It Breaks Your Heart

At the close of every Red Sox season, radio announcer Joe Castiglione reads from former commissioner of Baseball Bart Giamatti's essay "The Green Fields of the Mind." Since I was watching on TV I forgot to tune in to hear it. These are the first two and the last paragraph:

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.

Somehow, the summer seemed to slip by faster this time. Maybe it wasn't this summer, but all the summers that, in this my fortieth summer, slipped by so fast. There comes a time when every summer will have something of autumn about it. Whatever the reason, it seemed to me that I was investing more and more in baseball, making the game do more of the work that keeps time fat and slow and lazy. I was counting on the game's deep patterns, three strikes, three outs, three times three innings, and its deepest impulse, to go out and back, to leave and to return home, to set the order of the day and to organize the daylight. I wrote a few things this last summer, this summer that did not last, nothing grand but some things, and yet that work was just camouflage. The real activity was done with the radio--not the all-seeing, all-falsifying television--and was the playing of the game in the only place it will last, the enclosed green field of the mind. There, in that warm, bright place, what the old poet called Mutability does not so quickly come.

Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.

You can read the whole essay here.

This One Just Didn't Feel Right

I'm not sure what it was about this game, but I didn't feel good all the way. Even when the Sox were down 7 runs with 7 outs left in Game 5 I felt confident. Tonight I was waiting for Aaron Boone. I was nervous as soon as the Rays took the lead. As I walked to the bathroom after J.D. Drew struck out with the bases loaded, I started to eulogize the 2008 Boston Red Sox and look forward to 2009. Maybe it was the different makeup of this team, maybe it was the new younger opponent, maybe it was TBS, but I hadn't felt this nervous since 2003.

It feels weird to be the loser again. The Sox hadn't lost a playoff series since the Division Series to the White Sox in '05, and frankly that '05 team could have murdered half of Dorchester in a fit of roid rage and no one would have cared after the team won in '04.

Looking forward for Boston, I like how they shape up. A good young core of pitchers, more outfielders than they need, and a great infield. The main question is Jason Varitek. He's 36 and is a free agent. I want him to retire with the Sox. I think it would be best to start using him at first base, but if Mike Lowell is good to go theres no open slots in the infield.

Tip of the cap to the Tampa Bay Rays, I'm sure we'll see you play the Sox again.

We Will Have a Seventh Game

I wanted to title this post Big Blame James, but that wouldn't be appropriate. I thought of that witty play on Big Game James in about the 3rd and secretly hoped Shields would blow it so I could have it before the papers. All the credit in this must go to the Red Sox pitching staff. Only four hits given up in the game and the bullpen only allowed two base runners in four innings. Varitek broke out of a slump and threw out a base runner. I give credit to Beckett for that caught stealing, as he hung a curve basically making it a pitchout. Either way the Sox were able to get the ball to the pen with a lead.

Jeers go to TBS. Not getting on air for the first pitch is excusable if there was a power outage at the last minute. Being involved in live broadcasts of games, I understand what can go wrong. But man there was still some goofy stuff. Ron Darling refered to pitcher James Shields' cousin Aaron Rowand as a "hard nosed player." You may remember Rowand had a pretty soft nose a few years ago. I know he is a good player, but the first thing I think of when he is mentioned is his catch and crash.

Later in the game TBS showed a graphic with the title "Stolen Bases in the Postseason vs. Catchers" I waited the rest of the night to see how the stolen base attempts against the other eight players go.

Later still Chip Caray broke one of the rules of play-by-play, follow the ball. He said a foul ball went "back our way, into the seats." After the next pitch they had a replay of the ball getting stuck in a catwalk. Back your way, yes. In the seats, no. I'm glad there is only one more game with TBS, even if it does mean we have Buck and McCarver.

TBS, really?

Steve Harvey just had a heart attack. Not in real life, I checked Wikipedia and he is alive and well. TBS is showing an episode of the Steve Harvey Show because they've had a power outage at headquarters in Atlanta, and they can't get the feed of the Game 6 between Boston and Tampa. When I lose power at home we gas up the generator, wheel it to the back of the house, and plug it in. Not that hard. Luckily I have XM radio, so I can listen to the Boston radio guys describe Bossman Junior Upton hit his 7th postseason home run into the catwalk to give the Rays a 1-0 lead. At this rate we might get to see every episode of the Steve Harvey Show.

I've been thinking about starting to blog (again) for a while, and this seems like a great reason. I'm sure I'll have some reaction to this game later.

(Update) At 8:29 TBS breaks into the Game.