People (ie, Fans) Have the Power
Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2024 6:17 pm
It's time I get back to writing up the most memorable baseball games I've attended in my life to date. I thought, by now, I'd be about 12 deep into the 15 or so memories I jotted down at the beginning of the season, but considering how I planned on doing this in, at least as I had remembered the games, sequential order, I got scared about trying to remember anything remotely accurate about this game.
What's important about this memory is what it taught me, which is that fans could have an effect on a game. I knew I'd been to probably 3 dozen games by this point in my life, but this game was when something magical about our role in the outcome, at least as I choose to perceive it, hit home.
All I could remember, or so I thought I'd remembered, was the following:
1) The Phillies were playing the Braves in the mid-'70s, when the Braves had those cool uniforms with the white triangle with the logo in the middle of their hat. As I mentioned in my 1972 piece on Mike Lum and the end of Lefty's winning streak, the mediocre Braves of the early-to-mid-70s had a lot of fun players. I was years away from hating those Bobby Cox teams and that stupid tomahawk chop.
2) My brother and I somehow moved down from what were likely Skydeck seats at the Vet to seats at field level, right alongside the third base bag.
3) At a key point in the game, probably toward the 9th inning or even in extra innings, all the people in our new section alongside third started ragging on the Braves' third baseman. I could see his face, but for the last 3 months, I'd been unable to remember his name. All these years later, it feels like the first time I got totally caught up in ragging on an opposing player. It was a powerful feeling.
4) As we ragged on this mysterious third baseman, he made an error that led to a tying or go-ahead run. Then, I thought I remembered, he made another error, as our ragging reached new heights.
5) The Phils would win that game and for the last 50 years or so, I have sincerely felt like the 300 or or so rabid fans in our hijacked section who ragged on this third baseman were responsible for the win.
So, how the heck would I figure out which game this was and see if I could find a box score to back up, or contradict, what I'd remembered?
I went to Baseball Reference and looked up the 1975 Braves. I thought the Phillies were pretty good when this happened, and they were pretty good by that time. I didn't see the third baseman I couldn't quite peg on the 1975 roster. I went back to 1974. Nope!
I went ahead to 1976, the year in my life when the Phillies finally made the playoffs. I didn't think my brother and I could have snuck down to such choice seats during a banner year like 1976, but there was my third baseman: Jerry Royster!
I looked up his fielding record in the Game Log section and found a game where he made 2 errors. I drilled down and found THE MOMENT in the bottom of the 5th in what had been a 1-1 game! Royster made back-to-back errors that led to the Phillies taking the lead. The Phillies would go on to win 4-1. It wasn't near the end of the game nor in extra innings, as I had "remembered" things, but it would be the beginning of the end for the Braves that night.
I can hear our section mocking him all over again. I don't recall anyone being rude or disrespectful outside the bounds of the fun rudeness that is allowed in sports mockery, but it felt powerful then, and it still feels powerful today. My mind leaps ahead to a game from 2007, or so, where Reds RF Jay Bruce botched a couple of balls as we went wild. Then, I leap to a 2008 NLCS game between the Phillies and Dodgers, in which Manny Ramirez jogged out to his position in leftfield at the start of the game as a PSA against steroid use coincidentally went up on the giant scoreboard overhead. Oh man, don't judge me, but that feeling of politely going for blood as a fanbase makes me feel alive!
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxe ... 8110.shtml
What's important about this memory is what it taught me, which is that fans could have an effect on a game. I knew I'd been to probably 3 dozen games by this point in my life, but this game was when something magical about our role in the outcome, at least as I choose to perceive it, hit home.
All I could remember, or so I thought I'd remembered, was the following:
1) The Phillies were playing the Braves in the mid-'70s, when the Braves had those cool uniforms with the white triangle with the logo in the middle of their hat. As I mentioned in my 1972 piece on Mike Lum and the end of Lefty's winning streak, the mediocre Braves of the early-to-mid-70s had a lot of fun players. I was years away from hating those Bobby Cox teams and that stupid tomahawk chop.
2) My brother and I somehow moved down from what were likely Skydeck seats at the Vet to seats at field level, right alongside the third base bag.
3) At a key point in the game, probably toward the 9th inning or even in extra innings, all the people in our new section alongside third started ragging on the Braves' third baseman. I could see his face, but for the last 3 months, I'd been unable to remember his name. All these years later, it feels like the first time I got totally caught up in ragging on an opposing player. It was a powerful feeling.
4) As we ragged on this mysterious third baseman, he made an error that led to a tying or go-ahead run. Then, I thought I remembered, he made another error, as our ragging reached new heights.
5) The Phils would win that game and for the last 50 years or so, I have sincerely felt like the 300 or or so rabid fans in our hijacked section who ragged on this third baseman were responsible for the win.
So, how the heck would I figure out which game this was and see if I could find a box score to back up, or contradict, what I'd remembered?
I went to Baseball Reference and looked up the 1975 Braves. I thought the Phillies were pretty good when this happened, and they were pretty good by that time. I didn't see the third baseman I couldn't quite peg on the 1975 roster. I went back to 1974. Nope!
I went ahead to 1976, the year in my life when the Phillies finally made the playoffs. I didn't think my brother and I could have snuck down to such choice seats during a banner year like 1976, but there was my third baseman: Jerry Royster!
I looked up his fielding record in the Game Log section and found a game where he made 2 errors. I drilled down and found THE MOMENT in the bottom of the 5th in what had been a 1-1 game! Royster made back-to-back errors that led to the Phillies taking the lead. The Phillies would go on to win 4-1. It wasn't near the end of the game nor in extra innings, as I had "remembered" things, but it would be the beginning of the end for the Braves that night.
I can hear our section mocking him all over again. I don't recall anyone being rude or disrespectful outside the bounds of the fun rudeness that is allowed in sports mockery, but it felt powerful then, and it still feels powerful today. My mind leaps ahead to a game from 2007, or so, where Reds RF Jay Bruce botched a couple of balls as we went wild. Then, I leap to a 2008 NLCS game between the Phillies and Dodgers, in which Manny Ramirez jogged out to his position in leftfield at the start of the game as a PSA against steroid use coincidentally went up on the giant scoreboard overhead. Oh man, don't judge me, but that feeling of politely going for blood as a fanbase makes me feel alive!
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxe ... 8110.shtml
