Performer: Neil Young
Songwriter: Neil Young
Original Release: Mirror Ball
Year: 1995
Definitive Version: None
We’re just going to keep
Will’s Travelogue going. This time we’ll stay a little closer to home, and really,
this is more a story where the location is of secondary importance.
When Debbie and I went to
California for the first time in 1995, I’d been to a few destinations, such as
Lake Tahoe and San Francisco, before. They were Debbie’s favorite spots, so, of
course, we had to visit them. I was more excited about the other places that
I’d never seen, such as Yosemite, which I documented already, and Napa.
But I was MOST excited that
year about the baseball playoffs. Debbie and I were so certain the Reds were
going to the World Series to play the Indians in an all-Ohio brawl, we
scheduled the California trip for the early playoff rounds, so we’d be home to
go to the World Series.
It was a completely
presumptuous plan, and, of course, it ended up that when the Reds were swept by
the Braves in the NLCS, we didn’t get a chance to see a single postseason game
in person. That was a bad decision, but at the time, I didn’t worry about it,
because my attention had been diverted Northwest.
Since Ken Griffey Jr.’s rookie
year in 1989, I followed the Mariners a bit, and I saw that they had amassed
some incredible young talent. Although it wasn’t like my situation with the
Chicago Bears, it was similar. By 1993, when they hired Lou Piniella, you could
just see this team coming.
Nothing really happened,
though, and in 1995, it appeared that the Mariners were about to leave Seattle
for greener pastures. They were 14 games behind the Angels and had a public
ballot to raise funds for a new ballpark that seemed all but certain to go down
the drain. Considering Seattle had been the hub of my favorite vacation to that
point, I felt a bond of sadness.
But then, all of a sudden,
the Mariners started winning. For those who don’t remember, when September
rolled around, the Mariners weren’t just winning, they were winning every game,
and most were of the jaw-dropping quality. They didn’t win every game on a
walk-off home run—it only seemed that way.
Well, I jumped firmly on the
bandwagon. I pledged allegiance to Randy Johnson, who loved the Seattle music
scene, and I rooted for the Mariners to do the improbable and make the
playoffs, which, of course, they did in an epic playoff game against the Angels
that was watched in The Dispatch’s Business department.
They played the hated Yankees
in the new divisional round of the playoffs and played the first two games
before we left for California—both Yankee wins in New York. I lost track of the
games a bit on our travel days, but I saw that when the series went to Seattle,
the Mariners evened the series.
The night of Game 5, we were
scheduled to go out with a group of Debbie’s old friends for dinner, so I taped
the game, just in case it turned out to be something worth watching. We went
over to one couple’s house for drinks and then out to dinner at a favorite
Italian restaurant. Just before we got there, I turned to the radio broadcast
to get a score. The Yankees were winning.
The restaurant was crowded,
which meant we had to wait in the bar, which was fine with me, because the game
was on TV. It wasn’t looking good. The Mariners had scored, but the Yankees
still were ahead 4-2, and it was starting to get late.
We were seated and had a
great dinner, but now I was in agony: What was happening with the game? It was
not unlike 10 years earlier, when I was squirming at a joint in Houston
thinking I might miss Led Zeppelin reuniting at Live Aid. But, I wasn’t a kid
any more. I was taping the game …
Oh, to Hell with that. I
excused myself to (ahem) go to the bathroom and took a really long out-of-the-way
route from the bathroom back to the table through the bar. As I got there, the
TV was showing a slow-motion replay of Griffey following through on a swing,
and Brent Musberger said, “it’s all tied up.” The score was 4-4 at the end of
seven. Hot damn!
Well, now I could relax. I
didn’t WANT to know what happened now—I just could rewind the tape to the
seventh inning and watch from there.
It was fairly late by the
time we got home. I figured the game was long over, but I wasn’t going to stop
the VCR until I was sure they were showing the news or something. When I turned
on the TV, I stopped dead in my tracks.
The Mariners just won, I
said to no one in particular, although Debbie was standing right there.
What? How do you know?
Well, they’re interviewing
Edgar Martinez on the field, and the crowd in the background is going
absolutely nuts. That wouldn’t be happening if the Yankees had won.
Sure enough, the Mariners
had won one of the better postseason games of all time just moments before we
arrived home. I watched the game the next day from the seventh inning on,
reveling in the craziness and cursing myself for knowing the outcome. It’s
probably just as well; I couldn’t have handled it otherwise.
I was in a really good mood
when we headed out to Yosemite later that day.
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