Ben Blatt - I Dont Care if We Never Get Back: 30 Games in 30 Days on the Best Worst Baseball Road Trip Ever

I Dont Care if We
Never Get Back

I Dont Care if We
Never Get Back

30 Games in 30 Days

on the Best Worst

Baseball Road Trip Ever

Ben Blatt and Eric Brewster

Grove Press

New York

Copyright 2014 by Ben Blatt and Eric Brewster

Jacket design and illustration by Meryl Natow

ll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or .

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-0-8021-2274-2

eISBN: 978-0-8021-9216-5

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

Contents

Are We There Yet? No.

New York Yankees

Pittsburgh Pirates

Philadelphia Phillies

Boston Red Sox

Strike Out Sleeping

Washington Nationals

Detroit Tigers

Milwaukee Brewers

Its Zero, One, Two Strikes Youre Out

Arizona Diamondbacks

Kansas City Royals

Minnesota Twins

Chicago Cubs

: A Game Played By Nine Men and Nine
Dads Doing Laundry

Baltimore Orioles

Miami Marlins

Tampa Bay Rays

Cincinnati Reds

Cleveland Indians

Atlanta Braves

St. Louis Cardinals

Take Me Out to the Ballgame,
Unless Im Already There

Texas Rangers

Los Angeles Angels

San Francisco Giants

Seattle Mariners

Los Angeles Dodgers

San Diego Padres

It Aint Over Till Its Over 30 Times

Oakland Athletics

Colorado Rockies

Houston Astros

Chicago White Sox

New York Mets

Toronto Blue Jays

For Walter Solomon, Stephen Blatt,
and our friends at 44 Bow Street

Preface

With one out in the fifth inning on June 15, 2013, Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Alex Cobb threw a cutting fastball to Kansas City Royals first baseman E. J. Hosmer. It was the 4,123rd time in 15 days wed seen a 108-stitch leather ball hurled 60 feet 6 inches from the pitchers mound to the batters box. In the span of those 4,123 pitches, wed seen the ball hit the catchers mitt, the umps mask, the backstops net, the dirts chalk and, among other parts of the batter, his bat. From there the ball ricocheted off fielders gloves, outfield walls, fair play barriers, grandstands, foul poles, dugouts, adverts, vendors, coaches, fans. Some were never heard of again, smuggled away to the bedrooms of children to be placed on the altars of youth. Others, hit too hard and by enemy bats, were sent back to the field. A few retreated to the protective pockets of umpires. And the rest, all finite victims of infinite paths, were returned to the pitcher.

The 4,123rd pitch took a shortcut.

Eric remembers the pitch with perfect clarity because Eric was angry. After 15 consecutive days of slimed and sugared ballpark food, he had finally found a barbeque stand hiding in the corner of Tropicana Field. Despite no particular love for barbeque, the stand promised him what seemed nothing less than revolutionary within stalking distance of home plate: food that wasnt fried. Reassuringly overpriced to the tune of $12, the BBQ grilled chicken called to him like poultry with a phone. So when the park employee broke his twenty and handed him a cardboard plate with two thin strips of maybe-chicken and enough fries to rebuild a potato, Eric saw nothing but lost calories heaped upon a lost dream.

According to the calendar, it should have been the halfway point of our road trip, Game 15 of 30 in as many days. But it wasnt, of course. Like any good schedule, it had blown up long ago. And this had been more than just a good schedule. It was the best scheduleat least according to Erics best friend, Ben.

Bens 22 years on earth had been spent obsessing over baseball and math. He used his lifetime of focused quantitative education to calculate what he claimed was the optimal way to visit all 30 ballparks in 30 days, and had somehow convinced Eric to help him make it happen. Wandering around the other side of Tropicana Field in search of a hot dog and beerwhich he considered the optimal baseball foodsBen struggled to come to terms with the imperfections in the diamond of his algorithm. Eric saw nothing but 90-foot diamonds of dirt.

The trip had sickened Eric to the point of a refined psychosis, a looming sense that each and every ballpark was out to spite him, masterfully constructed to shorten his fuse till thered be nothing left to light. The drunks got drunker, the fatty food fattier, the innings stretched on and on. Soon he discovered within him the power to change the course of the games themselves. If he hadnt slept in a day, he could make a game meander into extra innings. If he fell asleep in the stands, he could make the game end on the spot. The little things built up and towered higher than the sickly yellow foul poles, obscuring his view no matter where he sat.

So when he paid $12 for a $3 meal, he was angry, because those $9 were going to a gargantuan professional sports conglomerate hed conditioned himself to despise. And when he was angry, he was always on the lookout for other things to be angry about, because it was a tragedy to let such passionate anger die.

Consequently, in a rare moment of in-game awareness, Eric happened to actually be paying attention when Cobb threw what happened to be the 4,123rd pitch of our trip. In 141 hours of driving during the prior 14 days, wed covered 9,032 miles and endured 131 innings lasting 2,625 minutes alongside 449,465 other spectators. Five days earlier and 1,250 miles away, wed already seen Hosmer hit and score a run.

But this time around, the ball cracked off the barrel of Hosmers bat and traveled two-fifths of a second at the speed of 102 miles per hour straight to Cobbs head. The impact could be heard from the second tier in the grandstands, the sum total of the play a swift crack - crack , as though a 38-inch wooden stick had blasted the ball not once but twice. Except that the second crack belonged to a human head. Cobbs hands shot up. He collapsed to the ground.

A few things happened then. The ball, still playing baseball, rolled back toward home plate. Rays catcher Jos Lobatn scooped it up and threw it to first to record the innings second out. The umps called time as medics rushed to the mound, followed by the infielders, then the outfielders and coaches and then Hosmer too. The players knelt around the mound like protectors of the realm, soldiers in a daily battle waiting for a knighting that might never come. A few prayed. Most just stared. Those off the field clung to the dugout railing, holding their own heads in half-conscious awe, perhaps wondering how they got off so lucky. Cobb, for his part, was alive and kicking, his dirt-stained legs shooting through the indoor air as blood dripped out from his right eardrum.