The Walk-Off

On June 9, 2007, the Tar Heels traveled to Tuscaloosa, Alabama to play the University of Alabama Crimson Tide, the winners of the Atlanta Regional in a “Super Regional” best of three series. Bama had beaten Troy twice to advance and would host the Super Regional against the Heels, and the winner would move on to the NCAA College World Series in Omaha.

Unlike North Carolina, Alabama is a traditional baseball powerhouse as evidenced by the comparative seating capacities of their baseball stadiums. Alabama’s Sewell-Thomas Stadium seats 6,118, while “The Bosh” holds about half that many spectators in Chapel Hill. I watched the game on ESPN and noticed maybe two hundred Carolina blue shirts and caps sitting together, as if on a lifeboat, in a sea of crimson. I wished for a moment that I had gone to Tuscaloosa to see the game in person, but with my recent fishing trips and an entire weekend of regional tournament games at The Bosh fresh in my history, I was pushing Vicki’s consideration of her husband’s sports addictions to its rightful limits. In fact, just watching the game on TV as she read on the bed next to me was pretty risky. We had been married for thirty-two years and I really wanted to see thirty-three.

Before the game, there was much discussion of Carolina’s highly vaunted pitching staff. Andrew Miller had just been selected with the sixth pick in the first round of the draft by the Detroit Tigers. There had been much speculation that he would go first overall. Andrew would start the first game on Friday night. Daniel Bard was the 28th pick overall by the Boston Red Sox and would start the second game.

Miller was unstoppable in the first game. Cavvy led off with the perfect at-bat, fighting off Bama’s previously undefeated starting pitcher for nine straight pitches, ending with a single. After Shelton flied out, Josh Horton, my favorite Tar Heel, batted third in the top of the first inning and drove the first pitch deep over the right field fence for a two-run lead and the Heels never looked back.

Josh was a sophomore All American shortstop batting over .400. That’s an amazing achievement at any level of baseball. Josh, Chad Flack and about a half dozen other baseball players rent a house across the street from my home. He’s an extremely polite and well-mannered young man who waves to me as he drives through the neighborhood and called me “Sir” on those rare occasions we have spoken.

In addition to winning my respect with his character and play, I probably root for Josh because I once played shortstop, too. It was Little League in Dawson Springs, Kentucky. After much begging, the coach, my best friend’s dad, moved me to short. I believe I was there for about an inning before he moved me back to the outfield. If I could have been a baseball player, though, I would have wanted to play shortstop.

“Fedex”, Mike Federowicz, also homered that inning and the team put up a total of seventeen hits. Carolina won the game 11-5, with Bama only able to make it look respectable by scoring a few runs in the late innings, well after the game had been decided.

Seventeen hits and a 95 mile-per-hour fastball are a deadly combination and the Alabama crowd spent a subdued evening in the stands. The crowd was still quiet at the start of game two on Saturday evening and they faced another top draft pick in Bard.

Cary’s girlfriend joined us for dinner. We grilled steaks and ate on the deck, enjoying the fabulous Chapel Hill weather that was partially responsible for our decision to move here. We sat under a perfect blue sky with the temperature in the low eighties and no humidity, just the kind of dinner I envisioned when I thought about how my retirement would be.

After dinner, I washed dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. By seven o’clock, I folded the damp dish towel, dropped it onto my clean kitchen counter and wandered up the stairs to find Vicki already settled on the bed with her book and a curled up ball of orange tabby lying beside her. Marco was well into his early evening nap.

When penguins find a hole in the ice, they line up single file and push the penguin at the head of the line into the hole. Then they wait, so the story goes. If the penguin returns to the surface soon, they assume that the area is free of leopard seals and other predators and they all dive in to feed. If the first penguin doesn’t return, they go looking for another hole in the ice.

I pushed a penguin into a hole in the ice.

“Honey, I may watch a few minutes of the Carolina game.”

“OK.” She didn’t even look up.

The first penguin had returned to the surface unscathed, so I turned on the TV, honestly planning to watch only an inning or so.

