In his remarkable baseball memoir, Man in the Crowd, sportswriter Stanley Cohen waxed lyrical of baseball's box score:

Throughout the season, each day is begun with a perusal of the agate type: the results of the previous day's games, the subtle shifts in the standings, the probable pitchers for games to be played that day, and finally, like topping on the cake, box scores, those wondrous blocks of type two inches wide by three deep that relate the individual statistics. Yes, the box score is the catechism of baseball, ready to surrender its truth to the knowing eye. It is all there: the lineups, the batting order, score by innings, the record compiled by each batter, the succession of pitchers, extra base hits and runs batted in, stolen bases and errors, double plays and runners left on base, even the time it took to play the game and the number of people who watched it--all are contained in those splendid little rectangles that, stacked on a page, comprise the history of a day's events.

But there are, I would add, some details that even the venerable box score can't capture.

On Saturday, September 9th, 1989, Kathy and I carried my parents to "The Big A" in Anaheim, California, home of the then California Angels. The Angels hosted the Boston Red Sox. Courageous Jim Abbott, born without a right hand, started on the mound for the Angels; outrageous "Oil Can" Boyd started for the Sox.  

We stayed for the entire game.  

The starting pitchers both left after five innings.

The box score, with its plentitude of data, reports that Angel outfielder Devon White stole four bases in the game. Ah, but the box score has its secrets; here's the rest of the story on three of Devon's four stole bases:  

In the bottom of the sixth--with none out, the Red Sox leading the Angels 5 to 3--Devon White singled to left off Boston reliever Joe Price, scoring Claudell Washington from third. After Chili Davis hit a long fly to center for the first out, Wally Joyner stepped to the plate. With a strike on Joyner, Devon White stole second; two pitches later, he stole third. Joyner lined out to Price for the second out. The Angels' Johnny Ray stepped in. Without warning, Devon White broke from third with Price's first pitch to Ray and stole home to tie the game.

The woman sitting next to me reached down to grab her Coke and missed the play. Hearing the sudden roar of the crowd, she lifted her head and desperately questioned, "What? What happened? What did I miss?"

To put Devon White's accomplishment in perspective, in the history of Major League Baseball, men have stolen second, third, and home in the same inning fifty times. By comparison, there have been 260 no-hitters.  

The moral of the story...Sometimes in life, you just have to show up and pay attention. Fully. Now.