Over the course of three days, nineteen times the mobilization began. The first time was when a supervisor called over a handheld radio to a group of volunteer security guards.
Should the softball come near them, their mission was to retrieve it. Should the ball be hit, it would be the 96th home run of her career, breaking the NCAA record, and it would come off the bat of Oklahoma senior Jocelyn Alo.
Dennis Baker, a softball dad from Long Beach who took the task more seriously than others, held a yellow game ball and said it would be traded to the fan who ended up with the home run ball and later signed by Alo.
He said that they would bribe them with a T-shirt and a hat.
Baker gathered a few of his chasers for a brief lesson before Alo's first at-bat against Cal State Fullerton. He told them to shift their focus to right field if they were to pitch her outside.
Mark Abercrombie, a local softball dad who runs a mobile- home park in Palm Springs, walked away from his scouting session and said that he was not that strategic. I will run hard.
The idea that Alo would leave on Sunday without the record seemed laughable back then. She found the fake Wrigley Field fence and wall painted with fake fans and fake brick offensive. It was inevitable that a pitch would leak out over the plate far enough and fat enough for Alo to clear the fence.
Many learned a lot over the course of five games and many hours. The pitchers and their coaches were resistant to the storyline from Friday to Sunday. Every time Alo came to the plate, the chasers loosened up, the camera phones raised from every corner of the park and the pitches sailed just badly enough to keep her from No. 96.
Oklahoma won all five games and Alo was 3 for 8 with 10 walks, one hit by pitch and roughly 1,200 feet of foul balls. It would be remarkable for anyone but her to have a.737 on-base percentage over five games. Someone who was there to see her break the record is the only way it could be perceived as a failure. The person was guilty.
Alo showed no strain through the 19 plate appearances. She hit second, third and leadoff in the final game, but it was not enough to prompt a challenge. Even if no one in attendance watched her throw away her forearm guard and jog to first base, she still took her walks because they were the right play. The strategy of not getting beat by Alo meant that they were being beaten by someone else.
"I don't know what they tell her, but she's incredibly calm up there even with all this going on."
The ball chasers couldn't see a home run because there were so many people around at Fake Wrigley. Alo's family members and friends were among the group. As Alo walked for the third time against Tennessee, her father, Levi, tried to change her fate by moving from camp chair to camp chair while someone in the Oklahoma crowd yelled, "There's a lot of pressure on her."
One of the few pitches she found to her liking, a high fastball off the plate outside, came Friday against Long Beach State and came within two feet of landing near her family's spot beyond right field.
Lauren was hoping to watch Alo break her record of 95 collegiate homers, but she was rooting for Joceyln. I enjoyed it for seven years. I have gotten a lot out of it, and now she deserves it.
Alo will get the record if not March 7 at home against Minnesota, then almost certainly the following weekend at her home in Hawaii, a trip Oklahoma coach Patty Gasso promised three years ago.
Levi traveled from Southern California to Oklahoma to Houston and back to Southern California. He told me on Friday that he was going to keep going if she didn't break it. He felt it again on Saturday but less on Sunday, when the entire family seemed resigned to holding up their phones and recording at-bats that would be consigned to the trash bin.
Levi spent the weekend changing seats and standing in different spots to alter whatever was in the air as the ball chasers mobilized and demobilized 19 times. Levi responded with a half-hearted shrug when the Oklahoma fan asked when she was getting 96. He has a habit of shaking his arms to relieve stress when he is waiting for a record, as if he is going to be called upon to play. When I asked if he was nervous, he said no. I don't have to do anything.
They all had flights back to Honolulu late Sunday, and they are relieved that Alo will be coming to the island in less than two weeks. When I asked Levi if he was going to miss out on seeing his daughter make history, he smiled and nodded to her.
As his wife shook her head and rolled her eyes, he said, "You never know."
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