Note: This column was published on June 16, 2007, in the Topeka Capital-Journal. I was fortunate to be on a project, Page 2, that provided me with an opportunity to be a sports columnist for a few years and interview athletes like Dane Iorg, a hero during the 1985 World Series. I later framed the piece and gave it to my old man as a Father’s Day gift. It was on his wall until his death on Aug. 5, 2019.
It’s a story that never changes. The perch doesn’t become a 15-pound catfish. The layup doesn’t grow into a 25-footer with two 7-footers towering over the shooter. The 30-yard field goal doesn’t expand to a 50-yard bomb on an icy field during a snowstorm.
My father, Ernie Jr., tells the same story at least once per year, usually around Father’s Day or in October, about the time the World Series begins. I heard it again recently during a conversation on the Kansas City Royals.
“I’ll never forget watching that game with you,” Dad said. “You were hiding under the covers, crying. You thought it was over.”
I suspect a lot of fathers in the Midwest were consoling their sons during that game – Game 6 of the 1985 World Series. Like many 9-year-old boys in the 1980s, baseball and the Royals were my life.
It wasn’t the first time I was about to give up on the 1985 team. Kansas City made a habit of falling into holes no other team managed to climb out of in the postseason.
“I’m sure it looked that way to a lot of fans, like we were finished,” said Dane Iorg, the former Royal whose clutch hit produced the feel-good ending to this story. “But we never felt like we were out of it. Even when we were down in the series, we knew the pitching would be good enough to keep us right there. It was, and we managed to score a few runs.”
For nearly three hours on that crisp October evening, though, the Royals didn’t score a few runs. In fact, they didn’t score any until the ninth inning.
“Unbelievable. The Cardinals can’t do a thing on offense, and Brian Harper hits a little dunker in there against poor Charlie Leibrandt,” Dad says as he continues with his story. “That’s when you hid under the covers and put the pillow over your head.”
Dad was on a business trip at the time. As I often did during the craft show season, I went along for the ride. We ended up watching Game 6 in a cheap, er inexpensive, hotel in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, on a TV that may have been the prototype.
“I kept telling you, ‘It’s not over, son. They’ve won games like this all year,’” Dad continues. “But you wouldn’t have it. Then, (Jorge) Orta got his ‘hit.’ You peeked over the covers. Then Motor Scooter (a name we’d given Steve Balboni to mock his blazing speed) got a hit. You peeked over the covers again.”
By the time the Royals had the bases loaded with Iorg at the plate, I wasn’t hiding under the covers or crying. I still get chills every time I hear Al Michaels’ call: “That’s a looper into right field for a base hit! Concepcion scores. Here comes Sundberg. Here’s the throw … he scores, we go to a seventh!”
“You probably woke the entire hotel up with that outburst, screaming and jumping on the bed (like a scene straight out of Hoosiers),” Dad remembers.
The Royals capped the comeback the next night in Game 7, crushing the Cardinals 11-0 to win the World Series. Dad and I were on the road most of the game, cruising down Interstate 44 in southwest Missouri on the way home to Lebanon, Missouri.
Almost 22 years later, I remember that ride as if it happened yesterday. I remember him honking the horn at the slew of cars on the highway with Cardinal bumper stickers and flags. I remember shouting and cheering as if we were in the stands at Royals Stadium.
“I love telling that story,” Dad says. “I’ll be telling my grandchildren about that some day.”
And the story will never change. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Happy Father’s Day, Dad.