Unhappy Endings (One Sixty-Two: Day 38)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day Thirty-Eight: Kendry Morales, Los Angeles Angels

It’s your wedding day, and after the beautiful ceremony, the lovely first dance, the hugs from relatives, and the delicious dinner, it’s cake-cutting time. As you cut that first slice, the knife slips, you feel a sharp pain in your finger, and suddenly you’re off to the emergency room for stitches.

It’s your graduation day, and after the diploma and the cheers and the speeches, you toss your cap in the air. You reach up to catch it, but instead catch an elbow in the mouth. Instead of dinner, your family gathers with you at the dentist’s office.

It’s your birthday. You’ve gone out to eat, taken calls from family members, and eaten some of the cake your mom baked. On your way to bed, you don’t see the dog on the floor, you slip, and now you’re spending the night with an ice cap on your knee.

Horrible.

To finish a beautiful day with such a sudden twist of fate is something we all hope to avoid in any way possible. But there are times when it happens. And all it really does is remind us of how fragile, how human, we are – even in our moments of triumph.

It’s the bottom of the 10th inning, game tied 1-1, with Los Angeles Angels first baseman Kendry Morales up at the plate against Seattle Mariners reliever Brandon League. Morales crushes League’s offering well over the left-centerfield wall for a game-winning grand slam. As the 26-year-old first baseman rounds third and heads for home, Morales sees his teammates gathered around home plate, ready to pounce on him in the kind of “dog pile” celebrations that have become popular around baseball. Morales tosses his red helmet into the air and leaps. He lands on his left foot, slips, and falls.

His leg breaks right there, on home plate, with giddy teammates trying to pound his helmet. But these teammates gradually realize that instead of celebrating, they have to cart their best hitter off the field. He is writhing in pain.

The ballgame is over, and so might be Morales’s season. All because he slipped on home plate while trying to enjoy the moment.

There’s no right or wrong to it. The Angels will not celebrate this way at home plate again, as their manager, Mike Scioscia, has said. They’ll try and learn from it. Right now, there are surely a lot of heads hung low in that team’s clubhouse.

Life will absolutely go on, and there will be much better days ahead. But the wedding cake will never taste as good as it might have. The graduation pictures won’t bring back the kinds of memories we hoped they’d bring. The birthday cards won’t elicit the same smiles. The ending didn’t match the day, and it’s hard to forget that.