It All ComesTogether
Game Four was played under a full moon, until the lunar eclipse began. I refused to go outside that night, to look up into the night sky either to watch the moon recede behind the earth’s shadow, or to gaze upon the faint red image left behind. A full moon is reputed to bring bad luck, something about the red caste of the eclipsed disk of the moon, and after a lifetime of close calls, who needed to tempt luck with the Cardinals down 3-0? As it turned out, luck didn’t play much of a role that night; if anything it wasn’t the Red Sox, but the Red Birds, who seemed to be suffering from bad fortune.
In truth, the series had already ended the night before. The Cards last gasp came in the third inning of Game Three; after Suppan got picked off trying to return to third, they barely drew a breath. In the remaining fifteen innings of the series, they managed only five base hits, and a single run. In fact, Game Four stayed close only because of the play of Pujols, who threw out two Sox at the plate. Three innings ended with various Sox stranded at third.
The only tension that night was created by Fox, who began speculating openly about a Sox victory in around the seventh inning. The first reference came when their graphic listed 31 thousand something or other days since the Sox last won the series. What is that? We need Fox to jinx us, when we’re this close? Get that shit off the screen! Everyone knows the Sox were a strike away in 1986, two runs ahead. Here we were only three runs ahead, and eight or nine outs away. Fortunately, none of this mattered. In rewatching the game, courtesy of these DVDs, I can for the first time enjoy all of Joe Buck’s foreshadowing. All these references to kids In New England staying up late, to Sox fans everywhere thinking about loved ones who never lived to see this happen. And when the game ended, after the Sox mobbed Tek and Foulke near the mound, and Jimmy Fallon finished kissing Drew Barrymore in some crazy blend of fact, fiction and entertainment, Fox cut away and the Nike commercial ran, the one depicting the four fans sitting at Fenway through the generations. It sat on Nike’s website for about a week, but I never saw it play on air except that one time.
One last observation, and then we’re done. Then we can turn our attention, if not to Montaigne, to the weighty questions of the day – Was Theo really a boy genius, or was he just lucky? And who’s going to play short next year? Anyway, watching the fans at Game Four, every Sox fan is on the cell phone from the fourth inning on. “Can you believe this?” Montaigne returns again and again to the relationship between fathers and sons. And so this endless dwelling on the Sox, this seemingly pointless recapitulation of the 2004 post-season, was actually not so pointless after all. We’ll undoubtedly learn more by reading the master, but we won’t connect any better than we do by talking baseball.
In truth, the series had already ended the night before. The Cards last gasp came in the third inning of Game Three; after Suppan got picked off trying to return to third, they barely drew a breath. In the remaining fifteen innings of the series, they managed only five base hits, and a single run. In fact, Game Four stayed close only because of the play of Pujols, who threw out two Sox at the plate. Three innings ended with various Sox stranded at third.
The only tension that night was created by Fox, who began speculating openly about a Sox victory in around the seventh inning. The first reference came when their graphic listed 31 thousand something or other days since the Sox last won the series. What is that? We need Fox to jinx us, when we’re this close? Get that shit off the screen! Everyone knows the Sox were a strike away in 1986, two runs ahead. Here we were only three runs ahead, and eight or nine outs away. Fortunately, none of this mattered. In rewatching the game, courtesy of these DVDs, I can for the first time enjoy all of Joe Buck’s foreshadowing. All these references to kids In New England staying up late, to Sox fans everywhere thinking about loved ones who never lived to see this happen. And when the game ended, after the Sox mobbed Tek and Foulke near the mound, and Jimmy Fallon finished kissing Drew Barrymore in some crazy blend of fact, fiction and entertainment, Fox cut away and the Nike commercial ran, the one depicting the four fans sitting at Fenway through the generations. It sat on Nike’s website for about a week, but I never saw it play on air except that one time.
One last observation, and then we’re done. Then we can turn our attention, if not to Montaigne, to the weighty questions of the day – Was Theo really a boy genius, or was he just lucky? And who’s going to play short next year? Anyway, watching the fans at Game Four, every Sox fan is on the cell phone from the fourth inning on. “Can you believe this?” Montaigne returns again and again to the relationship between fathers and sons. And so this endless dwelling on the Sox, this seemingly pointless recapitulation of the 2004 post-season, was actually not so pointless after all. We’ll undoubtedly learn more by reading the master, but we won’t connect any better than we do by talking baseball.
posted by pops | 7:32 AM
1 Comments:
pops,
a genius piece that took the discussion full circle. kind of like reggie bush after training with LT, montaigne has really brought out your literary game.
uncle rico would be proud.
junior
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