FanPost

Most Memorable Game: 2012 ALDS, Game 1

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There are a lot of favorite and memorable games I thought about writing on for this post. Last game played at Memorial, playoff games as an unsupervised teenager in 1996 and 1997, taking my stepson to Game 1 of the 2014 ALDS - I've probably got a sappy essay no one wants to read for all of them. But I'm writing about a playoff game we lost instead.

I hardly got to watch any baseball at all in the 2012 season. I was living in Richmond, Virginia and my job at the time involved 12-15 hour days, 7 days a week. Some of the only games I watched on TV were when I made the 3 hour drive up to Baltimore to take care of my dad. He was going through his 2nd round of chemo and radiation for a cancer that had started in his mouth, but spread first to his lymph nodes and then on to his lungs and bones. I'd work on my laptop in front of the TV while my dad napped on the couch, periodically waking up when the Orioles did something good.

So for much of the season I followed the team by checking box scores, and reading headlines on Camden Chat. As the season went on, I was growing increasingly vexed that for the first time in a long time there was clearly something magical happening with the O's, and I was missing it. I was missing not just the games, but the shared experience of living in the area for it - talking to oldsters in line at the grocery store about last night's game, or even hanging out in the comments here.

By October, work was crazier than ever, and I was up in Baltimore after one of my dad's chemo treatments, scheduled to drive back to Richmond the evening of Game 1 of the ALDS against the Yankees. The plan was to just listen to it on the radio in the car. I really had to get back to the office.

But that morning, my dad came down to breakfast and said, "I can't go. But I'll be goddamned if someone in this family isn't going to this playoff game." After minimal debate, I decided I could just drive back pre-dawn the next day, and a single ticket was purchased from StubHub.

It didn't occur to me until much later, but this was all a repeat of 1997, when my dad couldn't afford 2 tickets, but damnit, someone in the family was going even if he couldn't. So he pulled me out of school for the day and I went by myself.

I don't even remember that much about the in-game details, it was all such a blur. But my memories of the night are forever.

During the long rain delay that preceded the game, tens of thousands of people wandered happily around the concourses, high-fiving and making conversation in line. Cold, wet, but all in mutually joyful disbelief that they were at an Orioles playoff game again. It was like being at a family reunion full of complete strangers in orange and black. During the delay, I joined CC-er zknower, who texted to say his seat was under the upper deck overhang, and relatively dry. Game time came around and no one ever came to claim my seat (a Yankees fan, probably) so I got to scream my head off in the company of one of my oldest internet friends.

Even though we lost - through chance, weather, and the sheer stubbornness of my father, everything I'd been missing all season was fulfilled beyond my wildest imagination.

My dad passed away a couple of months later. I've always been grateful to the 2012 O's for showing him some magic one last time before he left, and I'll always be grateful to my dad for making damned sure I got to to experience the magic too.

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