Travis Ishikawa: The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

[Posted on my Facebook page last night. These are the moments every baseball fan dreams of.]

The beauty of baseball is the drama and stories that the game’s ebbs and flows allow to unfold. Yes, the walk-off pennant-winning home run in front of a delirious home crowd is awesome. But when you understand that the player who hit it, Travis Ishikawa, is a 31-year-old journeyman who the Giants let go in 2011, who kicked around between four other teams in 2012-13, who was released by the Pirates in April, who spent the entire summer toiling in the minors in Fresno, who gave serious thought to retiring mid-year, who was only called up after two Giants outfielders were injured, who was asked — after playing first base his entire career — to be the Giants’ starting left fielder with four games left in the regular season, who misjudged a fly ball to give up the first run of the game tonight, and who then got the shot at redemption that every baseball player dreams of from the time they started playing wiffle ball in the back yard, and came through in the most spectacular fashion possible — when you realize all of that, then you begin to comprehend, just a little bit, how special this moment was.