Baseball

At first it didn’t register what I was seeing as I walked by the bar. However, when I realized what I was witnessing, not only did I get shivers up and down my spine but goose bumps as well.

 “Is this really happening?” I thought to myself. Indeed it was. I looked around me on the street, looked in the bar, hoping that I would find someone who was just as confused, just as astonished at this incredibly significant historical moment. At 9 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 25, on a very pleasant, breezy South Florida night, I was walking by a gay bar in South Beach that had Game 6 of the World Series between the Marlins and Yankees on EVERY one of its TVs.

No club videos, no circuit party footage, no porn, but baseball. And inside the bar, were not just lesbians, but actual gay men in watching and cheering on the Marlins in the World Series. I would have been less shocked had George Steinbrenner said that he just wanted his team to have fun and not worry so much about winning. I started running. I mean, if Laundry Bar had the game on, what did the rest of Lincoln Road look like? Had Fish Fever gotten so big that it hooked South Beach as well?

Now some of you may think, what’s the big deal, gay bars all over show sporting events every now and then, and heck there are even gay sports bars in some cities. True, but in South Beach the word “sport” is usually associated with how quickly you can get your tank-top off on a dance floor or walking from a club to your new friend’s hotel.

On Lincoln Road, some bars had set up Giant TVs outside to watch the game. Trendy spots, like the hipster lounge/restaurant Touch, were virtually empty because they had no TVs showing the game. For one brief shining evening, ALL of South Florida was united, from Coral Gables to South Beach, to Ft. Lauderdale, to Boca. Everyone was watching or at least aware of the fact that the 11 year-old Marlins franchise was playing the Yankees, and the Fish were just one win away from the most improbable World Championship since the ’69 Miracle Mets.

As I squeezed my way into Finnegan’s, the only South Beach watering hole to consistently show all the baseball playoff games, I felt an electricity in the air, that certain indescribable feeling of a disparate, nonchalant community and populace coming together, cheering for the home team. When I moved back to Miami just over a month ago, the first thing I did was buy playoff tickets to the Division Series against the Giants because I thought it would be fun to go to a playoff game or two.

At the time the Marlins hadn’t even clinched the Wild Card so I made sure that my tickets were refundable in case they fell short. I certainly wasn’t prepared to bleed teal over the next month as the Marlins took their fans (old and new) on a wild postseason ride. At each stage along the way, I held myself back from totally believing in this team because what they were doing was so improbable, so unexpected. I found myself wondering: “Could I really get behind a team and expect them to win vs. worrying about how they would lose?”

I passionately love baseball and college football. As a life long Atlanta Braves fan I’m accustomed to postseason failure and have become a little jaded regarding baseball, just as I have about gay dating. As a South Carolina alum, I’ve learned to take losing in stride and hope against all hope that “Next Year” will be the year. Thanks to the 'Cocks and Braves, I had long given up my teams winning the big one. I find myself, more often than not, expecting the team I pull for to somehow lose, to blow it.

This Marlins team won my heart and the hearts of millions here in South Florida (and maybe the non-Cubs fans around the country) with their unselfish play, their commitment to baseball fundamentals (defense and pitching), their scrappiness, their lack of fear, and their complete unwillingness to ever give up. Their Game 4 victory against the Giants was a pulsating, thrilling baseball game that left me in a good mood for days.

However, even just as I hopped on the bandwagon, I was ready to hop off when they got down 3-1 in games to the Cubs in the LCS. I attended Game 4 of that Series as well, a disheartening 8-3 loss to the Cubs and I sold my tickets to some overzealous Cubs fans, thereby missing the turning point of the LCS: Josh Beckett’s 2-hit, complete-game shutout of the Cubs that gave the Marlins some much needed momentum heading back to Chicago. Still when the Marlins were down 3-0 in Game 6, five outs away from elimination, I gave up on them again, only to have fate, or a Billy Goat curse, intervene and keep Hell hot for one more year as the Fish scored 8 runs in the 8^th inning of Game to win and force a Game 7 against Kerry Wood at Wrigley Field, a game which they won as well, prompting a State of Emergency in Chicago.

As I sat at Game 4 of this week’s World Series, watching a ninth-inning 3-1 lead over the Yankees evaporate when the Yanks tied the game, I gave up on them again, because they Yankees always win games like that. When Alex Gonzalez came up to bat in the bottom of the 12^th, there was no reason to think that the Marlins would pull it out and then when they lost they would be down 3-1 in the Series, again. And then Gonzalez hit a home run that just barely cleared the right field fence to end the game, sending the crowd at Pro Player Stadium into crazy, joyous delirium. The Marlins won the next night too, taking a 3-2 Series lead back to Yankee Stadium, and up until that final glorious out, with Beckett nearly tackling Jorge Posada, I kept thinking to myself that somehow the Yankees would pull it out, because that’s what they always do. To pull for the Marlins was just ridiculous I thought, even as I hung on every pitch in Saturday’s game.

Well this improbable bunch of Fish, these kids and castaways and their septuagenarian manager, turned the baseball world upside down on Saturday with a storybook pitching performance by Beckett to conclude their storybook season and managed to get jaded, too-hip South Florida to care about baseball again. They demonstrated time and again in the playoffs the value of teamwork and unselfish, smart play. They got me to enjoy baseball again and believe in miracles and more importantly they penetrated the gay scene of South Beach, at least for one night.

Oct. 27, 2003