![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack
Jun. 22nd, 2002 11:13 amI love baseball. So it makes me an ugly American. So sue me. I was planning on posting this yesterday, when we lost at the World Cup, in that "bummer, back to my first love" sense. However, recent events have made me a smidge defensive about waxing rhapsodic about the national pastime. Hence this opener—I was going to talk about it anyway. Honest. (Defensive? No. Not me.)
This could spiral me off into an essay about patriotism amongst the American intelligentsia and the "chattering classes"; my good friends who feel the need to make sure they are not stateside on the 4th of July and when they do travel tend to lie and say they're Canadian; the attitude that American patriotism is somehow declassé and that being American and actually liking anything that is purely American (like, say, baseball) is not the done thing. What will I do is tell a story:
( A London tale )
This is all to say that, at this moment, I do feel a little defensive and self conscious about writing some effusive tribute to something as quintessentially American as baseball. Yet, it is the most literary of sports, the memories of it more words than images: Tinker to Evers to Chance. There is no joy in Mudville. Say it ain't so, Joe. The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. Did you see Jackie Robinson hit that ball? It-could-go-all-the-way! Even the pedestrian rhythms of the play-by-play are like poetry: The count is two-and-one as Piazza steps back into the box, a swing and a miss, two strikes. I could tell you, even now, the roster of Charlie Brown's little league team.
And so tomorrow I will be sitting in box seats at Shea, watching the mediocre Mets play the horrid Royals (13 1/2 games out in the AL Central), a game that will have no effect whatsoever on the pennant race. (I would point out that my own beloved team is in first place in the AL East, but they always collapse after the All Star break and like all long-time Red Sox freaks, I am more than a little superstitious.) If I get there early enough, I will stand and sing the national anthem (all baseball fans know that the last two words are not "the brave" but "play ball") and if I stay late enough, I will stand at the seventh inning stretch and sing again. The sun will shine, and the grass will be green, and the boys of summer will be put through their paces, and it will be a good day indeed.
This could spiral me off into an essay about patriotism amongst the American intelligentsia and the "chattering classes"; my good friends who feel the need to make sure they are not stateside on the 4th of July and when they do travel tend to lie and say they're Canadian; the attitude that American patriotism is somehow declassé and that being American and actually liking anything that is purely American (like, say, baseball) is not the done thing. What will I do is tell a story:
( A London tale )
This is all to say that, at this moment, I do feel a little defensive and self conscious about writing some effusive tribute to something as quintessentially American as baseball. Yet, it is the most literary of sports, the memories of it more words than images: Tinker to Evers to Chance. There is no joy in Mudville. Say it ain't so, Joe. The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. Did you see Jackie Robinson hit that ball? It-could-go-all-the-way! Even the pedestrian rhythms of the play-by-play are like poetry: The count is two-and-one as Piazza steps back into the box, a swing and a miss, two strikes. I could tell you, even now, the roster of Charlie Brown's little league team.
And so tomorrow I will be sitting in box seats at Shea, watching the mediocre Mets play the horrid Royals (13 1/2 games out in the AL Central), a game that will have no effect whatsoever on the pennant race. (I would point out that my own beloved team is in first place in the AL East, but they always collapse after the All Star break and like all long-time Red Sox freaks, I am more than a little superstitious.) If I get there early enough, I will stand and sing the national anthem (all baseball fans know that the last two words are not "the brave" but "play ball") and if I stay late enough, I will stand at the seventh inning stretch and sing again. The sun will shine, and the grass will be green, and the boys of summer will be put through their paces, and it will be a good day indeed.
