The fear never goes away

Being a true fan means conceding that your heart will be broken.

The white sphere soared into the night, and I jumped for joy.

It was 29 years ago today — Oct. 23, 1993, minutes before midnight, minutes before my 10th birthday. And Joe Carter hit a clutch, championship-clinching home run for the Blue Jays over the Phillies.

My book Playing Through the Pain: Ken Caminiti and the Steroids Confession That Changed Baseball Forever is available wherever books are sold.

Growing up in Pennsylvania, it was more or less expected based on geography that I would become a Phillies fan, like my father. His favorites were Michael Jack Schmidt and Greg "The Bull" Luzinski, two heroes from the team's first championship team in 1980.

My mother, meanwhile, was a fan of the Big Red Machine, of Rose and Bench and Morgan and Perez.

But I wasn't swayed by either of those teams. I had to find a team of my own. That 1993 season, I ended up choosing the Texas Rangers due to Nolan Ryan and Juan Gonzalez. So even though the 1993 Phillies were a lot of fun, I wasn't a fan — and I took pleasure in cheering against them as they made the playoffs and reached the World Series.

It was fun to root against my father's team.

That series was an epic battle. The gritty Phils against a stacked, proven Toronto squad led by future hall of famers like Rickey Henderson, Paul Molitor and Roberto Alomar.

Toronto built a 2-1 series lead. The Blue Jays won Game 4, an epic 15-14 offensive outpouring. Philadelphia's Curt Schilling pitched a shutout in Game 5.

And then came Game 6. The Blue Jays jumped out to a 5-1 advantage before Philadelphia rallied with a five-run seventh inning on the strength of a Lenny Dykstra home run. The game went to the bottom of the ninth with the Phillies still leading 6-5.

Henderson and Molitor reached base for the Blue Jays against scruffy closer Mitch Williams.

Up came outfielder Joe Carter with one out.

Two balls.

Two strikes.

Williams pitched and twirled through his motion, bracing himself on his gloved hand and perpendicular to the ground as Carter swung.

Carter golfed the ball to left.

The fans erupted before the ball landed over the wall. Fireworks exploded. And Carter floated around the basepaths, swarmed at home plate by a sea of white jerseys after hitting a series-clinching home run.

I jumped up and down. What a moment! We had a very sensitive floor lamp in the room where we were watching the game, and it flickered on and off, celebrating the homer in its own way. I looked back at my father, whose team's misfortune had just broken his heart, and he had a gobsmacked grin on his face. What is there to say?

What words exist?

To come so close and to have it all come crashing down …

In the years that followed, I found a lot of reasons why I would have rooted for the Phillies instead of Toronto that World Series, if only because it would have been nice for my dad to see his favorite baseball team win one last time.

Even so, that Joe Carter home run remained one of my favorite baseball moments. It was so innocent. Before the strike, before the height of the steroids era, before everything seemed to change.

A decade later, when I skipped work selling fast-food restaurant uniforms over the phone to try out for ESPN's "Dream Job" — remember that show? — we had to give an impromptu call for our favorite sports moment, and that's the one I pulled out.

The pitch by Williams ... Carter swings, hits the ball to left ... it's a home run! The Blue Jays win the series!

As a fan, nothing else could have prepared me to understand what the Carter home run felt like for my father — the feeling of victory yanked out of your hands, the elusiveness of winning — quite like Game 6 of the 2011 World Series, when my Rangers came within one strike of the championship, only to see it all come crashing down.

I don't think you ever get over those moments when your team rips your heart out. When your optimism and hope are upended with one pitch. When everything irreparably shifts, and you can't get it back, and anticipation makes way for shock and dread.

Every team has a Joe Carter moment, the instances reduced to names of the participants. Luis Gonzalez. Donnie Moore. Steve Bartman. Kirk Gibson. Ralph Branca and Bobby Thompson. Jeffrey Maier. Scott Podsednik. Bill Buckner. Jim Leyritz. Bill Mazeroski. Sid Bream. Edgar Martinez. Craig Counsell. Jose Bautista. David Freese. Aaron F'ing Boone. Bucky F'ing Dent.

Being a true fan means conceding that your heart will be broken.

Even when your team is rolling — as the Phillies currently are, up 3-1 in the NLCS — there's always that creeping fear that it could happen again.

The fear never goes away. Until the final out. And then you can exhale again.