The joy of staying up way too late

A long, long, loooong night of baseball

When I was 12 or 13, my mom and dad started letting me stay up as long as I wanted if it wasn’t a school night. I took full advantage. On Friday nights I’d watch Johnny Carson on THE TONIGHT SHOW—back then, it ran 90 minutes and didn’t sign off until 1 a.m.

But I didn’t care much about Johnny. What I stayed up for was what came after—THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL. It featured performances from a huge variety of rock and pop stars, from ABBA to Barry White to Steely Dan. Sometimes they played live and sometimes they lip-synced. Some shows were great and some were terrible. It didn’t matter. It ran until 2:30 in the morning. I felt like a member of a special tribe, those still up when everyone else had long ago gone to bed. We were stealing time.

That’s how I felt last night, and very early this morning, when I stayed up to watch Game 3 of the World Series.

It went 18 innings. It lasted six hours and 39 minutes. It ended—on a home run by Freddie Freeman of the Dodgers—at 2:51 in the morning.

If you want a recap, nobody does baseball better than my dear friend Joe Posnanski. But what I want to talk about is the thrill of just staying up that late.

When the game went into extra innings, around 11:30 or so, I started weighing my options. I’m usually in bed by then or right around then. Sometimes way earlier. I’m 61 years old. These days the only time I’m up at 2 in the morning is when I have to pee.

But baseball exists outside time. There’s no game clock. It ends when it ends. The longest game in baseball history went 33 innings (and spawned an excellent book). I had no idea what I was signing up for.

I checked my calendar. No appointments until noon. Screw it, I thought. I’m in.

***

I’ve had some memorable late nights over the years. One night in Atlanta, in my 20s, a group of us went bar-hopping. I was driving my 1971 Buick LeSabre, which we called the White Shadow. We fit 11 people in there one time. I think this night there were six of us. We pulled up to a red light in downtown Atlanta around 4 in the morning.

I looked left.

It was clear.

I looked right.

There was a tank coming down the street.

A tank.

A TANK.

Everyone in the car sobered up right quick. We had not hallucinated it. It was a freaking tank. This was during the Reagan years. Had the Russians invaded while we were knocking back 7-and-7s at Good Ol’ Days?

I pulled over and we got out. Carefully. It took us a few minutes to process what was going on. For me, it clicked when I saw the floodlights. It was a movie. Thank God! A movie! We stuck around long enough to discover that it was a Chuck Norris movie called INVASION USA. In the movie, the Russians did in fact invade. But Chuck was there to kick their collective ass.

I’ve seen INVASION USA. Trust me, the trailer is all you need.

***

These days, if I’m awake and dressed at 3 in the morning, somebody I love is probably in the emergency room. As the Dodgers and Blue Jays played on, I could feel gravity pulling me toward that warm soft bed. But the game was thrilling. One of the things that separates baseball from football and basketball: If you leave the game, you can’t go back in. So as the innings ticked away, the pool of players dwindled. Toronto used up all of its position players. Los Angeles used up all of its regular pitchers. Baseball god Shohei Ohtani hit two homers and two doubles, back during normal waking hours, so after that the Blue Jays walked him five times in a row. Runners got thrown out at second, third and home.

Clayton Kershaw, the Dodgers’ Hall of Fame pitcher, is at the end of his career and has been basically unplayable for months. But in this game he had to play. He entered in the top of the 12th with the bases loaded and got the one out he needed.

Our cat, Jack Reacher, knew that I was up way past my bedtime and his. He sprawled on the stool in front of me and growled over his shoulder. What the hell are YOU still doing here?

I know, buddy, I know.

It was raining in Charlotte and the wind splatted leaves against our windows. The traffic had long ago stopped. I could hear the creaks as our old house settled. The earth spun back toward dawn. The game kept going.

There are way too few times in my life when I feel like a kid. But this felt like one of those nights when you first taste freedom, when you cross the line just because you can. A reasonable person would have gone to bed hours before. Most reasonable people had. Next time, I probably will.

But not last night. Last night was a midnight special.

—TT

And if you’re so inclined, subscribe: