Brad Marley

For 30 days, I will be sharing random stories from each year of my life as the big three-oh looms. Consider it my way of coping.

My friends and I spent a large portion of the summer of 2006 at Comerica Park in Detroit.

Something strange and foreign started happening in April of that year, and remained in place until October: the Detroit Tigers were winning.  Actually, they didn't stop winning they lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series.

But let's focus on the positive.

There was a building sense, as the season broke out of the cold spring, trudged along through the sweltering summer and reached its apex as the leaves started to change color, that 2006 was different.

It didn't matter if we were down by ten runs going into the bottom of the ninth; there was never a sense that we were out of the game until the final strike.

And one warm evening that summer, we got to experience first-hand the magic of '06.

The Tigers were playing the Cleveland Indians, who had brought up phenom Fausto Carmona to close games for them.

Going into the ninth, we were losing, but the tying run was on base when ex-Tiger, Pudge Rodriguez stepped to the plate.

You have to understand that by this point in the season, the fans were starting to believe that anything was possible.  Not having seen a winning baseball team in close to twenty years, we didn't totally understand how to act, we just new it was so much better than cheering for the team to not break the all-time loss record.

On that night, they delivered again.

My memory is a bit foggy as to when it happened, but when Carmona delivered the pitch and Rodriguez made contact?  You knew it was gone.

Poor Carmona.  He brought his hands up to his head and crumpled to the mound as if he'd been shot and 40,000 people were cheering his assassination.

I went ballistic.

If you had shown up with no idea of what was happening, you would have thought the Tigers won the whole thing (again, we''re not going to get into that.)

We walked out of the park sharing high-fives with complete strangers.  It was, literally, the highlight of my summer.

***

I was in Mexico on my honeymoon when Magglio Ordonez sent the Tigers to the World Series via a homerun, so I was forced to watch a tape-delayed feed in Spanish.  I imagine I didn't experience the same level of excitement that my friends back home experienced, but celebrating in a hotel room on the Caribbean Sea had to do.

If I wanted to, I think I could have chosen 30 sports moments that have defined my life thus far, but I didn't want to bore you even more. 

But when it came down to choosing an event from 2006, this was at the top of the list.

(Okay, it was a close second.  Getting married was at the top, but this was more exciting.)