On May 1, 2011, I watched a baseball game. “Sunday Night Baseball” on ESPN was my Philadelphia Phillies against the hated New York Mets. Cliff Lee was on the mound in red pinstripes, opposed by Chris Young in blue. Ryan Howard had an RBI single in the eighth, but the Phillies lost in extra innings. I don’t remember any of these details about the game; I had to look it all up just now. What I remember most about this game was the USA chants that rang out in Citizen’s Bank Park. Somewhere around the ninth inning word began spreading throughout the sell-out crowd that the president was making a national announcement soon. The TV feed of the game cut to fans checking their phones, looks of shock and surprise and relief on their faces. Some were crying. I remember the announcer Orel Hersheiser, one of the most dominant pitchers of the ’80s, struggling to call the baseball game in front of him over the crowd chants, unable as a journalist to speculate on the as-of-yet-unconfirmed information. I yelled at the television when the game went into extra innings and ESPN redirected its feed of the game to a podium set up outside the White House. “He’s dead. We get it. Show the damn game,” I remember thinking. In extra innings a single play can end the game before the fans even retake their seats after their bathroom breaks, and I didn’t want to miss anything. By that point the tweets had been pouring in. I texted my family the news I had heard, but all the same, I knew it wouldn’t ever truly feel real until I heard the president say it himself. I remember Twitter was the craziest I had ever seen it. There were the initial reports, then there were subsequent reports that said the initial reports were inaccurate, then there were further reports saying, “No, wait guys, we were right the first time.” A “THREAT LEVEL: RAINBOWS” joke got 70 retweets and bounced around my news feed. Band friends of mine began formulating a Twitter plan in real time to parade around campus and the library playing “The Star Spangled Banner,” which later drew a small amount of ire from the student population. When the president was finished talking about Navy SEALs in far-away lands, the ESPN feed cut back to “Sunday Night Baseball.” The Mets had scored the go-ahead run and The Speech was over just in time to watch Kyle Kendrick collect the loss. As the cameras showed Hersheiser in the “Sunday Night Baseball” studio, again tasked with the impossible job of discussing pitching performances and at-bats on tonight of all nights, the fans in Citizen’s Bank Park stayed late and began the USA chants again. As Orel wished us all goodnight, there was a final montage of Phillies fans chanting and cheering and crying before the camera zoomed in to center field on the wind-waving American flag and the “Sunday Night Baseball” feed cut out. On May 1, 2012, I watched another baseball game. The Phillies beat the Braves 4-2 in Atlanta. Even though ace Cole Hamels was pitching for the Phils and the Braves were only a half game out of first place, the stadium was empty. There were barely enough fans to do the Braves’ Tomahawk Chop, let alone start USA chants. During the seventh-inning stretch, the feed cut to the 2011 game and the USA chants while the announcers let a reserved silence hang in the air, let the footage speak for itself with a superimposed “This Day In History” logo in the upper left of the screen. This was history, I thought to myself, as seen through the lens of baseball, the all-American rose-colored lens of the nation’s pastime. The feed they patched in on Tuesday wasn’t from Abbottabad. It was from Citizen’s Bank Park. It wasn’t SEAL Team Six, but ordinary Phillies fans, like you or me, forgetting, if only for a moment, the game of baseball and cheering the fact that we were and are Americans, that we live in a country that allows us to go to night games in May and watch a man on a mound of dirt try to throw a ball of yarn 95 miles per hour past another man. Baseball was simultaneously inconsequential and celebrated, more than anything had ever been celebrated before. It had never before felt so pointless and so paramount. It was just a game, but nothing else had ever mattered more. Baseball fans, by necessity, have great memories. To be a baseball fan is to be an archivist, a living historian, comparing a young left-handed Dodger superstar in Clayton Kershaw to a young left-handed Dodger superstar in Sandy Koufax. If networks keep showing the “This Day In History” watermarked feed, then May 1, 2011, is a day, I believe, baseball fans will never forget. Before the president’s speech I only wanted to watch the end of the game; after The Speech I was just grateful to be able to watch the end of any game. May the USA chants never cease to ring from the stadiums of our national pastime. Dan Camponovo is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected]