Fear and Awe in Phoenix

I went to the USA-Mexico WBC game last week, and while it was a rough day for the boys in the red, white and blue, it was decidedly fun for the overwhelmingly pro-Mexico crowd that was packed into Chase Field. The din as the final out grew closer pitch-by-pitch was ear-splitting from my vantage point five rows from the very top of the stadium, and that was with maybe 25,000 people left (almost all of whom were rooting for the baseball incarnation of El Tri). You'd have thought Mexico had just won a gold medal when Jimmy Rollins bounced out to first to end it. But that's all beside the point.

Anyway, the reason I'm writing - Giancarlo Stanton. The man is 6'5", 245 pounds. Absolute freak of a human specimen. I foolishly and a bit absentmindedly showed up to the stadium about an hour before the first pitch, and so was disappointed to have missed Team USA's batting practice - more specifically, Stanton's batting practice. This is because what The Player Formerly Known as Mike Stanton can do to a baseball is absolutely terrifying.


Exhibit A: The longest home run in the majors in 2012, 494 feet according to HitTracker.com.



Exhibit B: The fastest home run in the majors since Hit Tracker began tracking them in 2006, at 122.4 mph off the bat. For good measure, it also traveled 462 feet...or at least would have if a certain something hadn't gotten in the way.


Side note: The ball hitting the bat in the above video sounds unlike any hit I've heard before or since. It's not a sharp crack, it's - well jeez, I can't even figure out exactly what it sounds like. I can audibly find a connection, but I can't put that into words. Not everything is onomatopoeia-able, it turns out.

It's almost as if Stanton isn't so much swinging a bat as a sledgehammer. I don't know exactly what it is - I'm no scout, after all - but there's just something about the plane of his swing that makes it seem as though there's a massive weight on the end of his bat just pulling that thing forward with incredible force.

I had never seen Stanton live despite having read about/seen/heard all his Bunyan-esque feats, and it was perhaps because of that that I was acutely aware of something every time he came to the plate that I've never really been able to put my finger on before. I was legitimately anxious with every pitch as to what was going to happen - everytime Stanton's front foot moved back, every time he loaded up, I was waiting with bated breath to see whether his hips fired and his arms exploded forward. It was a terrifically dramatic moment, as we all waited to see if the behemoth in the batter's box would launch the ball to parts unknown and what that might look and sound like. And that's the crux of it - I was equal parts excited and fearful of what would happen should he swing and hit the ball.

You'll have to bear with me on the following tangent, as I'm stretching back 6.5 years and many, many educational experiences to pull out a philosophical connection here. I went to an Advanced Studies Program at St. Paul's School in New Hampshire between my junior and senior years of high school. My first choice of a main class was Mass Media (owing to my desire to get into the field and natural aptitude for creative things), while my second choice - on a bit of a whim after hearing a particularly convincing presentation on it at an info session - was World Religions. This was actually kind of ironic, as one of my Sunday School teachers had long been of the opinion that I was going to become a priest (as mentioned in an article on the program - no longer available online - which was also memorable for my first experience being interviewed, and then taken out of context, in the paper). Of course, my luck being my luck, I was shut out of Mass Media and shuttled off to World Religions, where I was the only person to not have it or a similar philosophy class as my top choice. To say I was out of my element the first day or so would be putting it mildly.

I bring that up because during the very first class, we were introduced to something called the numinous. I'll let the Wikipedia page explain it in more detail, but the CliffsNotes version is that the numinous is a religious experience that evokes both fear and awe, as well as a personal connection to a divine presence. Prominent atheists have argued that the numinous does not necessarily have to be a religious experience with a divine presence, but can instead derive from natural occurrences (or, for those of you playing semantics and wanting to call me on man-made things not being technically "natural", let's also go with "earthly"). Obviously, in a World Religions class, we dealt with the numinous in a religious sense. However, as I thought more about that *seemingly much longer than a split-second at the time* moment of equilibrium between fear and wonderment from the time Stanton loaded up until he either swung or laid off, I realized that the non-religious description of the numinous actually worked quite well to explain what I was feeling.

