Sports bring us back

Resslin' Around, by Casey Ressler

When you step back from the sports arena for a while and then come back, you'll find that you never really left. The faces may change year after year, but a sports fan is a sports fan for life.

After doing sports for three years here, I moved to the Valley Life section. With our sports editor on vacation, I pulled double duty for the last week. When the games start, the feeling is still the same however.

I made it to Anchorage for the Miners game against the Peninsula Oilers. I was there for pictures, basically, and to wrap the summaries up into a concise story. But then, that old feeling came back, and I found my notebook open with notes scribbled in it.

The Miners got a guy on first late in the tied ball game. The next hitter swung away, struck out, and in my notebook I scribbled "no sac bunt?" The inning ended and the Miners didn't score. In the bottom of the ninth, the Miners had runners on first and third with one out, and the Oilers brought the infield in to cut down the runner. As a casual fan, it didn't seem out of the ordinary. But as a passionate baseball guru, I saw several games within the game.

"Conceding steal gives up potential inning-ending double play," my notebook said. "In at the corners and in at second and short." The Miner stole second uncontested on an 0-2 count to the hitter -- a great count for the defense -- and then the Oilers walked the batter intentionally.

"Infield still in, even though intentional walk sets up double play up the middle," I scrawled. "Easy ground ball will win it."

Instead, Joey Hooft struck out for the second out of the inning and Mike Kelly followed with a game-winning single to right. All of the defensive posturing didn't mean a thing in the end.

The whole way home, I analyzed that one inning over and over in my mind. What would have happened had Hooft hit a sharp grounder up the middle? Would have the second baseman or shortstop tried to roll the double play and possibly allow the winning run to score, or would they come home with it? Why weren't they playing at normal double-play depth, when a double play gets them out of the inning?

Passionate sports fans don't see a beginning and an end to games. They see all the little details in between that make up the games we love to watch. Intricate things like a sacrifice bunt in baseball, a blocked shot that changes the game's tempo in basketball or a hard check in hockey that leaves a star player with a shy attitude for the rest of the game.

It's those moments that make sports what they are. Everybody can recognize the importance of a game-winning single, but it's the beauty of the previous hitter managing to move the runner into scoring position by hitting behind him and giving himself up for the team that matter most.

When I finally got home, I had played the inning in my mind a thousand times, moving the fielders around a few times as the manager of the Oilers and doing things differently as the manager of the Miners. I realized that you can take a guy out of sports, but you can't take the sports of the guy. At least this guy.

Casey Ressler (valleylife@frontiersman.com) is the Valley Life editor and sports editor fill-in.