I was witness to something last week which may have never happened before in Major League Baseball.
Four of us – Al, Kent, Mike and me – made our annual pilgrimage to Seattle. The aims are simple: do some shopping, ignore our diets for a few days, and, most importantly, catch some Mariners baseball games
As usual, Kent and Mike did the driving on the highway and Kent did the driving in Seattle.
I have to say, as I do almost every year, how well-mannered in some respects American drivers are. We may have pulled on to the rightmost lane of a six-lane freeway, but no matter what speed traffic was going (which could be anywhere from about 100 km/h to a dead stop), if Kent signalled for a lane change, it usually wasn’t long before another driver slowed down and let us in.
Ignoring our diets was easy to do, given the number of great places we’ve found to eat in Seattle over the years. We were at a new hotel this year, and it was incredibly close to a number of the restaurants we like, as well as a Barnes & Noble bookstore and a Silver Platters, which is a place to find old and new music, movies and a whole lot of other stuff.
The staff at the restaurants we went to didn’t know us, but that didn’t stop them from treating us as friends and having some fun. At lunch one day, Al ordered a burger and said, “No barbecue sauce, please.”
The server entered it on his notepad, saying “Double barbecue sauce, got it.” When Al glanced up at him, the server had a big smile on his face.
The highlight, of course, was the ballgames. It was Seattle against Cincinnati, two teams going nowhere this season. No real reason to get excited about the games, but this is baseball, and I was watching with three friends who are all huge baseball fans.
Seattle had called up a few players from the farm team for the games, and one of them was an outfielder named Kyle Lewis.
He started the first game we saw, went out in his first big-league at-bat, then came up in the fifth inning with the Mariners still looking for their first hit, down 2-0.
A few seconds later, the no-hitter and the shutout were both gone, with Lewis hitting his first Major League home run.
Big thrill, obviously, and his parents were there to see it.
Flash forward to Wednesday. Going into the seventh inning, Lewis and Seattle are both hitless. A walk and a hit-by-pitch put two batters on base for Lewis.
You guessed it – his second home run in two days.
So let’s look at this. His first two Major League are home runs, and both broke up no-hitters on consecutive days.
I have no idea how to look up if that has ever happened before, but until proven otherwise, I’m going to say I was a witness to baseball history.
It can happen anytime, anywhere. That’s why I love the game.