Some Things Are More Important Than History

He didn’t care that it was a no-hitter. He simply wished the Yankees to win.

More than 5 hours after we arrived at Yankee Stadium, my 9-year-old son, Wes, had waited in line for an hour in a rainstorm, collected his coveted (reproduction) 1998 Yankees World Series ring, talked me into shopping for him a T-shirt, visited the Gluten Free Grill twice, mourned the season-ending damage to Jasson Domínguez, cheered Aaron Judge so loudly that his voice was getting hoarse and disregarded each single point out I made that Corbin Burnes, the starter for the Milwaukee Brewers, was throwing an unimaginable recreation.

While the rain delayed Sunday’s recreation between Milwaukee and the Yankees solely quarter-hour, the soggy circumstances endured by means of the early innings and Burnes, the winner of the National League Cy Young Award in 2021, had the Yankees baffled.

After two innings, I texted a Brewers fan to say I used to be nervous the Yankees could be no-hit. He replied that Milwaukee didn’t have the offense for it to matter.

After 10 innings we each regarded prophetic, because it was a 0-0 tie and the Yankees had not managed a single hit off Burnes or the relievers Devin Williams and Abner Uribe.

But Wes, carrying his glove and sitting within the 200 stage for the primary time, didn’t care in regards to the historic significance of the second. When I attempted to elucidate the rarity of what we have been seeing — that within the a whole bunch and a whole bunch of video games I’d attended, as a reporter and as a fan, that I’d by no means seen a no-hitter in individual — he shrugged and mentioned he simply wished the Yankees to win.

After almost 20 years of watching the sport professionally, worrying loads about deadlines and what the sport’s end result would imply for both workforce, it was an unimaginable reminder of what it means to be a fan above all else.

When Milwaukee’s Tyrone Taylor lastly drove within the recreation’s first run with a single within the eleventh, Wes didn’t flinch. Oswaldo Cabrera, his fifth favourite Yankee after Judge, Anthony Volpe, Giancarlo Stanton and Gerrit Cole, could be up within the subsequent inning.

Did it matter that Cabrera was a second-year utility participant who got here into the sport hitting .207? It didn’t. After all, Gary Phillips had written a function in The Times in regards to the pearl necklace Cabrera wears, and the one factor that bothered Wes was that we had left his reproduction of that necklace at dwelling.

When Cabrera doubled in a run to tie the rating and finish my likelihood at watching a little bit of baseball historical past (whereas additionally getting me off the hook for a deadline story), Wes wasn’t even a bit stunned. I feel I obtained a “Sorry, Dad,” however he didn’t imply it.

In the twelfth, Milwaukee managed two extra runs and the stadium began to empty. I joked that they’d all run again to their seats as quickly because the Yankees hit a two-run homer and Wes, not understanding that I used to be joking, nodded. “They’ll look like IDIOTS.”

On the fourth pitch of the twelfth inning, Stanton made them appear like idiots. His game-tying, 419-foot two-run homer to heart subject despatched the remaining crowd right into a frenzy and earned me essentially the most earnest hug I’ve had in ages.

The solely second all day during which Wes appeared involved was when Anthony Misiewicz got here on to pitch for the Yankees to start out the thirteenth. You see, Misiewicz will not be on the Yankees’ roster in MLB The Show 23, so Wes didn’t know loads about him. Luckily Misiewicz, pitching for his third workforce this season, was as much as the problem, holding issues tied.

As the underside of the thirteenth began, Wes was on his toes for Cabrera to win the sport. On a protracted day that had concerned ready in so many alternative methods, we needed to wait yet one more batter. But Kyle Higashioka, who didn’t even enter the sport till the tenth, obtained to be the hero, crushing a double to left that scored Everson Pereira to win the sport.

The subsequent a number of minutes have been principally leaping and screaming as Frank Sinatra sang “New York New York.”

We walked out of the Stadium, 6 hours 24 minutes after we’d arrived, with Wes saying it was the best recreation he’d ever seen.

And his father, having been so unhappy to have missed his likelihood to lastly see a no-hitter however so glad to have watched his son get all the things he wished, obtained a present of his personal: Sarah Langs, M.L.B.’s inimitable numbers wizard, posted to social media that it was solely the fourth time in main league historical past {that a} workforce had been no-hit into the eleventh inning and proceeded to win.

We hadn’t seen a no-hitter. We had seen one thing higher.