Hey Baltimore, how’s your Monday going?
Cold and rainy? Stuck in traffic? Spilled coffee everywhere getting ready? Kids made you late?
Don’t worry, none of that is going to ruin your day as much as this little tidbit.
1996 ALCS Game 1. Yankee Stadium. We all remember the game.
And, we all still remember the name, introduced to us that night, that will forever haunt us: Jeffrey Maier.
Writing for Bleacher Report today, the now 29-year-old Maier recounts how that day “changed his life.” As if it’s not enough of a knife turning in all of our guts to just hear that name, now we learn the following, from Maier himself:
Game 1 of the 1996 ALCS was supposed to be played on Oct. 8, but torrential rains caused the game to be postponed until the following afternoon. As luck would have it, this change in schedule left close family friends with an extra ticket to the game. While they were long-time Orioles fans, they were kind enough to offer me the chance to attend the game with them.
That’s right. Maier was in that seat because O’s fans gave him the ticket.
Wonderful.
Now, to be clear – I wish no ill will toward Maier. Reading the rest of his story (which you should do, if you’re able to stomach it), it’s hard not to feel bad for him. All he did was what most any 12-year-old at a baseball game, with a glove, would have likely done. It’s really not his fault that the awful umpires allowed what he did to fly (or that, perhaps, they were too intimidated by the New York crowd to do otherwise). He immediately became famous, and much of the attention he received, as he recounts, was negative.
I’m sure he can’t step foot in Baltimore to this day.
It’s funny. New Yorkers really don’t even remember the kid. To them, Game 1 of the 1996 ALCS was just another playoff game during the Yanks’ late 90’s/early 00’s quasi-dynasty. When I was in college, just about five or six years after Maier, I talked to a friend from New York about baseball.
His words: “Oh yeah, wasn’t there something about a kid that caught a home run?”
Me: “Um…Jeffrey [expletive] Maier?”
Him: /laughs “Yeah, I guess.”
Orioles fans. Orioles fans gave Maier the ticket.
One Response
Sorry to say this but I don’t believe his story that the O’s fans have him the ticket to that 1996 ALCS Game 1. I would love to see them coming forward and admitting that it was true that they brought Maier to that game. Seriously. Sounds like a liar to me.
Karma is good that he’s now married to a Red Sox fan, huh?