On hope, a Riley Greene home run, and NHL Opening Night

Welcome to the NHL season, let's talk about baseball for a moment.

I know it’s opening night for the Dallas Stars and Detroit Red Wings, but if you’ll allow me, let’s talk about baseball for a quick minute.

Yesterday I was lucky to attend Game 4 of the American League Divisional Series between the Detroit Tigers and Seattle Mariners, joining my pals Prashanth Iyer and Max Bultman for a daytime game at Comerica Park.

The weather was beautiful, incredible actually for early October, and we had pretty good seats, roughly 28 rows behind home plate.

And for roughly five innings, it was pretty close to depressing. The Tigers couldn’t hit, A.J. Hinch made a puzzling decision to take out his starter after three innings, and trailing 3-0, it felt like it was all but certain Seattle would win a boring, yet efficient game to close out the series.

The crowd was distraught, understandably so, and while Detroit rallied to tie the game 3-3 in the bottom of the fifth inning, it still felt like a monumental task for Detroit to actually find consistent offense to win.

Then, on the second pitch in the bottom of the sixth inning, Riley Greene connected on a pitch and sent it into the bleachers for a solo home run. It’s one of those moments that takes milliseconds, but felt like an eternity.

From where we were sitting, we had a perfect vantage point, watching the ball’s flight to right field, unsure if it was going to leave the park until the right fielder simply planted his feet in submission that the ball was gone.

It was a home run that was both due and unexpected at the same time after Greene’s struggles and how much he represented the Tigers regular season collapse from the best record in baseball to backing into a wildcard spot.

When it cleared the fence, as the crowd awoke, the mood shifted. The Tigers went from a team on their deathbed to a team that now, against all odds, had found a way to rise from the grave and eventually deliver a kill shot of their own.

And that’s what sports is all about, right? It’s those moments, the unexpected and chaotic that, when things seem lost, pull you back in and give you one of the most dangerous things — hope.

It’s something that I can’t help but think about heading into the NHL season. How right now, across the league, everyone has some form of hope. Some form of belief that in the spring, they’ll have their own equivalent of that Riley Greene home run I watched yesterday.

So in that mindset, let’s open up the season coverage here at Shap Shots. Whoever you root for, enjoy the season and the hope of it all, and as always, thanks for reading, we’ll have some actual hockey discussion posted here later tonight.