One more strike!

Mike Vacarro just wrote that last night's baseball events add up to the greatest day in baseball history. And it's quite possible that's no exaggeration. What transpired included both some fantastic baseball and without a doubt unexpected and unlikely events that kept getting stranger and more preposterous. Adrian Gonzalez's God does indeed have a plan. And an identity: author of baseball melodramas so far fetched no publisher will touch them. Now, if you're a Braves fan or a Red Sox fan, just cross out "greatest," pull out your dictionary and get to work. "Worst" doesn't come close to describing it. That goes without saying. Otherworldly. Ghoulish. Torturous. Simply unbelievable. Etc. (No uneasy sleep for me: in the wake of 1986, I opted out. From then on I vowed to become a mere observer of baseball. Some might say I lost the faith. True. But I prefer to think of it as a conversion: if it doesn't matter to me who wins, I win with every single game.)
With time the details fade and last night was tremendously rich with singular moments. Just in Baltimore, which is where my attention was: how about those double plays in the bottom of the 2nd and bottom of the 6th! (Pedroia: sterling defense and a 3 for 4 night, including go ahead homer in fifth!); Ortiz trying to reach 2nd in the top of the 7th (bone-headed!!); the rain-a splendidly extended seventh-inning stretch, allowing events down in Florida to catch up with events in Baltimore!; Scutaro stopping between second and third in the 8th (really bone-headed: Marco, if the ball is caught you're not making it back to first in any case... just keep running!! First man fired: Tim-go-stop-go-whatever-Bogar); Ellsbury stranded at third with no outs in ninth(!); Papelbon, Papelbon, Papelbon. (Gee, I wonder what he's going to throw?); Carl Crawford: catch it, no, not quite... Oh, did we ever blow it! Can it get any worse? YES: the Rays did the impossible and your season is over! Now. And of course we will always remember that when Papelbon struck out Jones and Reynolds to start the 9th and got two strikes on Davis, it really looked like the Sox were headed for Detroit or Dallas. One more strike!

In short, you get what you get. And we haven't even addressed the just as incredible events in Atlanta yet!

Wednesday's Executions

I doubt it's very often that we execute two people on the same day, indeed, within the space of a few hours. Last night Troy Davis was executed in Georgia. Davis was convicted of killing police officer Mark MacPhail many years ago. Several witnesses in the case retracted their testimony and the case received a great deal of international attention.  In Texas, white supremacist Lawrence Brewer was executed for the brutal 1998 murder of James Byrd. In the former case, given the retracted testimonies, claims of police coercion, and the lack of a murder weapon, reasonable doubts do exist. There's no going back now. The work of The Innocence Project (www.innocenceproject.org) has demonstrated beyond a doubt that the danger of executing innocent people is very real. The case of Brewer is very different, to say the least: after going to prison he joined a white supremacist group, wrote about the thrill of murder, and never showed any remorse. In fact, he seemed to revel in it.  And yet, in spite of the grotesque, hateful nature of Brewer's crime, he should not have been executed. We have a moral imperative to abolish the death penalty. In our system of injustice, it is inevitable that innocent people will be executed. When the state kills innocent people it loses all legitimacy and incarnates in that moment the most horrible kind of despotism.  Having the likes of Lawrence Brewer live out their days in jail is a very small price to pay for restoring some legitimacy to our government. (Above, Manet's "The Execution of Maximilian".)

The Confederate Flag and Racism

Recently I've seen several images of the confederate flag in town. Mainly on cars, but also on t-shirts. And I always wonder, are these people displaying that image racists?  If one were to actually ask that question, the answers would almost always be negative, unless you had the bad luck to happen upon a proud holder of KKK type beliefs.  Signs are given meaning by people, of course, so when a confederate flag waver invokes "Southern Heritage," who's to argue that? No doubt people who invoke heritage are proud of their roots. For many, reality doesn't seem to matter when it comes to abstract matters such as identity. There is a strong tendency to idealize.  And then there is the "it's all about freedom" set: hey it's a free country, I can wear any t shirt I want..."  True. It's also extremely offensive. The name pretty much sums it up: that flag started out representing the battle units of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. In case you forgot, that's the side that seceded in order to maintain their "states' rights," as in the right to enslave human beings of a certain color. And after they lost the war and were pulled back into the union, these same states made many and repeated efforts to assure the continued subjugation of the former slaves.  Not surprisingly, to many citizens, the confederate flag signals a racist, retrograde ideology, not freedom, not a care-free "rebel" attitude.

