When you’ve done something for so long, experiencing something really different is a good thing, even if that experience is a really bad thing. For example, say you are a zookeeper, and for 15 years you’ve tended to the chimpanzees, feeding them, loving them, bathing them. Then one day your favorite chimp, Cocoa, who’s been more personable to you than your father-in-law, attacks you. Cocoa rips your shirt, bloodies your neck, but you escape relatively unharmed.
The attack shakes you to the core, but somewhere deep down you are grateful that the day wasn’t like the countless cloned other days, that the attack gave you some variation in your life and, not to be understated, a cool story to tell the next day.
Well, Cocoa attacked me. And if not for a sweet lady with a sense of humor who introduced herself as a player’s grandmother, Cocoa would’ve had my gullet pinched between its lower lip and gum.
It’s Tuesday, and Carmel is hosting down-the-street rival Libertyville. I know better than to attend a midweek nonconference game, but, having done this for many years, I think I have a better understanding of Cocoa’s reactions than Cocoa itself.
Seventeen walks, nine errors and five hit-by-pitches later, I now stand corrected. At 7:30 p.m., three hours after the first pitch, Carmel led 22-15. The game was called due to darkness. Oh, did I mention the fourth inning had just concluded? The game wasn’t even official. With so many other games being played around the state, no one cares about a suspended game, right?
Moreover, what If I told you that Libertyville led 10-0 after the top half of the third inning, only to see Carmel score 22 runs in its next two at-bats? What if I told you that the game got so slow during the second and third innings that I started timing how long it took a pitcher to throw a pitch? And that my finding in the top-half of the second inning was an average of 28.2 seconds between pitches. Or how about each half inning featured 8.75 batters, essentially the entire lineup for the four-inning contest?
I can honestly say I’ve never seen a game quite like it. We’ve all sat or played through bad baseball games, most of which we’ve purged from the memory banks. This one, though, will stick with me forever.