Ten Years After Bob's Backstop for September 7, 2005

Ten years.

Hard to believe, isn't it?

When Cal broke the Iron Horse's record, I was still running a contract security company, working part-time as a Methodist youth director. I was a still a summer away from my leg injury and subsequent embolism, and loved driving my jet black five-speed Italian-designed Impulse with the Lotus handling package and  turbocharger. The young man whose brother I took to the 2131 game with me was still in a coma after his auto accident of six days prior. I was separated, living alone in my treasured garage apartment in the few remaining wilds of Howard County. Clarksville was a sleepy little rural community, and no one was jostling to be awarded their mailing address. The local hardware store was still in an old surplus Quonset hut. Kurt Schmoke was still considered a comer among young politicos. Columbia Palace Nine was the outstanding movie theater in the area, selling out nearly every show of every film on the weekends. We had finished up our third *REGS" week. Kerry and I were writing bi-weekly columns for the Orioles Hangout under our column title, "Birds in the Belfry."

The Orioles? Still selling out most games in their three-year-old playpen, they were growing into something promising. Rafael Palmeiro had thrown his orange and black hat into the ring, adding his power to the play of Cal Ripken, Brady Anderson, and Chris Hoiles, while a pitching staff that featured Mike Mussina, Ben McDonald, and journeyman Jamie Moyer was providing hope to the local fans. The year under Manager Phil Regan was not going well, but fans from Richmond to York were still optimistic, giddy that the future actually looked as bright as the more distant past.

Today, things are, as always, different. I'm struggling to establish myself as a free-lance copywriter and novelist (though having a grand time doing so.) My bad leg tires easily, and I've undergone a couple of steroid bloats due to back injuries, but considering the alternative of being dead, I really can't quibble. The Impulse is in a junkyard somewhere after going through two used gearboxes in eighteen months, only to not be able to find another one. The young man from my youth group who had been in a coma is finishing up his college studies and working with the disadvantaged, his faith in God and himself still unshaken in spite of all of life's hard turns. His younger brother, the one I took to 2131 to get his mind off of his brother's crash for a few hours, is married; he and his wife are expecting their first child. I, too, am married, to a lanky bicycle-riding Jewish attorney; I gave up my beloved apartment to move in with her six years ago, and we're about to celebrate anniversary number five while looking for a single-family home in Mt. Arey. I still work with kids, though as a volunteer with a church located at the University of Maryland campus. One of the then-kids from my earlier youth group is finishing up her first year of seminary. I drive a boring but reliable four-door Honda.

Clarksville is no longer the sleepy enclave of a gas station, post office, bank, hardware store, and small strip shopping center. It's the most sought-after address in Howard County, with it's own large shopping center and traffic jams both morning and evening. Kurt Schmoke is out of politics, and current Baltimore mayor Martin O'Malley and Governor Bob Erlich have taken his place as the young Turks of Maryland politics.

The Columbia Palace isn't there any more; run out of business by the stadium-seating movie theaters, it's been torn down, a supermarket standing in its place. Kerry, Craig, Meg and I spent another summer suffering through a week of O's games this summer, though Kerry and Meg now do it as man and wife. We're in the midst of our fifth season on our own website, Birds in the Belfry, still covering the O's and MLB. The Baltimore NFL team has won a Super Bowl; the Redskins don't play in RFK any more, but the Washington Nationals do. Memorial Stadium has been torn down.

The Orioles? When Cal broke the record, they were on the cusp of a two-year run as one of the most powerful teams in baseball, a window that was open but briefly partially because of bad luck, injuries, the aged nature of the club, friction and fraction in the front office and in the dugout, and much more. The fans have suffered through the loss of Jon Miller, the hijinks (both good and bad) of Pat Gillick and Davey Johnson, the naiveté of Frank Wren, Syd Thrift, Albert Belle, Doug Drabek, Omar Daal, Shawn Boskie, Robbie Alomar, Ray Miller as a manager, Washington baseball, Lee Mazzilli...the list goes on and on.

But we're still here.

It's a pity the game celebrating Cal's milestone achievement wasn't better attended last night. I never dreamed a few months ago that I would pass up that game. After the collapse of the O's, the firing of Mazzilli, the Palmeiro flap, the Ponson arrests and subsequent release, and the Sammy Sosa debacle, though, somehow it just feels a bit numbing to think about the Orioles there days. The fans have been beaten down by all the losing, all the controversies. I decided (as did many others from the attendance figures) that the best place to celebrate 2131 was not at Camden Yards with some phony huzzahs, but in my mind, where the memories are there, indelible, magical, ready for me any time I want to roll the film. The crisp fall weather, the electricity supercharging the air, the National Anthem by Bruce Hornsby, Cal's home run, Cal waving at Senior and Senior waving back, that spillover of affection and celebration now known as the lap around the ballpark.

We were years removed from Phil Regan selling the lineup card, from the driver of Cal's retirement car trying to cash in on his final "official in uniform autograph", from all the losing, from steroid hearings, from watching a promising if portly pitcher with a ten cent head toss away his potential...it was a night to celebrate what was good about the game. And we did...

...and we do.

It's more difficult to escape to the essence of baseball these days. After all, the very internet and media circus that has given us all this instant access to our games and to each other, is a curse as well as a blessing. Web Gems and other SportsCenter highlights, the explosion of blogs, the desire of too many to tear down the very players they built up, and the all-too-willing collusion of the players whose behavior makes that self-same destruction so easy...sometimes you just want to cover your ears and yell out "I only want to watch the ballgame!"

But it's still there. You just have to look a little harder, listen a little more, perhaps express a strident opinion a little less. Root for the Game as well as your team? I don't know for sure. Perhaps we all have to find the game in a different way, one way for every different personality, every fan. Whatever way you choose, memories of 2131 are certainly a vehicle suitable for most of us.

Whenever I think of that night, magic comes to mind. Few things in life can do that, so for this and many other memories, Cal, we say...Thank You.