I saw Ozzie's "Go Crazy" home run!... well, sort of

It may be the most famous single moment in modern Cardinals history, and I was there to see it. Well, not exactly see it.

On this day in 1985 Ozzie Smith hit his “go crazy folks” home run for a tumultuous win in the fifth game of the 1985 National League Championship series.

I, my brother and friends arrived very early at the stadium to grab our standing-room-only spots behind the loge level seats along the first base line. Assessing our vantage point, I commented to my brother, Dave, that we couldn’t see the right field corner. I suggested that maybe we should move to the upper deck behind home plate. I knew from personal standing-room experience that the entire field was visible from there.

“Oh, we won’t miss anything,” was Dave’s matter-of-fact response.

With the score tied 2-2 in the bottom of the ninth, the tension at Busch Stadium II was gut wrenching. World Series hopes were on the line. Regarding this Championship series with the Dodgers, Manager Whitey Herzog said, “if we didn’t win this game, I didn’t think we had a chance”.

The Cardinals only had two hits since the second inning and hadn’t scored since the first. In the bottom of the ninth, Ozzie Smith came up to bat. The switch hitting Smith stood in from the left side against the righthanded reliever, Tom Niedenfuer. In over 3000 major league at bats in eight seasons, Smith, who only had 13 home runs at that point in his career, had never hit a home run from the left side. But while simply trying to hit his way on base, Smith drove a 1-2 pitch over the right field wall for a historic walk-off victory of game five, sending the Cardinals back to LA for a NL pennant winning game 6, and on to the World Series.

When Smith’s hit went over the wall, the explosive roar of the capacity crowd was deafening. For tens of thousands watching in St Louis and beyond, Jack Buck issued his immortalized call, “Go crazy folks, go crazy”. The scene, constantly replayed, is forever etched in the minds of every Cardinals fan. I was there for that historic home run. But I didn’t actually see it.

Because we chose to stay where we were, with our blocked view of the right field corner, we could not see Ozzie’s hit go over the wall. We didn’t know the game was won until we saw him rounding second, waving his arms. Those watching on television knew before us.

Had we realized what was coming, before the game we would have relocated. But we didn’t know, so we “played the odds”.

There are lessons gleaned from this experience which I apply to life. First lesson: don’t listen to my brother, Dave.

More seriously, I try to realize all I can do is make decisions the best I can and I shouldn’t cling too tightly to the hoped-for results. Rather, I need to then stay flexible and trust God for the outcome. You and I don’t see the future. We don’t know what we don’t know and can’t control what we can’t control.

At the game, we chose the best we could with what we knew at the time. We had put in the effort to leave home early and arrive when the gates opened in order to get the best standing position possible. As in much of life, there was a necessary tradeoff between two desirable factors-- having the most inclusive view versus the position closest to the field. We chose lower level proximity to the field at the expense of blocked view of one small corner of the outfield. If we knew what would happen, of course we’d have chosen differently. But we didn’t know—couldn’t know.

Speaking about the effort to do right in life and of our limited capacity, the New Testament assures, “For if the willingness is present, it is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have”. God doesn’t expect us to know all factors, anticipate all potentialities and always choose correctly. We shouldn’t expect it of ourselves.

Rather, knowing we are often “in over our heads,” we must endeavor to do our best, all the while trusting the Lord to graciously make up the difference. As the Apostle Paul wrote, “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God”.

Followers of Jesus are additionally assured by the promise that, while not all outcomes in life are in themselves good and desirable, the Master Weaver of the universe has his own purposes and is smart enough, kind enough and powerful enough to work things together to bring some sort of good out of the bad.

I could wish that we had relocated at the game so that we would have actually seen Ozzie’s historic hit fly over the right field wall. On the other hand, if we had, you and I wouldn’t at this moment be considering together life lessons gleaned from the experience so many years ago.

Of course, in spite of not seeing Ozzie’s homer fly over the wall, just being present was an overwhelming, immersive experience. We were there, part of the crowd. We thrilled, we celebrated. I remember the immediate aftermath. As we made our way out of the stadium, the city was electrified. Cacophonous car horn honking was sustained throughout downtown and all the way home, past the Washington University campus (satisfyingly eliciting crude, sour grapes gestures from students from New York). It was a thrilling memory of a lifetime and it all worked out fine. In spite of a less than ideal vantage point, like all of St. Louis we did indeed “go crazy folks”.

II Corinthians 8:12 & 3:5 Romans 8:28