I am a yankee doodle dandy

Last night we saw fireworks after the game. We saw the game too: an illustration of the importance of pitching. The local nine played well, scoring all their runs in one inning; however their pitching could not hold the other team within one run. In a world of six billion people, where at least 500 million in this hemisphere are familiar with baseball (and Japan and Korea, where major leaguers are beginning to show up from as well), you'd think that there'd be more than 20 people who have the wits and skills to get professional batters out consistently. But you'd be wrong. One of those 20 people did not pitch the 6th for the Bulls last night, which was a pity. It amazes me that in this vast population set, how rare pure baseball skills are.
For instance, I've been able to catch the Braves on TV 3 times this summer, usually on ESPN or WGN, when they play the Cubs, and each of those times I've turned the channel on and there was one of the Braves pitchers, pitching in the 7th or 8th inning, protecting a one run lead with less than two outs and a runner on first; each time disaster has followed. It think it's been the same reliever, MA, and I can only wonder, "Do we not have anyone else we can send out to protect a one run lead - someone who might actually be able to protect a one run lead would be good." Here's a major league club with a reasonably large payroll, and they can't find a pitcher in 500 to 700 million people who can ensure that the starting pitcher gets the win.
Still there's something wonderful about going to the ball park rather than staying at home and watching the game. Even minor league games are a treat. The next best thing is sitting in a local dive, at the bar, eating some wings and watching the game on a flat screen, engaged with the other patrons, swilling down Hennepins and Rogue Rivers. Aside from the wave, which no bar patron would ever do, the experience of being outdoors, in the bleachers, looking through binoculars or trying to guess what just happened when I looked away at my Merleau-Ponty, (last night a squeeze play occured - they pulled off a squeeze; which made the experience of the pitcher giving up three runs in the next half inning more bitter) is without parallel. I hate the wave - it has never seemed like a good idea or much fun: more an insistence on joining the crowd, the mass of sheep being lead to the slaughter: "Join us in our lemming like inertia; give up your brains and attentiveness to what's actually going on." - they seem to say. A siren call that crashes the game, the odyssey of the season, onto the rocks. " No I'll not be part of your wave! I will not join in your totalitarian group think." Giving up three runs took the life out of the team, and it was apparent that from the 7th inning on, that the players were in a hurry to see the fireworks.
The Braves in the 1990s had that mentality, that even giving up three runs, they would not give up. Glavine expemplified this, as did Smoltz, that they would hold onto the game like a bulldog with a steak. If the other team did win, they would be mentally spent. I knew I was seeing something special back in that decade. Something I may not see again for a while. Certainly the Braves have some good young starting pitchers in Jurrjens, Campillo, and Hudson (who's not really young anymore), but the bullpen remain problematic. We've been swept by the Phillies twice (we're supposed to be sweeping them). The only thing more frustrating than being a Braves fan must be being a Mets fan. They're supposed to be running away with the division. We've swept them! And we're awful. That's a comparative awful - an awful phrased in terms of being in contention. Before the 1990s the Braves had been awful for most of the 1980s - an awful phrased not in terms of contention, but in terms of playing fundamental baseball. I believe that awful in terms of contention is tolerable, even enjoyable, but awful in terms of being fundamentally sound is nightmarish and not enjoyable.
Baseball is a team game, a game where players must come together to play mentally tough: no card games back in the clubhouse, no looking at the ant hills in right field, and no throwing a fastball over the heart of the plate on a 3-2 count (and no swinging at 3-2 curveballs in the dirt). Those 1990s Braves taught me never to give up. That the opposing batter is hoping you'll give in to anxieties about throwing a strike and give him something easy; that the other team hopes you'll stop extending at bats when you're down by three runs - that you'll stop thinking and give into desperation. What a beautiful thing that mindset of devotion to a goal was to see back then. And it's true that the current Braves team could get it together and come back The NL East is a weak division with four teams in the mix.
But it seems unnecessary. I no longer project my longings onto a baseball field. When I was a kid, I projected strongly - as if Hank Aaron at the plate or Niekro on the mound were the sum of my hopes for nailing down my identity: alas, too many Jim Nashes and Biff Pocorobas populated those teams, all too ordinary and frail human beings upon whom no one should project their hopes - not that projecting hopes on the performance of others is healthy - it isn't. Those 1970s Braves teams are one reason I'm seeing a therapist now. In the 1970s Atlanta's sports franchises left a deep masochistic scar on millions of children: why else would anyone go to a Van Brocklin coached Falcons game but for the shear punishment factor: the brutally ineffectual running game, the wasting of Tommy Nobis's talents; and then the Pat Peppler/Marion Campbell coaching debacle. How did Rankin Smith make so much money in the insurance business if his running of that team was a reflection of his running of his business. And the Falcon's are still bad. Blank now runs the team as hopelessly as RS ever did. This last season may have been the Falcons most aimless and futile ever.
When we moved to Durham, one of the ministers we went to hear preach openly declared himself a Falcons fan. He's a good guy, intelligent, earnest, with a touch of humor; how then could he make that declaration. At first I thought it was some verbal slip, but he's since repeated it. I remember how in the 1970s or early 80s the Falcons threatened to move to Jacksonville - and I thought, "please, please." I also wondered how any town with any sense would possibly want the Falcons. The Falcons were like that L'll Abner character with the consonant heavy name, who constantly had a cloud over his head and whom disaster followed everywhere. I didn't care about the bare economic value of a major league team, no matter how hapless.
It's wonderful being in Durham now where I don't have to care if the home team wins. Minor league games don't count in the same way as major league games count. The minors, as I've written before, exist in a mediate place, non-ultimate. The fact that the games are not ultimate make them more enjoyable and for different reasons: the narrative of careers beginning and careers ending; the curiosity of the final score - how little it really matters in the grand scheme of things, the relationship of how the club's fate is tied to the needs of the major league club. The major league club can take that young righthanded starter and put him in the bullpen or give him a start; or take that 1st baseman to fill in for an injured starter. The minor league team cannot take anyone willingly off the major league roster. Is the minor league team in a pennant race? Doesn't matter. If someone roots for a minor league team with the ultimate concern of winning a pennant, then they've misplaced their hopes. This is what Niebhur talks about when he (and I think the idea is original with Kierkegaard) speaks of sin as giving ultimate concern to things that are not ultimate; and giving non-ultimate concern to objects that are ultimate: treating one's relationship with God as one thing among others.
Anyway, last night we're at the game, and I've tried to save as many weight watchers points as I can for beer and hot dogs. We went for a brisk walk on the American Tobaccy Trail and I was ravenous by the time we got into the ballpark. I ordered a Red Hook ESB and two hot dogs (it was $1 hot dog night) - I had enough points for one more beer and a cup of pop corn - the infamy! The Humanity! By the time the game was given up for good in the 7th inning I wanted another hot dog or two, some fries, another beer. But we soldiered on in solidarity.