likely mostly) don’t curse the team or will them to victory, but you are there, and you get to decide where. I, at least, will remember this loss along with the very best of the wins, just like each of you will remember who you were with, what you cheered and prayed and groaned, how you danced and why you believed when the Ballers kept reminding us what special feels like.

Overheard at blocktickets PARK:

His parents, both tall. He was [universal hand sign for not-tall]. When he was growing up, his sister was taller than him. And then one year…he just grew and grew. But don’t tell him I said his sister was taller than him. - A certain family friend discussing a certain B’s closer’s family height secrets.

A certain B’s player, on deck, asking a certain group of fans for assistance.

• Do you all have any bug spray?

• No, sorry.

• I’m getting eaten alive.

• I can cover you in Diet Coke, that’s all I’ve got.

  At the State Farm “Build Your Own Bobblehead” Booth

  Cool hair, kid! How long have you been growing it? That’s about as long as I’ve had my State Farm office. Can I talk to you about State Farm?

• Take me out to the ball game

  Take me out with the crowd;

  Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,

  I don’t care if I never get back.

  Let me root, root, root for the BALLERS,

  If they don’t win, it’s a shame—

• —Oh, it’s a shame.

  A certain B’s coach with a slight edit to tonight’s singing of the ballpark classic.

Best Promos:

A dental-inspired cleaning of the bases by a young child with a gigantic four-foot toothbrush.

Taste of the blocktickets TOWN:

The Vibes Fries, which poses two timeless questions without answers:

1) Is a meal a meal if you just put all the good toppings (cheese, sour cream, salsa, onions) on fries?

2) If you physically can’t stop eating something despite repeated messages from your brain, are you no longer alive?