The Trolley Dodger

The blurry picture above was taken exactly one year ago today, at 11:07:55 PM on September 18th, 2006. My camera was on extreme zoom. Myself and thousands of my new closest friends were on extreme zoom, too. My wife Denyse, stepson Hans, and friend Alex were yelling and screaming next to me.

Nomar Garciaparra had just hit a walk-off homer in the 10th inning of the most amazing game any of us had ever seen. The picture-blur approximates what I was seeing right then rather well, as I was wiping away tears at the time.

This was before the days of the Trolley Dodger blog, when I was writing Dodger content for my Celsius1414.com website, so my reaction to the game appears there in an article simply titled “11-10″.

Inner Reserve, Section 20, Row U, Seats 1-4. Jumping up and down, hollering, high-fiving everyone around us. Music blaring, crowd roaring louder and louder, white uniforms clustered around homeplate…

As we come down to another NL West photo finish in 2007, I can’t help but think back to the heady emotions of that night.

It’s amazing to think of the actors involved:

• Of the four 9th-inning home-run hitters (Jeff Kent, JD Drew, Russell Martin, and Marlon Anderson), only two are still on the team.
• The Dodger pitcher who gave up a run in the top of the 10th, Aaron Sele, is no longer on the team.
• Kenny Lofton, who got on base in the bottom of the 9th and was subsequently brought home by Nomar’s blast, is no longer on the team.

Those flashbacks I talked about in “11-10″ still happen if I think back to that night. As I wrote then:

I remember screaming “NOMAR!” over and over. Some unintelligible hooting. Occasionally, I threw a “DODGERS!” in. I don’t remember much else except that the walk back to the car was more of a floating hover as fans yelled and honked at each other.

In the car, we would hear Nomar interviewed, spending more time talking about his teammates than himself, more time talking about the 9th inning heroics than his 10th inning miracle.

But the image that will perhaps stick with me the longest, a moment that happened simultaneous to the picture above, was of Vin Scully giving the boys a standing ovation from the press box.

That gives me chills even now.