What an incredible baseball fairy-tale finish tonight!
However, the ending was very nearly not so rosy for this much-ballyhooed ballgame.
Yes, I did say much ballyhooed, for it certainly 'twas.
Folks in Detroit knew about it.
Folks in Kansas City were hip to it.
Folks in Miami knew the news.
Folks in Cincinnati were all onto it.
Even the folks in Las Vegas knew about it!
This wasn't just a little local novelty for folks in Savannah.
Thanks to USA Today and Sports Illustrated, folks everywhere had heard the news.
The Savannah Bananas were wearing kilts to play baseball.
Wow!
No other MLB team had ever done such a thing!
Then the game against Macon Bacon got rained out midway through the first inning.
The continuation of that game was tonight...
and the boys were clad, once more, in the yellow and green plaid kilts...
after reading about and hearing about the stunt novelty for over a week...
and with many of these players being Southern-born, as I am...
so I'm sure they'd been kidded about the "skirts" at least since the original game.
That had to be a bit rough on the psyche of these young men.
I could see it in the way they played the first few innings.
They were definitely self-conscious out there, even the few who had chosen to wear pants or jeans under their breezy, swaying tartan plaids.
But there was a perceptible shift in the sixth inning.
It wasn't that the Bananas finally scored a run, after trailing the whole game...
because they did not get a man across home then.
No, the shift was in their attitudes.
When they came up to bat, they came to get a hit, rocking that kilt as they did so.
They were finally accepting the apparel and owning it fully.
Macon had gotten all the runs they would be allowed - time for Bananas to play!
In the 7th inning, Alex Rodriguez swatted a double down the middle -
Hunter Wilson was in!
Run one for the Bananas!
After that, it was a matter of loading up the bases with yellow kilts, trying for more runs, to tie up the game.
But the seventh and eighth innings failed to produce more feet across home plate.
Then the magic, the miracle, the magnificent happened!
Bottom of the ninth, the home team was behind, 3 to 1.
Jake Howard got on base, followed by Justin Dirden, and then Garret Delano -
the bases were once again full ... and of mostly Southern Bananas!
Time for Bill LeRoy, the catcher from Dublin, Georgia, to wield the bat.
The ball headed toward third base, but the pitcher fielded it and hurled it toward first -
and beyond!
The boys were all waved on to home! Go home!! Come on home!!!
And they did!!!
Then the triumphant trio joined the others racing out of the dugout to join Bill on second base and hoisting him up jubilantly!
Wow!!!
What an absolute thrill to have been there tonight with Willie!
Wow!!!
i thank You, God!
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