How Sweet It Is: One More Day in the Sun

In a world that all-too-often doesn't live up to expectations, where the fairy tale ending almost never happens and disappointment outstrips elation, days like Sunday don't happen very often.

Having squandered a four-run lead, and then going down 6-4 to UCLA, in danger of being swept at home for the first time this season, the Cal baseball team gave the 1,062 in attendance a reason to believe.

Rally caps on. Fans on their feet. Right fielder and pitcher Blake Smith, who had given up two runs in the top of the ninth, strokes his second home run of the game in the bottom of the frame. 6-5 Bruins.

Sophomore Jeff Kobernus draws a walk and is sacrificed to second by Michael Brady. Without any sign from third base coach John Zuber, Kobernus steals third, and is doubled home by freshman Mark Canha. 6-6.

Bottom of the tenth. Rally caps on. Fans on their feet. It's Senior Day, and four of those 1,000-plus fans are the grandparents of the hitter leading off the inning-senior Josh Satin.

The first pitch sails high and outside, and Satin waits. The second buzzes a bit too far inside. Ball two. The next pitch is two to three inches off the plate, but the umpire calls it a strike. The umpires in the stands politely disagree. Satin digs back in.

Just before the pitch is thrown, said Josh's grandmother Shirley, the entire Satin clan joined in one singular hope: What if Josh hit his 18th home run of the season to win his last home game?

They didn't have to wonder, hope, or wait for long. On the very next pitch, Josh Satin wrote the last line of the movie script with his orange metal bat, sending a drive into left center field which floats quietly over the glove of senior center fielder Brady Dolan, and over the wall.

"I faced that guy three times already, and every pitch was a changeup for a ball," said Satin. "So I thought that they were going to try to get me to swing at garbage. Then he just left that one up."

And up, and up and up.

The team is almost louder than the fans, as it roars while the senior infielder flies around the bases without ever touching spike to dirt.

"It was unreal," says Satin. "Just unreal."

As he touches home plate, Satin throws his fists in the air, and the team in turn throws him into the air, to sit upon their shoulders to revel in the impossibility of triumph, the perfect closing act.

Josh's mother, Gail, puts her hand on her son's shoulder, voice quivering, overjoyed at seeing her little boy do something so big.

"I just asked for a base hit, that's all I wanted," Gail said. "I'm a very proud mother of a wonderful guy.

"I'm so proud, so happy. It was his last game, unbelievable."

Everyone under four feet tall who was in the stands when Satin hit his shot crowd around the 6-foot-2 infielder, holding up balls and scraps of paper for him to sign. One pen doesn't work. He presses harder and harder until it does. Wouldn't want the little fan to go away empty handed.

That one moment, that completely perfect moment when bat met ball, allowed everyone at Evans Diamond that day-not just the kids-to leave with something special: a reminder of why this game is so beautiful.

It gives us moments of awe, of hopes and of dreams, of the improbable and the impossible. It allows you to believe that an inside-out baseball cap can change the course of a game. It allows you to ask, 'What if?' It allows you to cheer and to believe in miracles.

Cal may have lost the weekend series to the Bruins, but that home run gave them all of the mental and emotional momentum they will need as they head into the playoffs.

"Now we've got all the momentum in the world," Satin said. "This was a hard-fought game against a good team ... Maybe we'll see them down the line (in the playoffs). If not, hopefully this was a springboard to something better."

Maybe even a springboard to Omaha.

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