#49. Convergence (Sunday, June 25, 2000)

What was your best day…of having a bunch of small positive things just come together perfectly?

This is a tale of three interspersing storylines. So let’s just go through that whole Sunday afternoon timeline step-by-step.

12:30 pm: I’ve been able to convince my parents to buy me some more Magic: The Gathering cards (#105, #88, #78, #66) to update my current collection/semblance of a deck; so they tell me we can go to the card store today. I have a piano recital later today starting at 3:00 pm, where, statistically speaking, I have about a fifty percent chance of humiliating myself¹.

1:00 pm: A baseball game starts between the Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox. They’re almost halfway through the season; and, after taking the first two of the series, the Jays have a one-game lead on both the Red Sox and the Yankees in the AL East. This is by far the latest in the season – in the first seventeen years of my baseball-watching life (1997-2013)² – that the Jays have held a division lead.

2:00 pm: The Red Sox have just taken a 5-2 lead in the fourth, and I’ve conceded that they can have this one (two of three ain’t bad). I remind my dad to bring his wallet as we head out. He kind of waves me off.

2:15 pm: We’re on our way to the card store (Silver Snail in the East End) when my dad says he forgot his wallet. Luckily, my mom brought hers, so crisis averted.

2:30 pm: We arrive at the store. I pick out a Nemesis booster pack (15 random cards) and Mercadian Masques tournament pack (75 random cards). I open the Nemesis pack right there, and get an Ascendant Evincar, which Joey on my van claimed (incorrectly it turns out) was the rarest card in the set, so I’m beyond thrilled.

3:15 pm: On the ride to the church for the recital, I hear on the car radio that Tony Batista has hit a home run to make it a 5-3 game. We arrive at the recital, only to find out that they started a bit early and my spot had already passed. I kind of go, “well, that’s too bad, I guess we’ll just go home (so I can open the tournament pack)”. But my parents speak to the organizer and have me re-booked for a spot at 4:45 pm.

3:30 pm: In the meantime, my dad needs to pick up something at a store. So, instead of staying and listening to the recital like everybody else, we drive around some more. The second the car turns on, I hear that Carlos Delgado has just homered to tie the game at 5.

4:30 pm: I’m back for my spot at the recital. I play. Miraculously, I don’t screw up.

5:00 pm: We get into the car. I see my piano teacher getting into her car at the same time. We figure that she’s leaving now that all her students have played. (Turns out, she left just before I played, thinking I had wimped out. I learned that the next week when she told me and mom: “You know, Jeff should really play at these things,” as if me wimping out was completely expected).

5:15 pm: I hear on the radio the Jays have won 6-5 in 13 innings, giving them a seemingly huge 2-game lead in the division. Insane.³

5:30 pm: I open the pack of Mercadian Masques. In hindsight, there is literally nothing of value in there – but those cards (plus the Nemesis cards) join my small existing pile as my greatest treasures for the entire summer.

I’ve done five recitals in my piano career. At the second one (age 7), my first time trying to memorize the song, I literally forget the notes and mom calls out from below that I can just stop (instead of embarrassing myself further), so I do. At the fifth one (age 12), I mess up (as in, the notes coming out of my fingers can in no way be described as music) for several large sections – all the while the hundred or so other apparent child prodigies there perform flawlessly.
Until 2014, and of course 2015 (#85).
The Blue Jays inevitably blow that lead within a few weeks, and the Yankees go on to win their third consecutive World Series.