Daniel Bard’s start was disastrous and the laugher twenty-four hours earlier seemed like it was ages ago. Bard hit three batters in a row, loading the bases, and then walked in a runner. I have never seen a worse start. I felt terrible for the kid, having just become a millionaire with all the glory and glitz of the major league draft, only to fall on his face on ESPN. He got out of the inning without major damage, but Bama was able to score a run without a single hit.

Bard’s pitching woes continued until Coach Fox pulled him with two outs in the third inning. It was not the kind of night anyone had imagined for the usually outstanding young pitcher. Alabama led 2-1.

Bama had base runners every inning and the bases loaded on several occasions, but they were unable to score more than a single run each time. The Tide led 4-2 at the end of the fourth inning when Vicki laid down her book and looked at the TV.

“Sounds like they’re having a tough night,” she said.

“You know, they are. Nothing is going right for Carolina, but they only trail by two runs. That really isn’t bad, all things considered.”

Vicki went back to her book and I continued to watch in quiet pain through the middle innings. Then in the eighth inning, all hell broke loose.

Trailing 4-2, Carolina’s Reid Fronk was hit by a pitch to lead off the inning. Josh followed with a single. With two men on, Chad Flack crushed a three-run homer over the scoreboard in left field to put Carolina in the lead for the first time all evening. As usual, the entire Carolina team met Flack behind home plate for a round of high-fives after he touched ‘em all.

The small Carolina contingent cheered wildly in the stands, and so did I. I jumped off the bed, threw my fist in the air as the camera tracked the ball’s flight into the night and screamed, “Yes! It’s gone!” Vicki looked at me like I had lost my mind, a look I had seen thousands of time while watching my beloved Kentucky Wildcats play basketball on TV. Her look no longer fazed me.

Five thousand Tide supporters couldn’t believe it. With one swing of the bat, Alabama’s star freshman pitcher, Tommy Hunter, who had put on a beautiful performance for seven innings left the game with the potential to go into the record book as the losing pitcher. The crimson-clad fans sat in silence as the team escorted Flack back to the dugout. Jay Cox singled and Benji Johnson doubled him home for a 6-4 Tar Heel lead.

The Tide fans weren’t quiet for long. A few minutes later, in the bottom of the eighth, the Tide’s Alex Avila, who had recently gone something like oh-for-2006, hit a three-run homer to put Bama back on top 7-6.

I felt deflated, but apparently Chad Flack did not. Carolina got a runner into scoring position, but Josh struck out swinging and Carolina was down to its last three strikes. The Tide fans stood and cheered for their team to get the final out and force a game three on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Flack walked over to an assistant coach and said, “We’re not going to lose this game.” (An assistant coach later confirmed this story, according to the local newspaper.) He then stepped up to the plate and drove a walk-off two-run homer over the fence, the right field fence this time, for the second consecutive inning.

As the ball sailed into the night and Bama’s right fielder turned and ran backwards toward the fence, I again jumped off the bed, waved my fist in the air and screamed, “Is it going? Is it going? Yes!”

Cary and Eric had joined us in the bedroom after my eighth inning screaming episode and had decided to watch the end of the game. Cary and I exchanged high fives and the two of them laughed at my inanity.

Vicki smiled. “Dirk, please. You’re scaring the cat.”

Again, the Carolina team waited for Flack to round the bases and touch home, but this time, instead of a round of high-fives and an escort back to the dugout, the entire team devolved into a huge human pile of screaming college baseball players on top of home plate, celebrating their upcoming trip to the College World Series in Omaha.

I believe the last Alabama game was one of the most amazing baseball games I have ever watched. I have watched many over the years and Chad Flack’s personal performance was among the very best I have ever seen.

I watched Bucky Dent, a fellow Kentuckian by the way, hit his game-winning homer for the Yankees in Fenway Park. I watched Tony Perez of my beloved Big Red Machine do the same thing in the same park for an eventual World Series win for Cincinnati. Probably the most heroic at-bat I ever saw, maybe anyone ever saw, was Kirk Gibson limping to the plate for the Dodgers to hit a come-from-behind home run to beat Oakland in the World Series.

Now, granted, these were in the Majors, not college. But they only did it once. Chad Flack did it twice in consecutive innings. His three-run blast in the eighth should have won the game, but when it didn’t, he just walked up to the plate and did it again in the ninth.