and Words
Slip slidin’ away
Slip slidin’ away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you’re slip slidin’ away
I know a man
He came from my home town
He wore his passion for his woman like a thorny crown
He said Delores
I live in fear
My love for you’s so overpowering I’m afraid that I will disappear
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
I fell in love in the spring of 1982. This love oscillates in ardor since then, but it endures. That love was for the game of baseball. Before that, I knew nothing about the game, save some basic mechanics. I didn’t even know how to read the line score. The letters R, H and E atop the numbers were a mystery.
A major league team had done dismally the previous year, next to last in their division. The Atlanta Braves had no reason to believe that their fortunes would change in 1982, until it did. It started with the insignificant practice games of spring training. Some would claim that it was a fluke. It was merely momentum that carried their winning ways into the regular season. It carried them to a 13-0 record. This baseball team, the target of some jokes, broke the record for most wins starting a season.
It was during those 13 games, from April 6th to April 21st, when I first became fascinated in baseball. It was also during that time when I started to root for this team that was too naïve to know that they shouldn’t win. It’s an affinity that I’ve kept through decades, into their 2021 World Series win! 😀
That said, this 1982 baseball season mimicked a soap opera set on a baseball diamond. If it was movie, it would’ve been a bad movie because no one would believe it. There was, of course, the aforementioned start of the season, which still defies any logic. Though this season also included bizarre plays that you may never see again.
A truly surreal play bookended the start of the season. It was during that thirteenth game when I watched a play where a ground ball hits a Braves runner. It was the bottom of the ninth and the Braves were behind by one run. The runner stood on second base, when Brett Butler hit a routine ground ball to shortstop. The baseball seems to take a bad hop and skip into the outfield as the runner passes, though it actually strikes his shoe. The umpire ruled the runner out; it was the second out of the inning, yet they managed to magically win that game.
I don’t remember another baserunner struck by a batted ball since that day, not in decades of watching baseball. I still remember the broadcaster yelling “Bad hop!” into the mic before the umpires deciphered what actually occurred on the field.
The Braves built a comfortable cushion with that phenomenal start. Even with a season as long as 162 games, many teams may take advantage of such a lead and simply play conservatively, though as I mentioned, this season was a soap opera. The Braves enter into a double header with the division rivals Dodgers on July 30 and lose both games. In fact, they lose 19 of their subsequent 21 games. Those games weren’t merely losses; they were heartbreaks. Botched plays like dropped fly balls and missed exchanges on routine double-play grounders tainted many games. Three consecutive extra-inning defeats by the division rivals Dodgers felt like nails on the figurative coffin. I was transfixed watching every game. If this baseball team was a train, I was watching it derail in slow motion over weeks.
Eventually the bleeding mercifully stopped. They finished off the season playing about 10 games over .500, but that’s not the end of the story. They needed literally every single game to win the National League West pennant. Their adversaries for that division? The Los Angeles Dodgers. Every single win and every single save mattered.
The 1982 baseball season ended as dramatically as you might expect, with another bizarre play to bookend the end of the season. The final day of the season started with the Braves maintaining a one game lead in the division, the narrowest of margins over the Dodgers. If the Braves won in San Diego, it wouldn’t matter how the Dodgers played against the Giants. Shortly after the Braves got a one run lead, the Padres get a runner on first base. A batter then hits what looks like a routine ground ball to the middle infield, it looks like a double-play ball. The second base umpire is unable to dodge the batted ball; the ball is dead in the infield. Instead of getting two outs, both runners are safe. This instance of umpire interference opened the floodgates.
The Padres end up scoring five runs in that inning. This is literally the only time I’ve ever seen this occur in a game in decades of watching. As the Braves lose this final game of the season, it cuts their division lead to ½ game over the Dodgers, who continue to play against the Giants. The Braves shuffle into their locker room to watch the remainder of that game. The Braves players crowd around the television in that visiting locker room, all collectively rooting for the Giants to win this single game. They all cheer in unison as Joe Morgan hits a three-run homer to give the Giants the lead. The Braves win the pennant, and they douse locker room in champagne. It was glorious!
Naturally, the Braves were eliminated on the first postseason division series against the Cardinals. There was a game started by Phil Niekro in the division series, where the Braves led. The umpires rain delayed the game just short of the five innings to make it an official game. Sadly, the umpires elected to simply call the game, so that great pitching performance was annulled.
And just like that the magical season ended. It seems like it was just yesterday.
In 1982, Ted Turner owned the Atlanta Braves as well as the TBS network. Though few knew at the time, Turner engaged in a little experiment where a film crew followed the team for the year. The result was a groundbreaking sports documentary called “It’s a long way to October”. This documentary aired shortly before the start of the 1983 season. It was phenomenal and heartbreaking. As they recounted the events of that marathon losing streak, they played this song by Paul Simon.
They interspersed the verses “Slip slidin’ away” with clips of the players upon each devastating loss. Every time I hear this song, I return to those weeks in August of 1982, but I wouldn’t change a thing. Whoever said that there’s no crying in baseball is a fool.