Think of it this way, to give you an example. When I was a kid, I had a bit of a hard time looking at pictures of the planets. Not little pictures in an encyclopedia or online, mind you - I'm talking massive pictures of, say, Saturn or Jupiter just hanging out in the void of space, front and center. The enormity and beauty - yes, beauty, I'll say it - of what I was looking at was almost too much for me to comprehend and therefore, I had a hard time getting myself to look at the picture for more than a few seconds. Even now, it's not the easiest thing in the world to do - for whatever reason, the sight of the planets against the abyss is, to a degree, overwhelming for me. And so I'd consider that a nuministic (is that even a word?) experience.

Now that you have a better idea of how I'm framing this whole thing, back to baseball.

As Stanton would freeze in that loaded position for the briefest of moments on each pitch, I would be frozen right with him, perched on the edge of exhilaration and terror. What was going to happen next? Was he going to swing, and if he swung, was he going to hit it? If he hit it, was he going to hit the ball no further than the pitcher's mound, or completely out of the ballpark? What does a 500-foot home run actually look like? What does it sound like? I had no way of knowing, and that was the best part. You have to keep in mind that I have been to many, many baseball games in my life, and I'm keenly aware that this basic Q&A session happens on every single pitch. It is, however, different with Stanton in that I was so aware of the monstrous amount of power coiled in that stance that I couldn't wait to see what happened next.

Then, on a few occasions, Stanton swung. And suddenly, everything got very exciting and kind of scary all at once. The dual thoughts in my head went something like this as his Louisville Sledgehammer rocketed around - "Oh man, I sure hope he hits it 500 feet, that'd be awesome to see!" and "Holy crap, I'm not sure I can comprehend a 500-foot home run." Again, keep in mind - I've seen my fair share of long bombs over the years. The night the Sox went back-to-back-to-back-to-back against the Yankees, Manny obliterated one just to the left of the light tower in left-center that cleared the Monster seats by a wide margin. Hit Tracker has it at only 460, but it certainly looked mighty impressive when it disappeared over Landsdowne Street. Carlos Delgado lost one well into the second deck in right-center at Safeco in '01, a blast I seem to remember being estimated somewhere in the 440/450-foot range. But I wasn't actively expecting either of them - or anybody else that I ever saw pulverize a ball - to hit it that far with each delivered pitch, so the experience of seeing a long home run was sufficiently different.

And twice, Stanton actually connected. Neither ball went 500 feet, of course - and for that matter, neither left the field of play nor hit the ground. The were loud outs to be sure, but both were caught on the warning track. But my God, when he would hit the ball and it soared into the air...I felt for a split second both times that I was witnessing something tremendous. I actually got up out of my seat at the crack of the bat the second time. Then I realized both balls was destined for an outfielder's (one of whom was Karim Garcia - Karim Garcia!) glove and life went back to normal.

As it is with most things in life, the anticipation really is the best part of something. The mind runs wild with expectations and fear of the sheer majestic nature of that which you may see or experience - and it rarely, if ever, lives up to that. Giancarlo Stanton is one of perhaps three hitters alive that I would have that same experience for on every single pitch right now - the other two being Josh Hamilton (my favorite part in that clip is the Fenway crowd going a collective "Ohhh," as in "Holy @#*@, how far did he just hit that ball?" rather than "Oh no, a home run for the other team") and Bryce Harper - because you don't know if, on the very next pitch, they might effectively murder a baseball or send it into a light tower.*

*Sorry, just watched "The Natural" last night. If you'd like a different "cover hit off a baseball" scene, try this one. Classic..."must be an omen." Side note: does the music in the light tower scene from 4:09 to 4:22 sound like The Fellowship theme, or is it just me?

It's the same feeling I get when I see Blake Griffin loping down the court with nothing between him and the basket but hardwood and air...



...the same feeling I get when I see Tom Brady sit calmly in the pocket, just waiting to wind up and throw it deep...



...and the same feeling I got seeing Alexi Ogando throw a pitch in precisely the wrong place and knowing all the way in that it wasn't a question of if Albert Pujols was going to hit it but rather how far.



It's a moment of extreme anticipation, when you're not sure whether to be frightened of what you may experience in the next split second or to be excited to experience it. And while the ultimate result may not eventually live up to the wild scenarios that run so quickly through your mind - Giancarlo Stanton will hit the clock above the scoreboard! Blake Griffin will do a 540 dunk! Tom Brady will throw it 70 yards on a line! - the moments in which those are, ever so briefly, as possible to you as reality? Those are what make the whole thing ultimately worthwhile, and if some semblance of what you imagined actually comes true - then that's just the icing on the cake.