When presidential candidate Rick Perry was elected governor of Texas he invited rocker Ted Nugent to perform at his inaugural ball. Great choice. Ted came to the party wearing a shirt with a confederate flag on it. Perry had no problem with that.  Check out Ted's message to then Senator Obama during one of his concerts.

Bryce Harper's Implosion

It was a beautiful evening at City Island yesterday and time to get a first look at top prospect Bryce Harper. He had a rough night. In the second inning he reached on an error, then struck out in the fifth and again, looking, in the seventh on a full count. And he lost it, disputing the umpire's call violently, slamming his helmet down, and then really getting in Max Guyll's face. He was promptly ejected. Harper is batting .248 for the Senators. It looks like the kid has some growing up to do.  What I found most distubing was seeing an 18 year old acting out like this with a man more than twice his age. Not a pretty sight.
The game featured very impressive pitching from both Richmond starter Eric Surkamp (9 Ks) and Senator's starter Shairon Martis (10 Ks).  That's a lot of whiffing!

Replays and Contingency

Last week the baseball crowd was all agitated again about another blown call, this one putting an end to a very long, 19 inning game between Atlanta and Pittsburgh. Too bad, that could have been an endless game in the making. This was, according to the critics, yet another glaring example of why baseball needs more use of instant replay. In this case, it would have been evident that the umpire missed the call and it could have been reversed.  But wait, reverse to what? That's not easy in a game as complex as baseball. In this case the bad call is at the end of a play. Going back is not a simple thing. As Phil Mushnick pointed out, "There were men on second and third, one out. The batter, pitcher Scott Proctor, after grounding to third, fell on his face a few feet out of the box. Had Meals made the right call, the likelihood of a home-to-first double play was strong."  So is the inning over? But you can't give an out that was only likely to be made. Many different things could have happened.  Trying to determine on what kind of plays you should allow instant replay quickly becomes a messy proposition. We've got some contingency going on here and "instant replay" is not an idea that values contingency. Sometimes we just get it wrong. Our universe seems to be like that. Long ago, God made a bad call. It seems she had already decided there would be no instant replay. So she messed up, give her a break. I still think it's better than a rain out. My Aunt Jo taught me never to leave a game early, no matter how lopsided the score. You just never know... (I went with her a couple of times to Shea Stadium. A young Tom Seaver! Jerry Koosman! Ed Kranepool!)  Anyway, that's my thought for today: the game is not over and that's a very good thing. And another thing: contingency itself is contingent.

Baseball and Alcoholism

A couple of days ago I finished reading Bottom of the 33rd, a wonderful book by Dan Barry about the longest baseball game ever played. (Thank you, Peter!)  I remember reading about the game back in 1981, and I've always been quite fascinated by the idea of an endless ball game, but in fact I hadn't really paid much attention to this unique bit of baseball history.  It's a fantastic story. The book's subtitle is "Hope, Redemption, and Baseball's Longest Game." Barry does give us many details about the game itself, of course, but the book is to a large degree a series of mini biographies about several of the event's protagonists. The lives of two of the game's participants progress downwards due to excessive alcohol consumption, eventually taking very different paths, one tragic, the other hopeful and redemptive. (The odd detail that this game was begun the evening of Holy Saturday and continued into Easter morning adds a curious frame for the idea of redemption.)  It's a book I highly recommend.

