Celebrating significant holidays underway on deployment is tough for anyone, but it was especially tough during COVID. It was hard to imagine that my Holy Week on board a ship was closer to normal than the ones my brother priests were celebrating back home in the States. In order to observe the Easter/Pascha season, we found ways to observe the occasion as best we could, including a couple of moments I won’t soon forget. More on that another time, however.
With no one out in the bottom of the ninth, Brewers third baseman Don Money strode to the plate. The Yankees led 9-6, but Robin Yount had led off the inning with a single, then Pedro Garcia walked, and Bobby Darwin reached on an error to load the bases and bring the winning run to the plate. Money was feeling pretty good.
He took Dave Pagan’s first pitch for a ball, and then smacked the Yankee pitcher’s next offering deep into the left field bleachers. Money hit a game-winning, game-ending grand slam.
Or had he?
As Money trotted across home plate, he looked over towards first base where the Yankees’ manager, Billie Martin, was giving the umpire an earful. Martin had seen his First Baseman call for time, AND the ump raise his arms to grant it, just as Pagan had started his windup. After a few minutes of listening to Billie Martin question his parentage, and the Second Base Umpire say he might have seen him raise his arms, the umpire relented and confessed that he had indeed called time out. Money’s grand slam was erased.
When order was finally restored and the teams returned to the field, the Brewers only managed to score one run before losing the game 9-7.
Had the grand slam simply been upheld, or if the Brewers had simply stranded their baserunners and lost, then there isn’t anything particularly interesting about that game, one in a Brewers season during which they lost as many games as the Yankees won on their way to winning the pennant that year. But because something weird happened, it stands out.
Today’s intro into the General Quarters drill scenario mentioned Groundhog Day. I don’t know how many of you have seen the movie, but you understand the reference: day in, day out, it’s the same day over and over again. The identical days you don’t remember, which is why it seems that days creep by while years speed past. So when we have the opportunity to punctuate the monotony, I encourage you to take advantage of them. These are the milestones that will make the trip more memorable. Like Don Money’s Grand Slam That Wasn’t, it’s the unusual that’s remarkable. Make sure to note and remember the weird stuff that happens—it usually makes for the best sea stories.
One of the things that punctuates the deployment today is Good Friday. So to mark the occasion we will be screening the Passion of the Christ tonight in the Learning Resource Center. Also, this Sunday morning we will have a Sunrise Service on the Foc’sle at 0530.
LET US PRAY
Before your venerable crucifixion, soldiers were mocking You, O Lord; and the angelic ranks were astounded. You who adorned the earth with flowers put on a crown of insult. You who cover the world with clouds put on the robe and were ridiculed. Such was Your plan, and by it Your compassion was known, O Christ, the Great Mercy. Glory to You! You worked salvation in the midst of the earth, O Christ our God. You stretched out Your immaculate hands on the cross, and gathered all the nations, who cry out to You, “Glory to You, O Lord.”
AMEN
An Orthodox Priest Abroad 