Dark Bilious Vapors

Baseball fans throughout the nation stood up and applauded when Seabol’s ringing pinch-hit, first-pitch, seventh inning shot cleared the visitors' bullpen by a very healthy margin. His home run trot reminded us all of the fallen Scott Rolen in its haste and modesty. No lolly-gagging around. No enjoying the moment. None of the cadillacking that he was arguably entitled to.

To his great credit, Seabol, faced with the most emotional moment of a long and undistinguished baseball career, lowered his head, ran from base to base, touched them all and disappeared into the Cardinal dugout. Almost at gunpoint from his teammates, he ducked out once to doff his cap in smiling acknowledgement of the curtain call from the 50,000 plus Cardinal faithful in attendance.

Scott Seabol is 30 years old. With the exception of a 3-week, one-at-bat stint with his ironically original team, the New York Yankees, he has been a career minor league player. He was called up a couple of weeks ago to help replace the injured Rolen. When Rolen returns, it is possible that Seabol will return to the relative baseball obscurity of the AAA Memphis Redbirds.

So Sunday was Seabol’s day in the sun, the punctuation of a career spent waiting for this magical moment when all the karmic forces of nature came together at home plate at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis, Missouri and he jumped on it. He beat the team that originally drafted him, the team that only gave him three weeks in the majors, the team that cut him, released him, fired him. His home run turned the momentum of the game around so that the Cardinals could defeat the Bronx Bullies of inflated payroll and remarkable underachievement. To paraphrase the Cardinal Bard Mr. Shannon, ol' Abner had really done it again this time.
--Rex Duncan [on Scott Seabol's game winning home run in the 6/12/2005 Yankees/Cardinals game]

Len on 06.15.05 @ 06:14 AM CST