{"id":2158,"date":"2011-09-29T17:17:44","date_gmt":"2011-09-29T21:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=2158"},"modified":"2011-09-29T17:26:48","modified_gmt":"2011-09-29T21:26:48","slug":"one-for-the-memory-banks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=2158","title":{"rendered":"One for the Memory Banks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sports is one of those things that is always there, no matter where we are in our lives \u2013 what our \u201cjoys\u201d and \u201cworries\u201d happen to be at that time.\u00a0 Sports keep going.\u00a0 Games are played.\u00a0 And, memories are made.\u00a0 Most memories fade away and are lost in a sea of sports recollections.\u00a0 But others \u2013 a select few \u2013 mark points in time like signposts and never fade away.\u00a0 A lot of these \u201csignpost\u201d events are specific to the individual, what team he roots for, where she happens to be at the time.\u00a0 But, others are independent of outside factors and are unconditionally indelible.\u00a0 To the true <\/em>baseball fan, last night \u2013 seemingly out of the blue \u2013 was one of those nights that will never be forgotten.\u00a0 It was a phenomenal representation of the wonderful dichotomies constantly permeating through the greatest sport on the planet.\u00a0 Last night in baseball was, at the same time, wildly unpredictable, yet cooly logical.\u00a0 It was an intense, heart-racing and dramatic culmination\u00a0of an eternally long season that demands, above all,\u00a0perseverence, persistence, and patience.\u00a0 And, our Shakespearean drama was acted out by quite the\u00a0variety of players \u2013 some with nothing to lose, some with everything to lose, and still others stuck with the cruel task of balancing \u201cthe integrity of the game\u201d with their own self-interests and the even crueler task of figuring out which was which.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What made last night special for those that really let themselves be taken by it was that the human condition was on display.\u00a0\u00a0We watched as Freddie Freeman grounded into a double-play, ending his otherwise excellent rookie season without the playoff appearance that had almost been a forgone conclusion just a month ago.\u00a0 We watched as another collapse – this one by the highest-paid team in the league – unfolded over five hours in rain-soaked Camden Yards.\u00a0 In the end, the juggernaut Red Sox left, heads in hands, while the 69-win, last place Orioles celebrated like they had just won the World Series.\u00a0 We watched as the Tampa Bay Rays – the AL East’s forgotten stepchild that keeps rising up and taking shots at the prodigal sons – erased a 7-0 deficit in 2 innings.\u00a0 They even had a 2-out, 2-strike pinch-hit home run in the bottom of the 9th to force extra innings against the big, bad Yankees, who basically played their entire AAA team, using 10 pitchers in 9 innings.\u00a0 And, we watched as our own Phillies won a game in 13 innings that didn’t matter at all to them, yet meant everything to their opponent (with injured and tired guys like Chase Utley and Hunter Pence coming through in a game that they may have been better off sitting out) to secure the best record in the history of the franchise and put their manager alone atop the all-time Phillies wins list.\u00a0 Oh, and the culmination of all of these stranger-than-fiction storylines came in about a 12-minute span right around the stroke of midnight.<\/p>\n

It was absolutely fascinating, and I can honestly say that that was a night that I will never forget…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sports is one of those things that is always there, no matter where we are in our lives \u2013 what our \u201cjoys\u201d and \u201cworries\u201d happen to be at that time.\u00a0 Sports keep going.\u00a0 Games are played.\u00a0 And, memories are made.\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[568,718,16,319,18,62],"class_list":["post-2158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb","tag-braves","tag-orioles","tag-phillies","tag-rays","tag-red-sox","tag-yankees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2158"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2160,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158\/revisions\/2160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}