The scene that never stops giving you something to write about
All hail the kid with the thousand-yard stare at the scoreboard.
Saturday night’s MIAA Division 1 Baseball Final between rivals Taunton and Franklin was everything you could ask for in a state championship. High-major talent in both dugouts. A pitcher’s duel, won by Taunton, 2-1.
And to top it off, one of my favorite scenes in sports.
It leaked out from the press covering the game that about a half-hour after the field was cleared, a player from Franklin came out to home plate just to stare out in silence at the scoreboard in centerfield.
As a writer, you can’t wait for this kind of scene to unfold. Even if you don’t grab the kid to ask what they were thinking in that moment, you can take a pretty educated guess at what’s going through their head. Pain. Sadness. Frustration. Devastation. Disbelief. And so forth.
If you get the chance to do this scene, and you can do it well, hammer it. They don’t come around often.
To pull it off on deadline, you have to be willing to bend (or break) a rule or two. One of my favorite examples of this from my ESPNBoston days was this recap from Mike Abelson, who captured a spirited back-and-forth that saw 23 points scored in the final 90 minutes — and left the losing team’s star running back stunned:
READING, Mass. -– The ending seemed like fiction, but for Cambridge senior Shaquille Anderson the pain was visceral. In the final 90 seconds, 23 points had been scored, and when the dust settled Reading had escaped with a 29-28 win.
As the handshake line dispersed Anderson turned left, helmet still on, towards the scoreboard. He just stared, seemingly trying to get the eight and the nine to flip places. Nothing.
He lifted his helmet onto his forehead, turned and walked towards his team's post-game huddle. His pads on; his mouthpiece still in. At the 40-yard line he took his helmet off and 30 yards later he slid out of his pads, his electric green compression vest illuminated under the stadium lights. His mouthpiece was still in.
The postgame stretch came and went followed by the talk from coach Ryan Saulnier. A huddle, a chant, and then it was over. Anderson still had his mouthpiece in.
A little dramatic in hindsight. But it’s the details that count. Shaquille never took his eyes off the scoreboard, and never took out his mouthpiece, as if he wasn’t ready to accept defeat. He may still be in denial.
The picture at the top of this story is from hallowed Doyle Field in Leominster, which seemed to be a frequent host of these scenes over the years. That’s after Leominster High lost an intense playoff game to rival St. John’s of Shrewsbury.
Another time at Doyle, after another intense playoff loss by Leominster to another hated foe, I remember a Blue Devils player walking across the turf an hour after the game ended. He was alone, shirtless and crying, muttering to himself “7-0” (the game’s final score) over and over again. That scene inspired me to write this essay a few weeks later about the meaning of high school football1.
Sure, this stuff happens at the highest rungs of the game, too. But it means so much more at the community level.
For instance, when we had Doug Pederson at Hudl Blitz ‘22 back in March, he went on forever about his four years coaching high school football in Louisiana after retirement. It’s the one level of football where he hasn’t gotten championship hardware, and it sticks with him today even as he’s gone on to hoist the Lombardi Trophy.
Jayson Tatum can stare into the abyss after losing to the Golden State Warriors in the most important game of his life. But he’s also 24 years old, and one of the best basketball players in the world. He’s going to have a bazillion more cracks at it.2
But for Joey From Franklin, this might be it. He may very well go on to do great things in life, but he may never come this close to tasting the ultimate victory again. And this is probably the biggest moment in his life to this point. You can just taste the raw emotion from a mile away.
There is no Hall of Fame for AAU. But there’s eternal glory in the place where you’re proud to call home.
All hail the kid with the thousand-yard stare at the scoreboard. Like they say in the SEC, it just means more.
Admittedly, this was my attempt at doing for state championship football what Gerry Callahan did for Thanksgiving football with this legendary column that’s run in the Herald every Thanksgiving morning since 1992. With a true state championship finally here, I got a little tired of Thanksgiving still getting all the love. Because if you polled 100 kids whether they’d rather win at Gillette or beat their Turkey Day rival, they’re all going to say Gillette. I don’t know what impact my essay ultimately had, but I remember getting a lot of kudos from coaches and administrators in the Gillette press box on state finals day.
And by the way, he’s a Missouri Class 5A State Champion.