First Pitch text

First Pitch

A true story by Erick Sahler

The late musician Michael Tracey White used to say the best part of going to a concert was the moment just before the band started, when the arena went dark, the crowd roared, everything felt electric and anything seemed possible.

Michael didn’t care for sports. In fact, whenever he performed in bars, he demanded all TVs showing sports be turned off.

But that sense of anything being possible exists in sports too, especially baseball, in which every game offers the opportunity to witness something rare: a no-hitter, a perfect game, a triple play or a steal of home.

Baseball — rightly called America’s pastime — seems to unfold at a leisurely pace. You can watch a ballgame and have a conversation, or read a book, or paint an entire house. I’ve done all three.

But there are sparks of excitement, and no moment of a ballgame is more electric than when the first pitch is thrown. The players, the coaches and the fans are all paying attention.

I sensed this on April 17, 1996, when the Delmarva Shorebirds — this year celebrating the 25th season of minor league baseball in Salisbury — played their first game at Arthur W. Perdue Stadium in Salisbury.

Sean O’Sullivan, my newsroom colleague, reported it for the local paper: “At 7:07 p.m. Javier Vazquez of the Shorebirds took the mound for the first pitch. It was a strike.”

Vazquez went six innings in that game, with nine strikeouts, and the Shorebirds defeated the Columbus RedStixx 4-2.

More than 5,700 fans — all of Salisbury and half of the Eastern Shore, it seemed — were there to witness the spectacle of the first professional baseball game on Delmarva since the 1940s. The mood was giddy, like Times Square on New Years Eve. I’d never seen people from around here so happy.

Vazquez went on to become a major league All-Star, pitching in the bigs from 1998 through 2011, including two stints with the New York Yankees. In fact, over the past 25 seasons dozens of major league All-Stars have played for the Shorebirds, including Manny Machado, Jayson Werth and Nick Markakis.

The Eastern Shore has always been fertile grounds for baseball. Consider:

— Major league farm teams played all over the Shore from the 1920s to the 1940s, and The Sporting News named 1937 Salisbury Indians skipper Jake Flowers its Minor League Manager of the Year for leading one of the most unlikely comebacks in all of sports history.

— Hall-of-Famers Jimmy Foxx, Frank “Home Run” Baker, Judy Johnson and Harold Baines grew up here.

— More recently, Delmarva natives Delino DeShields and Troy Browhawn joined the long list of Eastern Shore natives who made it to “the show.”

— The James M. Bennett High School baseball team owns the Maryland record for consecutive wins, and has claimed four state championships since 2006. The only other team with as many titles over the same period is St. Michaels High School, also on the Eastern Shore.

— Even our Little League teams compete at the highest levels. Preston, Fruitland and Berlin were state champions in recent years, the the 2007 team from Salisbury went all the way the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa.

Baseball is in our blood, and the Shorebirds got it flowing again, but the team’s legacy extends beyond the playing field.

Perdue Stadium led the South Atlantic League in attendance for many years, until much larger cities joined the league. The Shorebirds continue to draw more than 200,000 fans a season, respectable considering the population and socioeconomics of the Eastern Shore.

The Delmarva Shorebirds have become an institution. They brought our community together. They gave us something to do that’s fun, family friendly and affordable. They made this a better place to live.

And it all started with that first pitch, on a chilly night in 1996, when electricity was in the air and anything seemed possible.

It was the sign for Bass Ale that lured me into the King Richard.

Shorebird Javier Vazquez threw the first pitch at Arthur W. Perdue Stadium. It was a strike.