Anniversaries

Some things you don’t forget, or throw away.  Five years ago on Saturday, Clare was a freshman at Elmhurst, the only freshman to crack the starting lineup.  In fact, that afternoon she was batting cleanup, as befits a player with five homeruns. It was Senior Day and the last two games of the season.  If the Bluejays swept Carthage, they would make the postseason tournament in the first time in fourteen years.

The score was 1-0 Carthage going into the bottom of the seventh.  The first batter up singled.  The next batter was one of the graduating seniors, a very good hitter the coach didn’t want bunting; she lined out to right.  That brought up Clare.  As soon as she went into a bunting stance, parents—not me, other people—yelled, “What are you doing?  Don’t have her bunt!  She could hit a homerun.” Clare laid down a perfect sacrifice, 1-4, on a 1-0 pitch.  (I scored all of Clare’s high school and college games, counts included.  That should give the grandkids something to puzzle over thirty years from now.)  The next batter struck out, and Elmhurst did not go to the postseason.  Oh, in the first inning of the second game of the doubleheader, Clare homered off the same pitcher.

Four years ago today, at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, my daughter pulled off a really neat trick in her eighth at-bat of the day.  As to the first seven, five of them were outs swinging at the first pitch.  We argue about the last at-bat.  I say she swung at the first one, my daughter says No.  Either way, Elmhurst was down by a run in the top of the seventh, one out and one on.  Clare swung and hit a ball that went over the fence and ended up in short right field of the adjoining baseball field.  One of the fathers who live streamed the game said the Lawrence announcers were pretty much dumbfounded by what they had just seen.  The next day, again on Senior Day, Clare went two for three with a double, a run scored and an rbi in a game that clinched Elmhurst’s first postseason appearance in fifteen years.   

Five days later in the tournament, Clare hit another first pitch over the fence in left.  The ball must have gone at least 275 feet; add another 150 to get a rough baseball distance.  That was a thing of beauty, as was her final at-bat on Senior Day two years ago yesterday, a game-winning two-run double off the right field fence.

I hate how with each anniversary things get further away.