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A lifelong dream washed away
A lifelong dream washed away
The major league shot he chased his entire life finally arrived. Then it drowned.
By Dave Sheinin
AUGUST 30, 2018
In the middle of it all, the entire, emotional ordeal that would come to define his career, in the midst of the literal storm that was drenching the Eastern Seaboard on the afternoon of Sept. 5, 2006, and the perfect, figurative one that was conspiring at that moment to make him the victim of the cruelest bit of circumstance the inherently cruel game of baseball could possibly produce — in the middle of all that, Brian Mazone, anxious, restless, bored, headed to the dugout to see the skies for himself.
Out of the Philadelphia Phillies’ clubhouse at Citizens Bank Park he strode, past the coaches’ offices and the video room, down the steps, through the dugout tunnel, clad in team-issued, home-white game pants and a T-shirt. It was perhaps 21/2 hours before the first pitch of a game that, judging from a radar full of giant yellow and orange blobs, appeared doomed. He was 30 years old, with eight years in the minors, and that evening, weather permitting, he would be making his big league debut.
....
And now, as he stood by the dugout railing, the ground beneath him drenched, the stands empty, the rain began to pick up in intensity. And Mazone, in the empty stadium, took the full brunt of it, squinting through streaks of rain cut with tears at a field-level view that, in the mind of someone who had been picturing it since age 5, was akin to the one from the top of Everest. ... “I couldn’t even see much,” he recalled. “But at that point I really didn’t care.”
Finally, he walked off the field, drenched. Down the stairs to the flooded dugout. Through the tunnel. Up the stairs to the clubhouse. Through the doorway. To his locker. ... There hung his uniform. He looked at it again. He took it down, slipped his arms into the sleeves, buttoned it up. He took a seat. And that’s where he still sat a little while later, when they came to tell him they needed to see him in the manager’s office.
....
"It just wasn’t meant to be, I guess."
Brian Mazone
....
Credits: By Dave Sheinin. Photos by Sandy Huffaker. Designed by Joe Moore. Photo Editing by Toni L. Sandys.
The major league shot he chased his entire life finally arrived. Then it drowned.
By Dave Sheinin
AUGUST 30, 2018
In the middle of it all, the entire, emotional ordeal that would come to define his career, in the midst of the literal storm that was drenching the Eastern Seaboard on the afternoon of Sept. 5, 2006, and the perfect, figurative one that was conspiring at that moment to make him the victim of the cruelest bit of circumstance the inherently cruel game of baseball could possibly produce — in the middle of all that, Brian Mazone, anxious, restless, bored, headed to the dugout to see the skies for himself.
Out of the Philadelphia Phillies’ clubhouse at Citizens Bank Park he strode, past the coaches’ offices and the video room, down the steps, through the dugout tunnel, clad in team-issued, home-white game pants and a T-shirt. It was perhaps 21/2 hours before the first pitch of a game that, judging from a radar full of giant yellow and orange blobs, appeared doomed. He was 30 years old, with eight years in the minors, and that evening, weather permitting, he would be making his big league debut.
....
And now, as he stood by the dugout railing, the ground beneath him drenched, the stands empty, the rain began to pick up in intensity. And Mazone, in the empty stadium, took the full brunt of it, squinting through streaks of rain cut with tears at a field-level view that, in the mind of someone who had been picturing it since age 5, was akin to the one from the top of Everest. ... “I couldn’t even see much,” he recalled. “But at that point I really didn’t care.”
Finally, he walked off the field, drenched. Down the stairs to the flooded dugout. Through the tunnel. Up the stairs to the clubhouse. Through the doorway. To his locker. ... There hung his uniform. He looked at it again. He took it down, slipped his arms into the sleeves, buttoned it up. He took a seat. And that’s where he still sat a little while later, when they came to tell him they needed to see him in the manager’s office.
....
"It just wasn’t meant to be, I guess."
Brian Mazone
....
Credits: By Dave Sheinin. Photos by Sandy Huffaker. Designed by Joe Moore. Photo Editing by Toni L. Sandys.
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