A truly Once-In-A-Lifetime occurrence

This blog is, on occasion, known to indulge in a little hyperbole. Terms like Earth-shattering or Once-in-a-lifetime may get used a little too often than is probably warranted. This is often the case with most people who write about sports. Males are commonly sports fans AND supreme sentimentalists. They can get caught up in the moment and can lack perspective at moments of extreme excitement.

This is not one of those times.

Yesterday afternoon Brooks Conrad, a 30 year-old career minor leaguer hit a walk-off, pinch-hit, against all-odds, Grand Slam with the Atlanta Braves down three runs in the bottom of the ninth. In the 130 year recorded history of baseball, this has happened only one other time. On July 8, 1950, as the Korean War was just beginning, Jack Phillips hit the first pinch-hit, walk-off Grand Slam (with the Pirates down three) in history.Phillips would finish his MLB career with only nine home runs, Conrad now has five.

Only twenty three men have ever hit a walk-off, Grand Slams with their team down three. Babe Ruth has. Bobby Thomson has. Roberto Clemente? Yup. The last one to do it was Adam Dunn, who is actually paid to hit the ball out of the ballpark, and do little else. And now Brooks Conrad has joined that list, as totally improbable and unlikely as it is. He has even joined a more exclusive list.

More men have walked on the moon than have done what Brooks Litchfield Conrad was able to do on Monday. More sitting Presidents have been assassinated than have hit pinch-hit, walk-off, Grand Slams with their team down three. With the last (and only other) having happened in 1950, it is safe to say this is a once in a lifetime occurrence.

This Braves season has had it’s fair share on hyperbolic moments already. Jason Heyward hit a three-run home run in his first major league swing. A couple weeks later, they got no-hit but Ubaldo Jimenez. There has definitely been no shortage of moments to get caught up in with the Braves this season.

A baseball lover's lament.

Dialogue from Tony Scott's film, the fan:
Gil Renard: Don't get greedy, son. Don't get greedy. What we need now is a sacrifice. A winning team has to know how to manufacture runs. Coop taught me that. He used to say the most beautiful play in the game is a sacrifice fly, and you know why?
Richie Renard: 'Cause you give yourself up for the team?
Gil Renard: And it doesn't even count against your average. That's why baseball's better than life - it's fair.

Soccer is the most popular sport in the world. Football is the most widely watched sport in the nation. Driving down any American street, you will find nearly each and every driveway equipped with a basketball goal of some kind. Each weekend hundreds of thousands of fans flock to the the NASCAR race, whether it be in North Carolina, California or Delaware.

But no sport better embodies the history (and present) of this country better than baseball. Baseball has developed along with the country. Football and basketball didn't gain notoriety until pretty much after America had established itself as the true world power in the forties and fifties. Baseball's rise to popularity began during Reconstruction in the wake of the Civil War. Since then, it has changed with the times and reflected the state of American society.

Shoeless Joe and the White Sox scandal of 1919 came as the country was propelled into the capitalistic prosperity of the 1920s. During WWII, baseball went on a hiatus as the players, along with the rest of the country, refocused their efforts on war. And then, most recently, as all of the nation (and the world) deals with the issues of steroids and PEDs in sports, baseball is at the forefront.
Whereas most sports are representative of a story: an epic give and take that contains an introduction, a rising action, a climax and a resolution, baseball is more of a poem. Each pitch, each play, each inning has it's own separate and significant meaning. Don't believe me? Read this.

Football fanatics will say it is the strategy and war-like mentality of football that makes it the most popular sport in America. Now, a football game is definitely deep in strategy and makes for a very compelling battle, no sport mirrors the ebb and flow of war like baseball. Baseball is a 162-game season. That is a war consisting of 162 battles. A team will not win them all. Actually, they will undoubtedly lose many of them. Some will be one sided, some will not. Some will cost key players due to injuries. Sometimes players must sit in order to survive to fight another day. Managers are much more like Generals than their football counterparts. There aren't specific plays, just nine players that must be counted on to know their part and where to be when the ball is play. There is no speaker in the pitchers hat, only cryptic hand signals that can advise the soldiers on the field.
For the past ten years it has seemed to many that baseball has sunk to a new low. A new, dark time has emerged for the sport. Every few days a new star is found to have taken steroids or HGH. Let's not beat around the bush here, these players are cheaters. Many (maybe even most) have done so, but that doesn't make it right. All baseball fans out there only can hope that years from now things will be straight again and we can look back on this time and be glad that the game emerged better and more pure.