The Earth Stopped Cold at Dawn...

In that moment when Derek Jeter could not pull himself up from the infield dirt early this morning I could have snapped my finger from the third row of the third base side box seats and a whole stadium would have heard it. The Captain winced, and he could not get up. If you were wise enough, or resilient enough to be awake this morning when Jose Valverde failed to find one more strike, and Raul Ibanez made him pay for that failure, you'd have seen something historical. The New York Yankees had just become something no one envied. June had just woken after nine innings of slumber with Maggie. Zoey was at Grandad and Baachan's house. I had my face half-buried in a pillow, doing my whole-hearted best to replace it's stuffing with expletives, when The Captain went down. June's eyes popped and became moist. I fell silent, and all of New York felt their shoulders droop, and exhaled whatever inherent hope that Yankee fans are born with. Derek Jeter was being carried off of the field by his own Manager. The Detroit Tigers were returning from the dead just as the wounded were being carted away in the Bronx, and suddenly 1 a.m. didn't feel so late. You can say what you want about Derek Jeter but it's no surprise that he can harvest such emotions. The earth just tipped on it's axis and even baseball haters felt the temperature change and saw the stars disappear. Something historical happened early this morning and some of you didn't see it. Of course, it happened on a baseball field and so, so many people will easily dismiss it as nonsense, but anything that can make seven million New Yorkers turn silent is monumental. I kind of remember Delmon Young's post-season poise rearing it's head, and Drew Smyly stands out as looking like anything but a rookie...a kid...but it's Derek Jeter lying in the dirt that I'll always remember. And Maggie was asleep, and Zoey was away visiting, and it was just June and I watching. Sometimes I wonder why I watch sports...why I allow myself to get so invested, or why the stories keep pulling me back, and then somewhere after midnight this morning I had reason enough to suppress those questions for a little while longer. We just watched something significant happen, and we did it with a few million other people on the planet. Maybe that's how I'll explain such things to my daughters some day? Or maybe I'll never be able to explain it. Whatever happened, it made my wife's eyes water, and set me down in front of this keyboard not eight hours later. In that moment we were all human. In that moment a good many of us felt our hearts sink. I could have snapped my finger from the third row of the third base side box seats and a whole stadium would have heard it. That's a hard thing to forget.