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ONTARIO DOME
(To the tune of "Tennessee Moon", the title song of an album Neil released in 1996. Dennis Morgan co-wrote the song with Neil.)
Baseball doesn't do what it once could do.
I used to stay up and watch a game all the way through.
'Cause I lost my championship hopes one night,
Put the ballgame on, and watched Joe Carter's ball take flight.
In search of a dream underneath the Ontario dome.
I lost my hope with a ball Mitch Williams'd thrown.
Makes me wonder: is this the same dome Mitch played under?
Home run, and it broke my heart right away.
Began to think for the first time they couldn't play.
And when I saw that pitcher on the mound all alone,
I knew Joe Carter'd made his way to home.
In search of a dream underneath the Ontario dome.
I lost my hope with a ball Mitch Williams'd thrown.
And I wonder: is this the same dome Mitch played under
when he threw the pitch to Joe Carter
and I knew he wished he'd thrown it harder?
And I can hear the echoes
in the sound of a ball meeting bat.
And the hit still paints a picture where I'm at.
Yeah, in search of a dream underneath the Ontario dome.
I lost my hope with a ball Mitch Williams'd thrown.
The story behind this one:
After I moved to Philadelphia in 1986, I remained loyal to the teams for which I cheered when I lived in Washington, but since Washington does not have a baseball team, I decided to become a fan of the Philadelphia Phillies. It did not take me long to discover that this entails suffering through a lot of losses.
But in 1993, the Phillies surprised many people by winning their division and then beating the favored Atlanta Braves in the National League Championship Series. I had great fun watching the Phillies that year, seeing players like Lenny Dykstra, John Kruk, Darren Daulton, Pete Incaviglia, and Jim Eisenreich. And pitchers such as Curt Schilling, Terry Mulholland, Danny Jackson, Tommy Greene, and their top relief pitcher, Mitch "The Wild Thing" Williams.
The Phillies faced the Toronto Blue Jays in the World Series. (Some may say that this was more of a World Series than those played in most years because of the presence of the Canadian-based Blue Jays, who had won the World Series the previous year by defeating the Braves.) The Phillies were able to win just two of the first five games of the Series. The final score of one of the games they lost was 15-14. Thus, the Phillies needed to win the final two games of the best-of-seven series in order to win the World Series. This was going to be tough, because both games were scheduled to be played in the Sky Dome, the home stadium of the Blue Jays.
As the 9th inning began in Game Six on Saturday, October 23 (the 15th anniversary of the first time I ever heard "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" by Barbra and Neil), it actually looked like the Phillies would have a chance to win, because they were ahead, 6-5. But two Toronto players reached base, and Joe Carter came to bat against Mitch Williams. Carter broke the hearts of all the Phillies fans by hitting a home run over the left field fence, and Toronto won the game, 8-6, and the World Series, 4 games to 2.
After that game, Williams was never the same. The Phillies traded him during the off-season, and he had short stints with other teams before retiring in 1997. Carter played with the Blue Jays until the end of the 1997 season. He then joined my second-favorite baseball team, the Baltimore Orioles. But before the 1998 season was over, he was traded to the San Francisco Giants. Carter visited Philadelphia to play games four times after the 1993 World Series. He came in 1996 to play in the Major League Baseball All-Star game, in 1997 for a Blue Jays-Phillies interleague series, in 1998 for an Orioles-Phillies interleague series, and later in 1998 for a Giants-Phillies series. To no one's surprise, he was roundly booed every time. Late in the 1998 season, Carter announced that he would be retiring at the end of the season. Ironically, his last at-bat came in the ninth (last) inning of a game against the Chicago Cubs which the Giants lost, causing them to be eliminated from playoff contention.
P.S. As a Phillies fan, I'd much rather say, 'Forever lose, Blue Jays.'"