09-11-2009, 03:25 AM
Hearing your stories of the '84 fiasco brought back that unpleasant memory for me. Game 5 was the final nail, but to me, Game 4 was worse. It sucked equally as much as the Bartman game.
Like Alou, I distinctly remember the time and place as if it were yesterday (and it was a quarter-century ago). It was a Saturday night game in San Diego, on my <i>birthday</i>. Because I had just moved to California a few months earlier, my folks and my siblings came out to say hi and celebrate the occasion. My poor dad is a lifelong Cub fan, so the conversation was mostly about the "Cubs are going to the World Series!"
We went out to a restaurant in Malibu (l thought I was living large), and there was a TV set right behind our table showing the game. Nail-biter game, the lead changed hands constantly, weird plays, intensity on every pitch. And, it was just too much going on at once, kind of "stimulus overload" for me; there were celebrities in the restaurant, the waiters were singing Happy Birthday, a lot of the other customers were crowding around our table trying to watch the game.
(And games that intense, I like to watch alone, at home, so I can process it.)
Steve Garvey, though now a Padre, was still hugely popular in L.A., and was getting loudly cheered all game long (there was also a TV over the bar). And the fucker had a monster game (4-for-5, double and homer, 5 RBI). When he came up in the bottom of the 9th, winning run on base and Lee Smith on the mound, I felt unsettled, to say the least.
In '03, the Bartman/Prior/Gonzales thing happened so quickly that I didn't almost realize what happened. In '04, it was exactly the opposite...time moved like a glacier, and that Garvey at- bat was excruciatingly long. When he finally cracked a homer, and the rest of the restaurant exploded with shouting and celebratory clapping.....it just sickened me in a way that no game, before or since, ever has.
Cheers to the Cubs.
Like Alou, I distinctly remember the time and place as if it were yesterday (and it was a quarter-century ago). It was a Saturday night game in San Diego, on my <i>birthday</i>. Because I had just moved to California a few months earlier, my folks and my siblings came out to say hi and celebrate the occasion. My poor dad is a lifelong Cub fan, so the conversation was mostly about the "Cubs are going to the World Series!"
We went out to a restaurant in Malibu (l thought I was living large), and there was a TV set right behind our table showing the game. Nail-biter game, the lead changed hands constantly, weird plays, intensity on every pitch. And, it was just too much going on at once, kind of "stimulus overload" for me; there were celebrities in the restaurant, the waiters were singing Happy Birthday, a lot of the other customers were crowding around our table trying to watch the game.
(And games that intense, I like to watch alone, at home, so I can process it.)
Steve Garvey, though now a Padre, was still hugely popular in L.A., and was getting loudly cheered all game long (there was also a TV over the bar). And the fucker had a monster game (4-for-5, double and homer, 5 RBI). When he came up in the bottom of the 9th, winning run on base and Lee Smith on the mound, I felt unsettled, to say the least.
In '03, the Bartman/Prior/Gonzales thing happened so quickly that I didn't almost realize what happened. In '04, it was exactly the opposite...time moved like a glacier, and that Garvey at- bat was excruciatingly long. When he finally cracked a homer, and the rest of the restaurant exploded with shouting and celebratory clapping.....it just sickened me in a way that no game, before or since, ever has.
Cheers to the Cubs.
There's nothing better than to realize that the good things about youth don't end with youth itself. It's a matter of realizing that life can be renewed every day you get out of bed without baggage. It's tough to get there, but it's better than the dark thoughts. -Lance