A brief passage from a story I wrote:
Baseball
It may as well begin in 1986, that October, when the Boston Red Sox played the New York Mets in the World Series, especially Game Six, when the Red Sox were within one out of winning it all and then blew it – the biggest choke in sports history.
“That’s when my life changed,” Fred stated dramatically, and without irony. “After Game Six, I knew I was going to die. I can’t say it more plainly.”
Fred never followed a team, or watched games on TV, or read the sports section in the newspaper, or talked sports bull shit, he just sort of dwelled in the spirit of the game. “My approach to baseball is metaphysical,” he decided, choosing that word because nobody knew what it meant.
Sometimes he listened to baseball games on the radio. “I like the sound of the game. You can hear the crowd noise in the background – the OM sound, swelling, rising, falling, the accumulation of thousands of completely unimportant conversations between baseball fans – this is beautiful. It’s the sound of 25,000 people doing nothing, sitting there in the stands, passing the time, waiting for something to happen,” he told his friends, and again, like a lot of other things, Fred was going too far – Fred had developed another theory or attitude which was too loopy and mystical for his friends to get with.
“And another nice thing, baseball is very much like real life – sometimes a long time passes and nothing happens at all. Actually, I just like thinking about baseball. That’s why I don’t watch it on TV – I can see it in my mind. It’s like the redwoods in California, or the herds of caribou in Arctic Wildlife Refuge. I don’t ever see the redwoods or the caribou – but they have to be there, and baseball has to be there too. And I know it inside of myself, so I don’t need to watch the game” he said, in one of those rare moments when they let him talk, and then the guys quickly changed the subject.
I especially like: "You can hear the OM sound, swelling, rising, falling, the accumulation of thousands of completely unimportant conversations between baseball fans – this is beautiful."
And your use of the word "metaphysical" "because nobody knew what it meant" is such a great "throwaway" line.
Wouldn't it be wonderful to have fewer "alternative facts" and more "metaphysical" references? (Thomas Aquinas is spinning in his grave at so many rpms that the energy needs of America could be fully met by harnessing the power.)
Last night Jim Sanfilipo recommended Jack Tapper's interview with Kellyanne Conway. Dang, Tapper's good! http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/02/jack-tappers-full-fiery-interview-with.html
Did you know caribou are New World reindeer?
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