my beloved flying squirrel going first to third on a shallow bloop! Squee.

ETA picture:

(I am so gratified that he has been getting decent coverage this year in my hometown paper despite not being a Met or Yankee)

I still cannot, and no matter what else he ever does I will probably never be able to, see Waino (especially in a road uni) and not have it teleport me back to a gorgeous cool October night, sitting next to the press box, surrounded by "the enemy", savagely sleep-deprived and nerves ajangle, shaking so badly it was hard to focus, and after a long evening of increasing tension and a thus-far nervous breakdown-inducing side -- (the bases were loaded! everyone forgets that) -- everything slowing way, way, waaaaay doooooowwn as he wound up.... and delivered... and ... days later ... it arrived... (I was directly above it, so didn't know til later that it was slow, the nastiest sickest most disgustingly filthy curve you have ever seen: how can something so vile be so beautiful?) ... weeks passed, months, and nothing happened... and then ...at the slowest pace of anything that has ever happened in the history of time .... Welke pivoted left ... Yadi began to leap like a frog set afire but, in seeming defiance of known laws of physics, did it in ultra super slo-mo... after several miscommunications my eyes finally persuaded my brain that yes, Welke was ringing up Beltran... yes, that same terror-in-the-heart-striking, Cardinal-killing, postseason heart-breaking Beltran who I'd been beyond certain would do it again... my brain deduced that he had not... figured out what that meant... and then it was all over but the screaming.

I still get waves of chills just thinking about it. Just writing this is making my heart pound and my eyes prickle. I still can barely even look directly at a picture like this - it almost hurts. I feel the shadow of a threat of it not having really (yet) happened.



Because of the game situation and the way that series had evolved and ...everything else, for me it is now and I think will forever be exceeded in passion of recall only by being at Game 5 of the 2001 World Series, being nearly crushed by the wall of sound, jumping up and down and feeling the stadium almost come down after, well, you know.