I watched a great baseball game tonight. I totally get baseball - again. I mean the last time I cared about baseball, such as developing a relationship with the players and the TEAMS, was when i was twelve years old. The Boston Red Sox are such an interesting team. I have a lot of friends from Connecticut, new Jersey and that part of the country, and they're all huge redsox fans. Today, watching Boston defeat the new york Yankees 9-6, I grasped why so many love this team and so emotionally.
I had never seen Fenway prk from the air. I was spookily amazed to observe that the field is not the usual diamond, but is instead shaped like a kidney. You wonder by what strange fluke that happened. The red Sox have so much damn character.
And isn't it great that they play at Fenway Park. Their old clubhouse. It's so Boston. The Boston RedSox are not going to have a home ballpark called pizzahut.redsox.com/stadium. It's Fenway Park. And damn well it should be. I think these corporations should be ashamed, but i guess it's really the team owners. It's the whole chingasa it is. How about a corporate culture which makes a stand, and doesn't try to overwhelm and eradicate the small things which give our cities some depth? How about allowing some mysticism, besides the hypnosis of brand loyalty? Yeah that's going to happen.
But then, those redsox. Senator John Kerry was sitting next to the Boston dug-out, in what i imagine would be the most coveted seats in the ballpark. He was with John Glenn, and the crowd loved it. I loved it. Millar jacked a homerun with the bases empty in the bottom of the sixth. On his way back to the dugout he high-fived Kerry. I mean kerry is Boston. Talk about a son of that state. He threw out the opening game ball; a flacid lob I have to say. It landed on the plate itself, ane of the announcers good-naturedly called: "Breaking ball."
Volkofsky noted amusingly that the Red Sox are a hair band. It's true that a lot of them have funky hair. I barely know anything about team line-ups, but Boston has all the guys I've heard of. I guess I know the names of few yankees players too.
But I know that Boston has, or recently had Tim Wakefield, a knuckleballer. He has the slowest pitch in the big leagues. His knuckleball averages between 41 and 61 mph, and the catchers can't even catch them. They're junk wobbling through the air. This is at a point in the game when buffed up jocks with flame throwers are throwing fastballs at 104. Wakefield plays a really old school game, in which owners have little confidence. And of course he plays for Boston. The teams are run like McDonalds. At least a very high paying McDonalds.
Ken Burns was being interviewd on NPR theother day, and he was waxing poetic about baseball. He made such great points about the mysticism of the game, at least what baseball's diehard fans will always try to convince you is the game's mysticism. Burns pointed out that baseball the only sport in which it is the Man who scores the point. In all other sports it's the ball, the puck, the stone which has to cross, or be placed or slamdunked in order to gain points. And in baseball it's the runner, and he does it by getting home.