Echoes From The Field
Episode #9 -- Down for the 19th time

San Diego Padres vs. Colorado Rockies Friday, July 9, 2004, 7:05 P.M. Petco Park, San Diego

As another year turns over in my personal history books, so do I return to the dream that is the heart of everything.

I've always wanted baseball tickets on my birthday. It's appropriate, I suppose, that if I'm going to celebrate being born, I should do it with the people who made it possible for me to live. Really, you can't talk about who I am without talking about the heroes in my life -- Tony Gwynn, Adam Eaton, Mark Loretta, Brian Lawrence, Jake Peavy, and on and on. For me, too, it's a moment to stop and pay tribute to them for what they've done in my life. I stand as part of the family one more time, to live in supporting them, and also to celebrate the living we've already done.

Well, I'm nineteen years young today, and I'm headed to the destiny of Downtown.

Granted, it's not the best time to be going home. Just two days ago, I was throwing up my hands in disappointment at the fact that I'd miss Adam by a mere 24 hours. Knowing the cruel fate that befell him, however, I'm not quite so disappointed. If anything, I'm thinking, almost knowing, that my being by his side might have changed it all, but that I was powerless in that respect. Now, all I can do is put my faith behind David Wells, with whom I have no such special powers, and hope for the best.

The drive down is a good time for me to think over what is now nineteen years with the Padres organization. Unsurprisingly, though, it's this year that stays at the forefront of my mind, if only because of the nine billion philosophical implications I've managed to put on the simple design. The Padres of 2004, with the young blood of Sean Burroughs, Khalil Greene, Jake Peavy and the like, are now more than ever my contemporaries. A new stadium, a new season, a new team -- it's not just baseball this year. It's coming of age and holding the future in our hands.

Sometimes I get chills just thinking about what we can do.

We have new seats tonight for the special occasion: about five rows back in the left-field porch. The view is interesting and different, and I sit there realizing I'm about to see a lot more of Sean and Xavier Nady, who's tonight's left fielder, than I ever have before.

At least in X's case, that holds true. He goes three for four, including a long ball in the seventh that gives us a one-run lead. I remember back to when I used to see him and Jake and Khalil Greene all at Lake Elsinore, when we were so much younger and still trying to find ourselves, and smile knowing we've all grown up and taken destiny in our own hands. If they can do this well, there has to be hope for me, right?

David "Boomer" Wells is very good, only giving up three runs over his time with us. We beat the daylights out of Shawn Estes for a three run advantage in the beginning, but it's a battle back and forth all night. We go into the ninth leading 4-3.

That means it's Trevor Time.

In the Padres hierarchy, if you want to get religious, Tony Gwynn is God, and one step below him is Trevor Hoffman. There's nothing this man can't do. He is positively brilliant.

Even Trevor's human, though, and he allows a go-ahead two-run blast by Mark Sweeney to put the Rockies up, 6-4. I guess there's a lesson in there about respecting that not even Trevor Hoffman is indestructible.

Fate is not kind to me, either. Going into the ninth, we pretty much empty the bench, and Ryan Klesko scores a run to pull us within one. With two outs and runners at the corners, though, Khalil Greene strikes out. It's as if fate decided to tempt me until the very last second before smashing my heart into a million pieces. I feel the first urge to cry -- I have no idea where it comes from, but I assume it's from knowing the pain that's heavy in the hearts of my boys as I watch them leave the field.

My father and I get into a discussion about why Klesko, who's not fast but not slow either, wasn't pinch-run for. "Why didn't you use Adam Eaton," he asks, which in my head is the nail in the coffin.

Great, we've lost, now please remind me that I could've seen the man I adore on this team more than any other, and just to make it hurt more, make me realize he probably would've scored that tying run, too.

The idea of Adam coming on to grace me with his presence and tie up the game but for being denied continues to haunt the back of my mind, and by then I'm so depressed I don't really bother to write much of this piece until the coming day. If there was one game I wanted these boys to win this season, this was probably the one. Not because it had standings implications, though we could've picked up a game on L.A. Just because of what it meant in my scheme of things.

There's nothing I can do about it though, I tell myself. They gave it their best. There was a great effort out there. And hey, I even saw my name on the scoreboard. That doesn't happen every day.

It's once in a lifetime, too, that you meet men like these and walk with them.

On this night fate was cruel, but in this year, we are rising and still have so much left undone. Given what I've seen and done already, I manage to placate myself. It's not the end of the world. Tomorrow, I tell myself, Brian Lawrence will make things right, and Sunday, I'll have a chance to fix my end of the deal as well. Nineteen years, after all, is just the beginning.