Past Perfect. ed makes it perfect and past
One: you didn’t provide a passage therefore how am I suppose to know who Sadie smith is?
It shows that Perez believes it is a very important moment. Toward the end, he (assumed) uses the words "for our beloved Coyotes." Given that, one could say that Perez is a big fan of the Coyotes. He knows about baseball down to the smallest of details, and this moment was a "frozen in time" moment of importance because of the anticipation.