Rounding Third

​In baseball as in life

​By Zach Hively

Two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. Game Seven of the World Series. The opponent’s ace throws me a heater. I murder it! The crowd goes bonkers as I win the championship for the Kansas City Royals. After celebrating, I fetch the Wiffle ball from the other side of the house, and I set up to win it all over again.

​If each of these imagined championships of my boyhood had earned a real flag, the house would have looked like the United Nations.

I let go of that dream a long time ago. I was not skilled enough to be a world-class baseball player. Or, more honestly, I was unwilling to put in the time to find out whether or not I was good enough. I built fresh dreams atop my fantasy of baseball stardom. Write a world-renowned column. Write great novels. Write anything else I damn well pleased, but write it evocatively and maybe even change the world with it.

Those who really and truly push themselves know how much effort goes into spinning hay into gold. The Royals’ erstwhile left fielder, Alex Gordon, was the type of athlete who spun that gold into platinum. He dedicated himself to baseball at a level I wish I would offer to my writing, or to anything, really. Others have penned stories in actual respectable sports sections about the one time he broke his dietary regimen to eat a hamburger. His dedication transformed him from a top-prospect bust to one of the silent stars of a short era in the 2010s.

Back in 2014, he lived my old dream. His Royals were down 3-2 in Game Seven of the World Series. Two out, bottom of the ninth inning. Gordon faced the Giants’ best pitcher—a pitcher on the threshold of legend—a pitcher whose name we dare not speak.

That the Royals would play in the playoffs at all, let alone on this stage, boggled the oddsmakers. The Royals were mediocre at best in July of that year. They had no standout star. Not even Gordon, whose biggest, most reliable successes were on defense, which fans and analysts both tend to overlook. Then, to lean on a cliché, something clicked. So much of the team stood out in overlooked ways that people started looking.

The Royals turned scrappy and resourceful. They figured out what they do best, and they played that way, even when it went against current baseball conventions.

A bunch of guys having fun suddenly plaused the implausible. They earned the team’s first playoff berth in twenty-nine years. They won the Wild Card game after their win probability was literally three percent in the eighth inning. They won seven more straight to reach the World Series.

Forget pigs flying and hell shivering. Anything was possible. I felt it. I mean, just look at me: I was writing a weekly column and had already secured multiple publications—hey, two is a multiple—pleased to run it. Solid accomplishments. More pieces of ether made tangible.

Then, with Alex Gordon at the plate, the whole magical season reached its final out. No one on base, down by one run. The first pitch was a strike.

The most finessed storyteller could not craft a more perfect way to play out this postseason. All the seeming restrictions of life frayed and fell away, turning reality beautiful and glorious and completely ridiculous.

The second pitch, Gordon swatted into center field.

The ball touched the grass. A two-out single. The slimmest deli slice of hope.

The center fielder missed the ball. It skittered to the wall. Gordon sped up for second base.

The left fielder bumbled the ball against the wall, buying a couple seconds more valuable than a lifetime of fandom. Gordon ran for third base.

The left fielder corralled the ball and threw it to the shortstop. The Royals’ third base coach read the tea leaves in an instant—Gordon’s speed, the shortstop’s arm strength, the distance of the looming throw—and he hoisted his hands up into the air. He wanted Gordon to stop.

What do you do? You work hard for years for one goal: maybe a World Series ring, maybe a book. If you’re very fortunate, the universe sets up the grand opportunity, or a whole Rube Goldberg of opportunities, just for you. Then, the universe does what it does best. It pulls back its hand, takes a step into the shadows, and lets your own actions determine the finale.

Comedies and tragedies are the exact same stories until this final beat. Everyone ends up in love, or everyone ends up dead. You live forever, or you disappear. In these big moments, you get one or the other. There is no compromise.

Alex Gordon listened. He stopped at third base.

The next batter popped out in foul territory. Game over.

The third base coach made a rational call, and Gordon very defensibly trusted him. He put hope on a respirator for one more batter. He put his faith in his teammate to hit another baseball even though, win or lose, his dash would have been pantheonized.

Probably nine times out of ten, he’s out.

But one time out of ten, he lives forever.

Listening to the base coach is the smart choice, every time. I survive by listening to the conventional wisdom of my own inner base coaches. Play it safe. Don’t throw away your chances. Never make the final out on the basepaths.

Game Sevens are not conventional. Big moments are never safe.

When an entire lifetime of striving is on the line, hope has no value. The universe will not hand you victory. You go for it, or you sit on your heels.

For all my emotional investment, for all I didn’t sleep that night, I was zero percent pissed that Gordon did not run home. Time and patience softened this blow when those improbable Royals won it all a year later. But even before 2015 retconned the tragedy of 2014, I played out a fabricated memory of his running home, over and over and over. I still do. Even when he’s out by a mile, I am proud of him, this person I will never even know.

That year’s Royals team showed me the value of fun, and amazement, and wonder, and dedication, and a fair bit of bravado. The season is long over, the band is broken up, and yet they continue to inspire me.

​Here I am, rounding second once again. I’m always and perpetually rounding second. But when I get to third this time, I’m blasting past the base coach. I may get thrown out by twenty-five feet and silence the stadium. Analysts may pick apart my boneheaded decision. But I don’t care. I’m through living for hope. The dash for home is the play I want on my highlight reel.
Safe or out, there’s always next year.