There are a handful of indelible moments that stick with me as a fan of Detroit sports, moments that I witnessed live, moments that I will remember until the day I die, moments that are burned into my brain and live there, as crystal clear as the day that they happened. I watched Barry Sanders break loose from a pile of Dallas Cowboys and sprint for the endzone while a crowd cheered with amazement. I watched the Bad Boys Pistons shut down Michael Jordan while the Palace speakers blared Final Countdown and the crowd went apeshit. I watched Charles Woodson rise from the turf and soar, soar, soar until he plucked a ball out of mid-air along the sidelines of Spartan Stadium and make a one handed uber-interception that to this day is the greatest football play I have ever seen in my life. I watched all of these things happen live and not one of them inspired the kind of reaction that the Cecil Fielder roof shot inspired.
I remember everything about that game. I remember the Tigers beat the A's 14-4. I remember Jose Canseco hit a bomb to dead center field, and at the old Tiger Stadium that meant that he hit it at least 440 feet. I remember John Shelby - yeah, John fuckin' Shelby - came within an inch of an infield single that would have given him a cycle. Hell, I even remember almost catching a line drive hit by Carney Lansford during batting practice. I remember all of this because Cecil Fielder stepped to the plate and hit a home run over the left field roof of Tiger Stadium, which had only been done, like, twice before by dudes named Harmon Killebrew and Frank Howard, and which was only replicated one time after, by a dude named Mark McGwire.
I remember being 10 years old and leaping out of my seat, surrounded by my mom, my uncle and my aunt and I remember screaming "HOLY SHIT!" as it happened. I completely lost all ability to self censor. I would have never - never - said that in front of my mom because I knew that she would first choke me half to death with a bar of soap and then shame the hell out of me for eternity. But I just reacted. It was instinctual. The moment completely overwhelmed any sort of self consciousness or self-preservation instincts that I had. It was the sort of moment that makes you understand how someone can completely lose their shit, driven by pure emotion and a temporary insanity born of something primitive and feral and explosively reactive. There is no thought, nothing rational or civilized about it. It just happens, like it probably happened the first time a dude saw a tree catch on fire or the first time Adam realized that Eve's vagina was the key to the kingdom of heaven. Holllllllllly shiiiiiiiiiiiiit.
I screamed it and I didn't care who heard it. That is a testament to the incredible energy of the moment. But even more telling is the fact that nobody said anything to me about it later. Either nobody heard me because they were too busy losing their own shit or they heard but didn't care because, well, they were too busy losing their own shit and understood on a basic level that such a moment transcended basic decency and convention. Morals and values and rules were fucking worthless in the splendor of that moment. There was just a primal energy and a rapturous sense of pure joy.
That may all sound ridiculous as hell and yet it is all true. Sports can do that. They can. I know because it happened to me and it happened to me because Cecil Fielder is awesome and he hit a baseball further than I have ever seen a man hit a ball. He launched that fucker on the roof and set off a wild celebration, a parade of insanity that more closely resembled a nuclear powered zoo than a crowd. It was all very primal and more than that, it was pure. There are so few moments in life that aren't governed by some form of logic or reason or a slavish devotion to convention and to rules. This was one of those moments and I will remember it and I will savor it until the day I die.
