Orion Kerkering: Do you crush the kid for blowing the Philadelphia Phillies chance at a World Series? Or do you show compassion for a 24-year-old who flat-out cracked under pressure at the biggest moment of his young athletic life?
808-KNBR.
Maybe it’s a function of my station in life. Or maybe I’m soft. Or maybe I just can’t shake the image of Kerkering, bent at the waist in his road powder blues, hands on his knees, maroon Phillies cap covering his head as he stared at the grass of Dodger Stadium, where moments before he committed one of the most embarrassing errors in October baseball history.
But man, do I feel for Orion Kerkering.
So much so that my overwhelming reaction is to want to put my arm around the kid, hand him a cold beer and fall back on the age-old truism from “Bull Durham”:
Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes it rains.
Or, perhaps more harshly, sometimes your brain has a 10-car pileup and you panic and throw wildly to the wrong place, even when your catcher is calmly directing you to throw the ball elsewhere.
Ouch. Double ouch. Triple ouch.
Surely you’ve seen it by now. Game 4, National League Division Series. Dodgers ahead, two games to one. Phillies have to win to force a Game 5 back in their cauldron of Philly passion, Citizens Bank Park; Dodgers have to win to extinguish this beast of a Phillies team and advance to the NLCS. Everything on the line.
Bottom of the 11th. Dodgers up. Bases loaded. Two outs. Kerkering, literally the youngest player on the veteran-laden, 96-win Phillies, is summoned in to a first-and-third, two-out situation in front of 50,563 fans at Dodger Stadium. He is tasked with facing October demon Kike Hernandez, and carefully walks him.
Not the worst play at all. Bases loaded, after all, sets up a force at any base, including home plate.
Kerkering then attacks right-handed hitter Andy Pages and throws the pitch of his life, a 96.2 mph sinker that causes Pages to barely make contact, hitting a 69.5 mph dribbler that barely reaches the mound.
It is here where Orion Kerkering’s life changed.
He booted the ground ball. It’s tricky, sometimes, dribblers back to the mound. Kerkering did not field it cleanly. This is where the panic sets in.
By the time Kerkering grabs the ball with his bare hand, he still has time to save the day. He can, as his excellent catcher J.T. Realmuto points, throw it to first base and retire Pages comfortably. Pages is only halfway up the line when Kerkering has the baseball in his hand.
But life happens and pressure happens and splits-seconds happen and somewhere in Kerkering’s brain he thinks about the force at home and the easier distance to home plate — without realizing that the Dodger baserunner Hyesong Kim is almost at the plate already and will beat his relay.
Kerkering throws home. It’s late. It’s wild. It’s unplayable. It’s feckless. It sails away. And it’s over. The Dodgers win.
And Kerkering bends at the waist and stares at the turf, realizing what he’s done.
The Dodgers stream past him, their blue and white mosh pit of joy a stark contrast to the Kerkering mosaic of disbelief and pain.
And the Jock Blog is here to say: Damn, kid. I’m not going to crush you for this.
As we played today on the show, per the legendary “ABC Wide World of Sports” intro, it’s “the human drama of athletic competition.” It’s unscripted theatre laid bare. It’s human frailty and human error on display, for all to see. It’s a time to show compassion for a mistake, because there’s nothing that’s going to change that moment in time.
Orion Kerkering knows what he should have done. The Phillies also know that baserunners were on before Kerkering entered the game. And that star players from the Phillies could only muster one run. And that the Phillies lost two games at home earlier in the week. And that every single person who has ever played a sport has made a mistake, and how we react and how we feel and how we treat these moments are what make us human.
No, I’m not making the kid a hero. No, I’m not giving the kid an orange slice and a participation trophy. Yes, he should feel terrible. Yes, if I’m a Phillies fan I will never forget this.
But because life is fleeting, and because we’re all in this thing together, and because come February there will be spring training and hope, you forgive Orion Kerkering.
Have a cold one, kid. You played the great game of baseball.
