This will sound like it’s about football, but I don’t think it is. I think it’s about something more. Sunday night, with two seconds left in the game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens, rookie kicker Tyler Loop lined up to boot a 44-yard field goal.
If he made it, the Ravens would win the game by a point and go to the playoffs.
If he missed it, the Steelers would win the game by two points and go to the playoffs.
Loop had not missed a 40-something field goal all season. He’d attempted eight of them, including one earlier in the game. He made eight of them. The Ravens were so confident that he’d make the field goal that they didn’t even try to get closer. In fact, to set up the field goal, quarterback Lamar Jackson actually lost two yards but placed the ball in the middle of the field.
If you follow the NFL at all, you surely know that Loop badly missed the field goal.
The Steelers will play a home playoff game against Houston on Monday night.
And, on Tuesday, the Ravens fired their longtime head coach, John Harbaugh.
One play. One moment. If he’d made the kick, the Steelers probably would have fired their longtime head coach, Mike Tomlin. If he’d made the kick, Harbaugh would be watching film right now, and Ravens fans would be dreaming Super Bowl dreams.
One play. One moment.
Of course, it isn’t about one play and one moment. There are countless moments in each team’s season that could have changed the story. But this is the moment that endures because it came at the end, and it was so decisive, and you don’t have to use much imagination to envision the alternate universe.
What is sports but a series of such story-bending moments? Every pitch, every pass, every shot, every putt, every decision sets a course. Think about a seemingly meaningless 0-1 pitch in an early inning of a June game between, I don’t know, the Blue Jays and Yankees. New York leads 3-1. Carlos Rodon throws a curveball just off the outside corner to Davis Schneider. Yankees rookie catcher J.C. Escarra tries to frame it so that home plate umpire Dan Merzel will call it a strike.
Merzel is in his first year as a full-time umpire. This is not important, but he has a degree in applied mathematics from Johns Hopkins. Well, I mean, I’m sure it IS important to Dan, but it’s not important for our example.
Anyway, Merzel called it a ball.
Had he called it a strike, the count would have been 0-2.
Davis Schneider, I kid you not, hit .025 after falling behind 0-2 in 2025.
But instead the count was 1-1, and Schneider eventually doubled, and this sparked a four-run rally, and the Blue Jays won the game 5-4, and the Blue Jays went on to sweep the Yankees four straight, and this gave the Blue Jays the tiebreaker over the Yankees when they each finished the season with the same 94-68 record, and this gave the Blue Jays homefield advantage in the division series, and the Blue Jays won their two home games against the Yankees 10-1 and 13-7, and the Blue Jays went on to the World Series.
One play. One moment.
Every game — every day — is filled with a countless number of these. We’d drive ourselves crazy if we spent too much time thinking about how taking a different route home or calling a friend or holding up the runner at third or buying this book instead of that one or missing a 44-yard field goal might change not only our lives but the entire world around us. But it’s true.
Thirty-three days until pitchers and catchers report, and here’s your daily splash of joy — Why You Love Baseball:
Brilliant Reader Jacob: “Probably the thing I love most about seeing big league games in person: seeing Major Leaguers playing catch; it’s the first thing kids learn to do and do it before every game at every level, and to see it perfected as these masters of the game effortlessly toss the ball hundreds of feet on a line is mesmerizing.”
Brilliant Reader Waldo: El Duque Hernández high-leg kick, beautiful ❤️!!
Brilliant Reader Mark: “Players not stepping on the line when coming on and off the field.”
Brilliant Reader Arnie: “While I have had the thrill of being at Game 7 with my son in 2016 when the Cubs won the World Series, nothing beats the regular season games that I took in at Wrigley this past year again with my son and now also my grandson!
If you want to email why you love baseball — photos, drawings, poems, and all else welcome — here’s the address.
