I followed Oregon State freshman Zack Kline as he climbed the steps of Goss stadium on Saturday before the Beavers’ game against Pacific. He emerged onto the concourse and I got goose bumps. He flipped a U-turn and climbed another flight of steps into the press box. He sat down in the first chair just inside the door. He opened his hot dog and finished it before I even got halfway through mine, which I had started eating on the walk up.
“I skipped lunch,” he said.
See, it was Zack’s first baseball game in Goss Stadium on Saturday and baseball must have known it was a special day. It has a way about it like that. It’s like Southern California and the Rose Bowl. It knows when to put on its Sunday best. It knows when it’s time to shine.
Baseball knew Saturday was special — it knew it was going to be a day that would be remembered. Baseball put on its Sunday best a day early for Zack. The weather forecast called for cool showers but was warm and sunny through eight innings.
The game between a two-time national championship team and a 14-39 team from the Big West that should have been a blow out turned into a tense game at the beginning and a nail-biter at the end that was full of ups (the fourth inning John Wallace RBI single) and downs (the Ryan Ortiz “foul ball”).
It was a game that defied every statistic in the book, and it’s a game Zack Kline may never forget. He heard “O-State Ballers” by Mitchy Slick, got to sit in the press box and met Mike Parker.
Of course, he didn’t get to see Joey Wong’s seven assists at shortstop, he didn’t see Logan Boyd go 2-for-3 with two RBIs and he didn’t see Jorge Reyes strike out seven Tigers.
Zack Kline is blind.
Zack has been blind since birth. But that doesn’t mean he is taking a back seat in life. His parents have kept him motivated to do great things, and he is well on his way. His father graduated from Penn State, worked with Bill Cosby, wrote for the L.A. Times and scripted a speech for Gerald Ford. His mother is originally from Thailand.
Zack is closing out his first year of college as a computer science major and has an internship set up this summer with the Smithsonian. He told me that he is interested in using his degree to find a job that will enable him to help other blind people navigate through the world easier — to help them navigate through the world like Zack.
But Saturday, he was just like the 2,258 other people in Goss. He was a baseball fan.
“I followed the team last year,” he told me. “I wasn’t sure I was going to go here yet, but I still followed the team.”
I wonder if a national championship helped cement that decision.
So he leaned forward and listened intently to Mike Parker sitting to his right, following along with the best play-caller in the biz. From the first out — a grounder to Wong — to the last out — also registered by Wong — Zack celebrated every Beaver hit and enjoyed every recorded out.
During the third inning Parker leaned over and asked, “How does it sound, can you follow the action?”
Zack answered with a smile, “Yes, it’s good, I just hope we can improve.”
And America’s favorite pastime, knowing it was a special day, turned on the next fastball it saw.
The following inning, John Wallace got the Beavers on the board with an RBI single. It only opened the gates.
In the fifth inning, the Beavers scored seven runs on five hits, much to Zack’s delight. During a pitching change, Parker took off his headset, leaned over and explained a few intricacies of the game.
“You want to walk [the batter] here to get to the next guy who hasn’t been as successful today,” Parker said.
“Mike is great,” Zack said, “I can follow everything.”
People say that when a person loses one of the senses, it heightens the rest. Others can refute that claim, but I have watched it happen first hand. Even after the Beavers opened an 8-0 lead, Zack could feel something. He sat uneasy, repeating hopes that the Beavers could hold on to the lead.
Even after Parker insisted the team would pull through and had nothing to worry about, Zack was weary.
During the seventh inning, a Ryan Ortiz fly ball down the right field line landed fair and was ruled foul as Ortiz rounded second. Parker exploded.
“That was the most horrendous call in the history of this or any other ball park!” He said over the airwaves.
I leaned forward and started explaining to Zack in further detail the absurdity of the ruling when he stopped me. “I got the impression.”
Who says you have to see it to believe it?
The “foul ball” in the seventh ended up turning the tide in favor of Tigers who battled back in the next two innings. The Tigers scored three runs in the eighth on three hits with one Beaver error. The score wasn’t threatening at 8-3, but a little more intimidating than 8-0.
It was just about that time that the clouds began to roll over the stadium, both literally and metaphorically. Baseball knows how to put on a show — even if the most important person in the audience can’t see the action unfold.
The Pacific Tigers worked in three more runs in the ninth after James Nygren walked the first two batters on 11 pitches. Then it started to rain. Big, heavy, fast-falling drops.
Zack was right. His uneasy feeling was being answered not only by a poor outing by Nygren but also by the inclement weather.
But then his attitude changed. He felt like the Beavers could get out of their predicament. One batter later, Marc Grbavac was lifted for Taylor Starr.
Starr got the save because baseball doesn’t disappoint. But by the end of the game, it wasn’t as important — baseball knew that too, though.
Zack left the game with a smile that would make a 12-year-old on a roller coaster jealous. It was picturesque.
They say a picture is worth one thousand words. But baseball knows that one thousand words can also be worth a picture. With the help of Mike Parker, that picture became an everlasting mural in the mind of Zack Kline, a day he will never forget.
Leave a Reply