This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The most significant moment of the 2011 Triple-A All-Star Game — maybe the only significant moment of the 2011 Triple-A All-Star game — didn't start with Brad Mills turning a scuffed yellow ball in his left hand; it didn't end with Russ Canzler swinging hard at that same ball and watching it disappear over the yellow railing of SpringMobile Ballpark.
The moment, a memory, began late in the afternoon when Nelson Sandberg, wrapping up his workday, was offered tickets to Wednesday night's game. He went home and told his wife, Melissa, and three young children — Carlie, Eric and Jason. Jason pulled on his Yankees ballcap — he played for the Yankees in Little League this year — and he and Carlie grabbed their gloves.
They hadn't been to a game yet this year, but they still recalled the routine.
"Every time we come to a baseball game, they always hope they catch a ball," Melissa said. "They always go home disappointed. We tell them that doesn't happen very often."
But there Carlie was, in a pink T-shirt and too-big glove, on the other end of that moment. She's 10, a fifth-grader at West Bountiful Elementary School and she does gymnastics.
Canzler, a third basemen for the Durham Bulls — the I-believe-in-the-Church-of-Baseball Durham Bulls — stroked a 1-0 pitch toward right field, and then …
Well, it's best Carlie just tells the rest.
"It was coming," she said.
"I was like, this could be my chance," she said.
"And," she said, "I heard someone say, 'Bill, get it.' "
And then, "He got it, but then he dropped it and I got it."
"I started shaking," she said.
Carlie posed for a photo, while her mother — shaking a bit herself — took a picture. Then, she and Eric, who is 7, started playing catch with that ball, putting their mitts to use again.
Only at the Triple-A All-Star Game. Only in that moment, with the collective forces of the cosmos and the rotten luck of Bill, who had it then didn't, did the All-Stars align in a manner that allowed Carlie Sandberg to go home the happiest little girl in all of northern Utah.
When planning the All-Star game — like any event — organizers worried.
If they host it, will they come?
Two Salt Lake Bees played in the game. The rest? Durham Bulls and Columbus Clippers and Reno Aces. Unless you're a fan of minor league baseball, would you care enough to come?
For Curtis Schaefer, the game was the stage to watch the teams he has paid such close attention to this season.
"Who's tied for last place in the PCL?" Scott Schaefer asked his 7-year-old son.
"There's three," said Curtis, round-faced and wearing a Chicago Cubs shirt over a Boston Red Sox one. "There's Oklahoma City, there's the Fresno Bees, and they're all … "
"You forgot one," Scott interrupted.
Curtis is allowed a half-hour of computer time each day. Since attending a Bees game on the Fourth of July, he's used it to study the Pacific Coast League.
"Oh, and there's the Salt Lake Bees," Curtis said. "They're all 39-52."
Of course, they came — 12,439 of them.
Thing is, baseball brings people together. It brought Glen Romrell and Blake Bradshaw together as 5-year-olds. As kids, they walked from their Glendale homes to the ballpark.
Wednesday, that same ballpark was, for the first time they remembered, on a national stage.
"I came for the All-Star game," said Romrell, now 45, a truck driver, his right arm covered in tattoos of demons and gargoyles and skulls. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing."
"Seeing all the players that will be in the majors soon," said Bradshaw.
They sat in the upper-deck along the first-base line, directly opposite from Carlie Sandberg — and Melissa and Nelson and Jason and Eric. With his tattoos and a gray goatee that he hasn't cut in more than 18 months, Romrell was truly the opposite of little Carlie.
Or, against the backdrop of a once-in-a-lifetime experience, really wasn't.
Twitter: @oramb