No. 929 – The Dolphin’s Cry

Performer: Live

Songwriter: Ed Kowalczyk

Original Release: The Distance To Here

Year: 1999

Definitive Version: None

After the Reds’ brutal collapse at the end of the 1999 season denied me my first postseason game, I regrouped and set my sights on Atlanta. When World Series tickets went on sale, I bought two in the upper deck. Now all I had to do was root for the Braves to make it there.

This was a risk to be sure, because the Braves had failed on their previous two attempts to make it back to the World Series, and I had lost $30 on my Ticketbastard bet that the Reds would make it to the playoffs. (For the uninformed, if you buy postseason tickets from the box office, and the team doesn’t make it, you get your money back minus Ticketbastard’s bogus service charge. This is not unlike the vig you pay at a Vegas sports book—Ticketbastard ALWAYS takes a piece of the action regardless.)

But it was a chance worth taking. First, the Braves had a good team. Second, I had free room-and-board at Debbie’s aunt’s house in Sandy Springs, north of town. The drive was only 9 hours from Columbus. It was a perfect set-up. I went for Game 1 on a Saturday, because I wanted to see the introductions and the teams all lined up on the first- and third-base lines.

Now all that needed to happen was the Braves to weave the wicket that the Reds could not and make it there. They had ripped through Houston in three straight and were up 1-0 on the Mets. It looked good.

It looked even better when they went up 3-0. I was one game away from my first postseason game—and a World Series game at that. But when the Mets were 2 innings from being eliminated, they got their game together. They pulled out Game 4 and won an epic Game 5. I was at work for Game 6, and before anyone knew what was happening, the Mets had scored 5 runs. What in the name of the Curse of Will’s Postseason Bid was going on here? First the Reds, now the Braves?

Dave, of course, was in heaven. To say he’s a Mets fan would be like saying Kim Kardashian doesn’t hate attention. Dave is MetsGuyInMichigan; he bleeds Mets orange and blue. The Mets, of course, had put the final nail in the coffin of the Reds season—not that the Reds ever should have let them have that chance, but that’s a different story. Now they’re going to do the impossible and climb out of a 3-0 hole to kill my postseason bid a second time?

No. The Braves weren’t ready to roll over. They got the 5 runs back. The Mets went back ahead; the Braves tied it up. The Mets again went in front; again the Braves said, not tonight, not this year. The Mets—AGAIN—took a lead in the 10^th. (This was turning into a pretty amazing series, but I was in agony and getting next to nothing done at work.) But the Braves tied it and loaded the bases. They—and I—were 90 feet from going to the World Series.

Now Dave might have a slightly different opinion about what transpired next, but from this writer’s vantage point, I saw Kenny “The Great” Rogers throw an immortalizing pitch high and wide on a full count to Andruw Jones. No sooner had the pennant-winning run scored on a walk-off walk that I was on the phone to Debbie: WE are going to the World Series.

Somewhere some poor soul might have been calling (OK WAS calling) Rogers every name in the book, but I was doing the Yes-Yes dance with joy. And because Live had just put out a new album, I’d have something to listen to on the drive.