This week's new ESPN slow summer buzz-phrase, right on the heels of “Tell me how my ass taste,”
turned to “Fresno State is the Turkey of the College World Series.” And
deep in the second half of Wednesday's Euro Cup semi-final match I
hoped not. The college that unleashed me and the birthplace of my fiancée,
seemed tethered. Even though Turkey had not surrendered the goal that
would take it out of the running for Euro Cup Title contention I sensed
the worst was coming. Germany’s aggressive offense and the Turks’
shortage of players due to injury and suspension gave every reason to believe that.

With
the final game of the Fresno State-Georgia College World Series Final
only hours away, my future and past felt inextricably connected. “Respiration” played over an eclectic mix tape while Germans on TV celebrated in a circumspect fashion.

I know from both literature and personal experience that the Turkish are something like comfortable with melancholy,
so I didn’t trip a bunch off the loss. I felt grateful, actually. The
Cup has finally made me something like comfortable with international
football. As a child I played a little, and I had a wormhole
experience with the game in college, working as a sports correspondent
for the Fresno Bee: A girls playoff game, in Bakersfield, ran late.
This was in, like, the winter of 1988, before cell phones and laptops
and all that good shit. The game ran late, I phoned my editor from a
Carl’s Jr. along Highway 99. “You got 20 minutes!” said Jerry, my
editor, and I scribbled out a story in my Reporter’s Notebook before
dictating it back to the sports desk. The resulting narrative ended up
being one of my better clips from the school years. That was great, but
it's not the same as having a visceral connection to the sport. Now I
got that. Gimme Germany to take the whole thing.

Thank you, Turkey for delivering the good hurt.
My
Fresno experience was, overall, something liberation through pain. And
if you were going to buy into this great moment in amateur athletics,
you were gonna have to accept that part of it sucked. The ping of
aluminum bats in college baseball can be hella unnerving, at first. The
its pitching is so erratic that no game is ever over until the last out
is rung up. (Take it easy and you can roll with that; it can work.) And
if you’re like me, being champion of a conference that’s called the WAC is a mixed blessing.

It’s
fitting then that the Bulldogs’ unlikely run was came from such a
flawed place. Fresno, invited to the tourney like the wallflower you
invite to a party only because he has a great punch bowl, turned out
the show as if that punch bowl wallflower rocked the mic and mthen ade
all the ladies orgasm. Total leftfield hit.

Like
Turkey, Fresno State had been wracked by injury. But on the 10th
anniversary of the school’s only other national championship, in
women’s softball, its baseball team perservered. And I loved it. These Bulldogs are so white as to serve as tangible evidence that MLB has done little to foment interest in the game among people of color. But so what, for now. I know Terry Pendleton was amped.

Truth
is, I always regretted going to Fresno State, chalked up my attendance
there to self-esteem so poor that I wouldn’t give UC Berkeley a chance.
But on Wednesday, listening to all those crappy little towns like
Clovis and Visalia, burgs I spent way too much time tooling around in
search of sex and fast food, I felt great for my old school. In Fresno
State’s fervent search for recognition in athletics, it had found
mostly off-the-charts shame, especially in the well-funded basketball
department. That one of the money-losing sports finally brought the
university glory was fitting. So, When Clayton Allison got the last
Georgia hitter to line out to right, I was as proud as if my old school
and I were a tight and friendly fit. Proud as if I had actually
graduated.

Steve Detwiler, Fatih Terim
— hats off to you. Thanks for the awesome memories on a slow summer
day. Here's hoping Turkey gets into the EU and Fresno escapes the
clutches of the anti-immigrant, God-obsessed, guided-by-talk radio
right.