This is the Year
(This week's issue, which was originally going to be about a string bean in a French beret and heirloom tomatoes, has been rescheduled for next out. Out of respect for Columbus Day.)
(No, wait! Not for Columbus Day, but for something else. Something... different.)
(And yes, I realise what will follow here is not continued from last week. To be hones with you, neither was the string bean/heirloom tomato story. It's just how it goes sometimes. Like rain, only different. Maybe it's like the leaves changing color in the autumn.)
(Something a little like this:)
If you look at it from a math perspective, it's all very elementary. I've never been particularly good at math, myself.
Oh sure, I've used it to bend certain decisions my way, played percentages a little bit – I'll buy that pack of baseball cards if there's no traffic at the top of the road and I can motor straight up to the package store. If they score 2 in either of these two innings I'll stay up for two more. Okay, I'll kiss her when we get to the bus stop if a bus doesn't approach in the first five minutes of us arriving there. When I knew full well the time was somewhere in between scheduled bus arrivals at this end of town. And besides, the buses never ran on time.
Pure and unadulterated numbers. Baseball's a lot about numbers these days. You get sort of inundated. And the Red Sox, well, they've got good numbers. Great numbers, in fact. And they've got defense, which is inevitably referred to in nearly every article I’ve read discussing the strengths and weaknesses of this team as having no readily quantifiable aspects in a manner that you suspect is disparaging, like “what the hell are we supposed to do now!” And I’ve read a lot of those articles.
I mean, we’ve all seen this before, though, right? The numbers all add up to something fantastic, something incredible. Something magic. In fact, more Septembers than not that old magic number watch begins to pop up. Usually something that, in the lucky years, makes it to the front page of the newspaper, and you watch it creep down (hopefully) each day you pick it up over your corn flakes before reading some more stuff about numbers. Record power numbers. Most power out of a pair of hitters in the uniform since, well, for a long time, folks. More runs driven in by a lead off hitter than is rational in this day and age. Dominant combinations of such a small number of earned runs given up over an average of nine innings, total innings pitched, total strikeouts, strikeouts per nine innings, five pitchers with double figure win totals for the year. A bona fide closer with more than 20 saves on the year.
Number of times you were told, as a kid, "Don't worry, shake it off, get the next one." The first time you've seen someone really able to do that, almost in the walk back to the dugout, the strikeout or ground out forgotten, the next one due up in three innings or, hopefully, less. Not lip service.
A management team that prepares for each game by these numbers, and almost every fan sitting there, watching the pitch count, oh the pitch count, looking for that magic number. 30 pitches in the first two innings means we hit the bullpen in... around 100 or divided by 30 = 3.3333333333... well, we get the point. Probably around the sixth inning and two thirds, I'm going say, if this keeps up. Who knew that 3 repeating on into infinity equaled the end of the sixth? If you look at it in that light you don't fear the all too human signs of fatigue, pride, and second guessing entering into the picture. Infinity is a piece of cake, after all, when compared to nothing for over 80 years, longer than a lot of lifetimes.
Well, a long time ago (well, not too long, but a good long time), I roughly calculated that a bus would be passing by in twenty minutes, and that I had an excellent window in which to go for the kiss. Only problem was, she hailed a cab on me.
Then the years passed and stuff happens, like it seems to in life while we're watching the Red Sox, who only occasionally move along with us, in sync; Roger's long gone, Nomah's gone.
And there I was, sitting on a rock, it was the ides of some month, coincidentally her sister's birthday, and it was damn sunny in a place where your average New Englander will feel like a fish out of water, being baked in the constant sun. Not a bus in sight. Just a backpack with a couple apples, one of which had already spilled out and into some valley in the middle of the Santa Cruz Mountains. There was the sun, the mountains, and the occasional hawk, which was probably, more likely than not, a crow, and not a hawk at all. And I kissed her, no waiting around for any damn bus. And it was one of those lifelong sort of things. A bit like the Red Sox.
Why not us?
disclaimer:
Lock up the doors and batten all the shutters, kids.
Because Papi and the boys roll into the Smelly Tanker (if they can call it Beantown we can call it Smelly Tanker, or any other nickname we deem fit – New York City is anything but apple-like, I don't know how they ever got that one).
So if you're in the habit of ringing the Sane Magazine offices, well, this week, we hate to break it to you, but we're not going to be answering the phones unless you're on a pre-approved list which starts and ends with the Pope, and if you're reading, Johnny, just don't, okay?
For those of you living under a rock, or perhaps, just the other side of the Atlantic, the Boston Red Sox play some other team this weekend on the road to their first World Series since, well, since a long time ago, and the way you might feel should A**enal stand in the way of Tottenham Hotspur of the FA Cup (or maybe some more meaningful competition) in the quarterfinals or so, well, this is the way a whole lot of the New England diaspora feels at this very moment.
For those who don't care about baseball one way or another, I apologise for the overtly baseballish tone in this week's issue. Like issues that have preceded it, in fact. Now, by 'I apologise' I don't really mean that. I really mean I don't give two flips if you didn't enjoy this particular episode. Well, all right, I might give two. But no more, really.
Listen, what I'm trying to say is that this is how it is. I, the Head Editor and general raisin detour for this damn site, well, I'm from New England. It's something in the blood. Like ticks. Like an advanced form of lyme disease, which, when I was a kid, I thought was something very like a Koolaid flavor. But it isn't, I tell you.
Good luck to you. Good luck to all of us.
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