Greatest Sports Moment

The greatest sports moments come from when we are young. My story comes from little league baseball. The greatest sports moment in my life was a semifinal game in little league baseball when I was 12. My team, the Dodgers, had gone through the season undefeated with a couple of scares. Our last challenge though faced us with a Mets team that had played us hard in two regular season games.

The tension going into the game was great. We had robbed the Mets of a potential championship the year before when they had been favored. We had beaten their star pitcher in an ugly game of mud ball in the semifinals. So the Mets were out to pay us the favor back.

We came out hitting as we scored a run in each of the first two innings. Then our offense stalled and we were unable to score another run the rest of the game. So the burden fell to our defense and pitching which was stellar for four innings. But, then the top of the 5th came. The Mets hit three singles to start the inning. Suddenly it was 2-1 with no outs and runners on first and second base. The Mets had found their spark and their fans and dugout were going wild. The Dodgers needed to dig in. We did as we got a force play at second to get an out. Then a ground ball right to our shortstop Oliver "Twist" seemed to be a sure double play to get us out of the inning. He fielded cleanly, but then rather than take the double play he hesitated and checked the man on third. Finally, he stepped on second and threw home to me where I made a wild swipe for the man coming home.

The dust settled and the call came in that we had gotten the outs at both second and home. The other team was outraged and our team celebrated and rode it to a 2-1 victory. We then continued on to sweep the Championship and complete our undefeated season. It will be a game and season that I will never forget.