CommentsTHE SERIES, UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL--Almost a day has gone by and I’m still processing last night’s heartbreaking World Series Game 2 Dodger loss, which I attended with my brother Richard, my niece Grace and my son Vin.
Despite the ridiculously hot weather, the game was an instant Fall Classic fall classic, though we came out on the wrong end of it. Certainly many coulda-woulda-shouldas. But then again, baseball is a game of coulda-woulda-shouldas. Nonetheless, as Dodger superfan Beersalt Bob wrote, “That was the most amazing game I’ve seen in person that we actually lost. If you’re going to lose, that’s the way to lose.”
Even though we lost, my brother’s takeaway was: never give up. Our Dodgers didn’t and despite a bullpen meltdown for the ages, they almost managed to come back and win the game. Oh, it was tantalizing. That’s baseball. A blowout loss against Verlander would have in many ways been easier to swallow. But my brother was right: our Boys in Blue never give up and Vin and Grace will hopefully learn from it, learn to embrace the attitude which is also embodied in Apollo 13 flight director Gene Kranz’s motto: never surrender.
My own takeaway was slightly different: don’t pitch fastball pitchers to a team that eats them alive.
Almost a day later, it’s still a loss that stings.
A couple of months ago, little aware of the World Series schedule nor presumptuous about the Dodgers’ chances of playing in it, I had purchased tickets for last night to see the LA Opera’s production of Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles. Vin loves baseball but he also enjoys opera. We gave away last night’s tickets to friends.
In Ken Burns’s landmark documentary “Baseball,” historian Manuel Márquez-Sterling discusses his two passions, baseball and opera, and explains how they are similar despite the superficial differences. As beautiful and brilliant as the production and singing of the opera performed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion last night may have been, there is no way it could have topped in drama and passion what we were privileged to behold at Dodger Stadium. Last night’s game was like the most sumptuous and textured of grand operas, one in which, alas, the heroine dies in the end.
After the game, as we sat in the emptying stadium, allowing the traffic to slowly drain from the Dodger Stadium parking lots, we pondered the turns which had led to the loss and the “if onlys.” If only Puig had caught Bregman’s liner. If only Joc had brought home Cody from third with one out in the seventh (suicide squeeze anyone?). If only Corey or JT’s hard-hit balls had found a hole in the 11th. And perhaps the biggest “if only”: if only Kenley Jansen hadn’t missed 0-2 and given up a homer in the ninth. In 2017 the Dodgers were 98-0 when they went into the 8th with a lead. Kenley is the best in the business and we wouldn’t be where we are without him, but a closer’s gotta close.
Oh, the humanity. Heartbreak.
Sad about the loss, Vin complained about waiting around after the game. I showed him the sea of almost immovable red in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, and we finally slowly moved towards my brother’s car. On the way to the car, we saw the Astro team bus. And then something magical happened.
During batting practice before the game, Vin had gotten a batting practice ball, tossed up to him by one of the Dodger batboys, as the Dodgers were taking their BP. With the ball and a pen, Vin waited, hoping he might get an Astro to sign the ball on the evening of their first World Series victory in franchise history. 
Vin called out to Astro superstar and the likely winner of the AL MVP award, second baseman José Altuve, whom we had seen win the Hank Aaron Award earlier in the evening, not to mention smash his first homerun of the Series off the hapless Josh Fields and break the tie. Altuve had someone come over, get Vin’s b all and then signed it. He then took the time to pose for a picture with Vin and Grace on what was one of the most important nights in Astro franchise history.
José Altuve is easy to root for anyway. He is one of baseball’s class acts. But after witnessing his kindness last night, José Altuve is a player we will root for forever (oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful to see him in Dodger Blue …).
José Altuve’s kindness to a little boy, a Dodger fan who simply loves watching and playing baseball (as a proud father, I will note that Vin plays on the Beverly Hills Little League’s All-Star team) was the pixie dust which turned heartbreak into an evening of wonder, despite the loss by our beloved Dodgers. As he proudly posed with his autographed ball, Vin said happily: “My headache is gone!”
Vinny slept with his signed baseball last night.
What does that tell you?
There is nothing like baseball. Beyond the drama, it is a special connection between people, families, generations, through time and space, intertwined with sacred memories. From Vin Mirisch to Vin Scully to Fernando Valenzuela to Hank Aaron to Joc Pederson, Corey Seager and José Altuve, all of whom provided magical moments last night.
No, there’s nothing like baseball. And Game 2 of the 2017 World Series was an operatic masterpiece which caused our hearts to beat faster, which had us high-fiving and hugging each other, and finally consoling each other.
And we were there ...
Now it’s time for This Team, our Dodgers, to show what they are truly made of, to define and to own the concepts of resiliency and grit and to win this damn thing.
Yes, baseball is more than just a game. The Dodgers are more than just a team. And those who bleed Dodger blue are more than just fans. Indeed, perhaps more than any other civic institution, the Dodgers are the glue that holds Los Angeles County and its 88 independent cities together. Boston may have Red Sox Nation, but we have the Dodger Family, a Community connected by all that is good in baseball. The roots go all the way back to Brooklyn and connect us with those passionate fans and that special place.
Bart Giamatti, the late commissioner of baseball who was also my college president, once famously wrote that baseball “breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.”
Maybe baseball does break your heart. But perhaps more importantly it also reminds us we have one and it exercises that particular muscle a whole lot more than so many other extraordinary and pedestrian pursuits which would bid to be America’s pastime.
There may be no crying in baseball but there sure is passion. There may be no crying in baseball but there sure is irrepressible hope. There may be no crying in baseball but there sure is dreaming. And that, too, is what baseball is all about.
We are all so lucky it’s our game.
Go Dodgers!
(John Mirisch has served on the Beverly Hills City Council since 2009 and twice served as mayor. He created the Sunshine Task Force to increase transparency in local government. John is a CityWatch contributor.)
-cw
