The Memes, Moments, and Legacy of Scott Oberg

Ultimately, the game is about moments.

We pour hours, days, weeks, our whole lives into thinking and talking about baseball and all we remember are snippets. The calamitous and joyous moments that makes fandom so addicting.

Baseball fandom is, of course, silly. Inherently built around a game that functions on geometry and physics, our fandom often seems like asking math to treat us fairly. That’s an oversimplification obviously, these are world class athletes performing at the very top of their abilities, but still, it feels like every game, we ask for spreadsheets and luck. It’s why, a least for me, getting emotional about sports feels stupid. Getting frustrated, angry, or even excited about this thing we can’t control feels like wasted emotion. But, I do get emotional. How can I help it? I’m not a robot, I can feel the moment.

Defector’s David Roth made famous the game “Remember Some Guys”. David has a lifelong obsession with baseball cards that allows him to remember hundreds of former players that were only memorable to him and maybe a few other baseball fans. It led to him remembering guys and their impact on his baseball fandom. The game can be played with anyone, you simply remember the guys you can remember and talk about their moments and impact.

Their moments are, ultimately, all they occupy our brain with. Whether that moment is Clint Barmes falling down the stairs with deer meat or me being in attendance for Josh Rutledge’s MLB debut and watching him crank a double, for so many players, all we have are these moments. We can’t tell you how many home runs they hit or even if they ever had a good season, but we can tell you the moments.

Our fandom is made up of these moments. We remember the Rockies blowing a six run lead of a game we attended, we remember Holliday’s Slide, we remember The Guys that made the moments, good or bad. This is how the sport speaks to us. We don’t all remember the price of tickets in 1999 or how many wins the Rockies had in 2004, but we all are connected by the moments. We are bound together by the emotion and the memory, how we felt and what we did when the moments happened.

Scott Oberg is one of our moments.

The Rockies reliever may be forced into retirement after a third surgery to alleviate blood clots in his arm this weekend, cutting short a career that truly felt like it was just getting started. The 30-year-old righty wasn’t definitive on his career prospects this week but every quote seemed more gutting than the last as Scott and his teammates talked about his future.

For Oberg, if this is the end, this ends a career that began in 2015 and reached it’s crescendo in 2018. If Scott never throws another pitch, he won’t have his jersey retired or give a hall of fame speech, but I can say he will be remembered. There is no doubt in my mind of that.

The 2018 Rockies will assuredly go down as some of the most fun you can have watching a baseball team. They were rowdy, they won games in exciting fashion, and they were fun. Were they as good as 2007 or 2009? No, probably not. But they were just as fun.

For the team, and for those that cherished that team, the NL Wild Card game was the squad’s biggest moment. Not just because it was the only playoff game they won, either.

Coming into Chicago against a 95 win Cubs team that had an MVP candidate and championship pedigree, the Rockies handled the Cubs offense with five pitchers having the game of their life at Wrigley Field. Eventually, as we all know, Tony Wolters slapped the game winning RBI single in the 13th inning against Kyle Hendricks.

Scott Oberg closed it out in the bottom of the 13th with three strikeouts.

Sports fandom is just a collection of moments to cherish. We have individual moments (watching Josh Rutledge slap a double or watching a Bichette walk off) and we have collective ones. Moments that bind us together. Scott’s four strikeout playoff hero performance is a collective moment, one we all share. His name sits on the stat line next to a W but it also sits in our brains, tied to the emotion of that night.

After midnight, on a Tuesday, whisper screaming as each batter was called out. This is how I’ll remember Scott. I won’t remember the struggles of 2015 after his callup, I won’t remember his Yo-Yo from Albuquerque to Denver for 3 seasons, I won’t remember the stories of his development and the duct tape he put on the plate to teach himself what zones to hit.

I will remember Bryant, Gore, Baez, and Almora.

I will remember a celebration at Wrigley Field on a cold October night.

If Scott is leaving us now, he is leaving us with a collective memory that binds us all to the Rockies. A moment that we will cherish and remember whenever we see a Scott Oberg card or some rando wearing his jersey at Coors (which is probably me). If this is the end of Scott’s baseball road, you could say it was an unfair end but you can’t say it wasn’t a great road to walk.

Scott’s impact on my personal fandom is separated entirely from this moment, though I share the collective memory. For me, Scott is a part of a community. Early in 2017, when Scott was still learning how to deal his slider, I began to post pictures of Scott on Twitter. What began as a lighthearted joke to get us through any potential Oberg Struggles became more as Scott transformed his game and became a legitimately effective reliever.

Memes are collective property, that is something I’ve always believed. I understand the frustration of you making them or taking the time to create and then watching someone else post it but, they aren’t art. They’re not individual expression, they’re a joke or message based around a collective experience. Scott’s photos became a meme because we all shared the commonality of understanding them, not because I thought to post a picture. That makes the meme much stronger, in a way. Much like a memory, or a moment, Scott’s meme was something we all shared together.

Fandom is about community. The only reason we do this is for someone to talk to, I would expect. If this sport made us lonelier we’d probably refuse to watch it and go do something like build cabins in the woods or cook pancakes. But, it bonds us together through that shared experience. Shared joy and heartbreak create a fandom, not sold merchandise or TV ratings. Scott, through his moment and his meme, did more for this community and this fandom than most.

If Scott never throws another pitch, he gave us a joyous memory and a shared experience. For some, he gave us the very basis of the community. That’s really all we can ask for, isn’t it?