baseball

I love drawing baseball players, especially in those old baggy uniforms. How dainty Tris Speaker looked or even Ty Cobb. Imagine Cobb batting with Barry Bonds' or Galaraga's batting armor! Those big kevlar arm slings and ankle protectors they weilded because they stood so close to the plate - to salve the toll of getting hit. Cobb and Speaker played in a different era: the balls were softer, the dust chalkier, the bats were bamboo; coaches used semaphore and aldis lamps to convey signs to the players; the pony express positioned the outfielders.

So unlike now. Today players play on a grid, determined by senority and pay scale; they do what their press bio says they do and no more - except when an understudy takes their role. "Now playing the role of center fielder for the New York Metorpolitans" - booms the announcer at Chez corporate sponser field, where the grass was planted by microsoft - grown in their development labs for the last seven years, and sometimes they find they have to reboot the infield - but over all the grass performs fine, except when players from a mac sponsored field come to town. Then there are compatibility issues.

Cobb and Speaker never had to face this knid of thing; but today's players have never had to beat up a disabled man heckling them from the stands or take a job cleaning camel stalls during the off season.

Such are the vageries of the pastime. The national past-tense it's called - after a popular gravy of the day, used by soldiers on both sides of the civil war to cover the cabbage pies they had for breakfast, before they developed the game while they were prisoners of war. When they weren't prisoners of war, they went back to their passtime as prisoners of love. Some though were prisoners of Zenda - who inspired the 1950s hit Return to Zenda.

Baseball has provided my life with memorarble moments. My favorite right now was near the end of my playing days. I was playing softball (which is really hard) with Bob and Jeff at Rotary Park in Portales (though the park remains stationary now - the rotating mechanism having broken on a wandering elk) and a lofty fly was popped up right at me. I gauged my position, camped under the ball as it made its descent, pounded my glove, and just as I lifted it to receive the brown rotating sphere, I was struck on the forehead.

Another moment I remember was llistening to a game on radio. The Braves were playing Pittsburgh back when that meant something and Glavine, I think or it could'vee been Avery, was pitching a 2 hitter or even a one hitter. But the score was some bizarre thing lilke 1-0 or 2-1, and it was the ninth, and Van Slyke hit a shot, which Otis Nixon caught running and leaping up the wall in center field. Skip Cary was beside himself.

How I loved listening to him on the radio. Even now I rememeber listening to the Braves on TBS and hearing Cary and Johnson, and it's sad that it's impossible to listen to a game now - hidden as it is on cable, and no longer ubiquitous as their games are scattered on different outlets. I remember watching a Braves game in New Mexico or Colorado. No more.

I couldn't believe he caught that ball. But it was a crazy time when I knew that they'd find a way to win. Now I know that Soriano will find a way to give up a homerun to Ryan Howard or Brad Asmus.

Victory is elusive again. Which is not so bad.

I said that I listen to games on TV just now. I tend to draw and read while a game is on, only occasionally looking at it.

On the night Otis caught van Slyke's liner, I was sitting on a sun porch at night, listening to the radio.

My dad would sit in his study after working on the rail road all day, turn a Hawks game on the TV, a Braves game on the radio, and read the sports page.

That's another memory I have of baseball, or sports in Atlanta: the night Dale Murphy homered off Carlton as Wilkins hit a three pointer in over time vs Sacramento.

Which didn't happen, but that's what watching a game with dad was like, who sometimes looked up from the sports page.

I was thinking tonight that the winningest pitcher, Cy Young, might also have the most losses. That being, for instance (and here I'm mixing sports), the always winning quarterback is easy; losing is tough, it takes a toll. The quarter back who gets back on the field after a loss, after a bad play - how much mental toughness that takes.

Is it stubborness or persistance?

The Romans worshipped Victory, as did the Greeks. Nike! But Christ leads us to victory in his defeat. He helps us find victory in our defeat. We're all defeated. Death takes us all. Yet we're all in the game, even as the clock ticks down, and whether it's 70 years for us, 300 years for a nation, of 5 billion years for a planet - when the sun going red giant will vaporize even a carefully preserved Mona Lisa.

Baseball, as Carlin pointed out, stretches out to infinity. It's desire is to run home, to not get out. As Delueze points out, transcendence misleads us to seek some other place and some other time, when we are better off seeking the infinite possibilities where we are, right now, by making connections, bringing into existence, not judging. No judging: Kant never could.

As Branch Rickey used to say.