It was the ninth inning of Game 6 in the Yankees-Sox series and I really didn’t want to leave the sports department. But the voice on the scanner reported there was a man down on Bates Street and you just can’t ignore those calls. A man down on the ground might be riddled with bullets. He might have a sword sticking out of his back.

I rushed out the back door of the newspaper and got to the scene in seconds. The man was down, all right. No signs of life and the cops hadn’t arrived yet. I bent down close and saw that he was breathing. A good sign, respiration.

When police arrived, they were able to rouse the man, who then sat up. I pegged him at 30 years old and drunk. Very, very drunk. His blood-alcohol level might have topped his age.

The man could barely speak and he was unable to climb to his feet. Yeah, he’d been drinking, he told the officers. No, he didn’t remember stumbling out of the bar and taking a header on the sidewalk.

Crashing into a tree

When the officers helped the guy to his feet, he immediately stumbled into a tree. The cops steadied him and hailed a paramedic. The besotted man agreed to spend a few hours sobering up at a hospital rather than trying to weave his way home. A good call, I thought. The guy could have lived a block away, but it would have been a long way home.

I don’t know how many unattended deaths police investigate, but I’ve checked out a few of them. Some of the dead were people who, for one reason or another, stumbled off drunk and alone. They froze to death, took nasty falls or just went to sleep and never woke up.

Others only narrowly escape that fate.

A few years back, a man decided to sleep off a drunk near the railroad tracks at West Pitch. I don’t know if the ground is warmer near railroad tracks, but it’s an area many choose to get cozy.

This guy must have been a restless snoozer. Somehow, he rolled closer to the tracks and continued to sleep with his hands lying across the rails. If you can foresee what comes next, this would be a good time to cover your eyes.

A train came along, as trains are known to do along stretches of railroad tracks. Tons of metal rolled over the sleeping drunk’s hands and severed some fingers. The horrified engineer stopped the rig and called for help. When the police arrived, it took them a few minutes to find all the severed pieces. I spent that part of the night following around their flashlight beams until they swept across body parts.

Navigation impaired

The potential for calamity is immense.

The other night, a man was bobbing and weaving his way down Main Street in Lewiston toward Longley Bridge. I mean, it was a marvel he was able to remain upright. He was stumbling down a narrow sidewalk, Twin Cities’ traffic on one side, Androscoggin River on the other.

The young ladies who spotted him didn’t know what to do. Do you call the cops and report that a man might get hurt? Do you try to intercept him and offer assistance, risking a ferocious reaction from the stranger?

As far as I know, the man made it across the bridge unaided, like a contestant in some weird reality show that tests coordination under extreme impairment.

We watch people stumble down Park Street all the time. They move like pinballs between the bumpers, stumbling toward one object after another in an attempt to sustain balance. Walking while hammered, sloshed or wasted is far better than trying to drive that way. No doubt about it. At least you won’t mow down innocent people in your travels. Still, you take a gamble.

The cerebellum, responsible for balance and coordination, gets pickled. Your navigation equipment scrambled, you reel in spite of your mightiest effort to walk straight.

The frontal cortex, your first line of conscious thought, gets soaked and leaves you with muddy, scrambled thoughts. You’re falling down and making bad decisions. A lot of people who get arrested for really obnoxious behavior can blame their booze-soaked cortexes.

Then again, landing in the back seat of a police cruiser might not be the worst thing these days. It’s below zero when darkness falls. Winds shriek. Stumble in this frigid white world and you want to be quick getting back to your feet. Otherwise, the nap will be a long one in a cold and dark oblivion.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.