In any case, yesterday I was at the Dickinson library and on my way out I stopped to take a glance at the new arrivals bookcase.  And there I found Language of the Heart: A Cultural History of the Recovery Movement, from Alcoholics Anonymous to Oprah Winfrey by Trysh Travis. (That name is too good; do you think it's real?)  Interesting. I've just spent a little time reading here and there, but for an academic press work it's quite readable. Good job, Trysh!  So thinking about baseball and alcoholism has got me thinking about "hitting bottom."  My associations can by silly ("hitting," baseball; "bottom," alcoholism, but also baseball), but the idea, the phenomenon of hitting bottom is both sad, sad, sad and also potentially a starting point for hope and redemption. And that got me thinking about Gil Scott Heron, a great precursor of spoken word art and author of that 70s hit, "The Bottle." It's wonderful song. And so sad. "Livin' in the bottle..."  (I saw Gil Scott Heron at a nightclub in Boston in 1977 and what I most remember from that performance is "Winter in America." Chilling!) Mickey Mantle, Billy Martin and a host of others. Livin' in the bottle, indeed.  Baseball stories. Winning and Losing. I still want that never ending game.  And I can assure you, in the unlikely case I ever get to be President of a baseball league, there will be no curfews. (And the foul poles will have arrows at the top, signaling that they are vectors, continuing upwards infinitely, pointing us all up into the endless cosmos.) Play on!

"May I address you as Mark?"

Yes! I got asked that on the phone this morning and I so much appreciated the kind gentleman's little courtesy: you were kind enough to ask, so of course, let's move on to first names... (I'm filling out a seemingly endless financial aid application for our youngest and I had to call the help desk for some clarification; not only was my telephone helper courteous, he was, indeed, helpful: my question was answered clearly right away.)  This little post makes more sense if you read my earlier post on how we address one another. Then you should read Alma Aldrich's post, which is also related.

Last night I heard George Scott's name come up while watching the all star game home run hitting contest (I couldn't take more than 10 minutes -- pretty dumb stuff). He was a memorable player! The Boomer! I wonder what he's up to now. A great mystery: how do you explain his horrible year at the plate in 1968?: in 350 at bats he batted .181 and has 3 home runs! 1968 was the year of the pitcher--Luis Tiant's ERA that year was 1.60!); nonetheless, .181 is truly horrible.

Basque Terrorism and Poor Journalism

 Yesterday El País, the Madrid daily that during the 80s and 90s was one of the world's truly great newspapers, published an interview with Martín Garitano, the newly elected leader ("diputado general") of the legislative body of the province of Gipuzkoa in the Basque Country.  Garitano represents a newly formed nationalist coalition ("Bildu") that favors complete independence for the Basque Country. (Bildu did not win a majority of votes, but the opposition parties were unable to reach an agreement, and so Garitano ended up as the "diputado general"). Javier Rivas, the interviewer, says to Garitano that his coalition has spoken more clearly about the needs of ETA prisoners than they have about the needs of victims of ETA terrorism. Garitano denies this and then goes on to affirm that in the Basque Country there are currently over 700 political prisoners. This is false and the journalist didn't call him on it. Maybe it's because everyone knows it's a lie, but I don't think you can let these things go. Sometimes people keep repeating lies and eventually people believe them. Good journalists should help prevent that.

Let's be clear: jailed ETA terrorists are not political prisoners; they are not prisoners of conscience. Many of them are in jail for murder or attempted murder. Others are imprisoned for belonging to an organized armed group that in a 40+ year campaign has killed over 800 people, extorted thousands and forced many to leave their homes with threats of violence.

There is a lot of hope in the Basque Country these days and the absence of violence is to be celebrated. But unless people get honest about the nature of ETA there is little hope for true reconciliation.

Blessed Litter!

You know what they say about one man's garbage... Let me tell you a story.

A couple of years ago I had an intensely strong gastronomical flashback to a candy bar I enjoyed as a very small child. It was a chocolate bar that was divided into four sections, each one filled with a different flavor (caramel, nougat, and ???)  I really wanted to try one of those sweets again, but there was a basic problem: for the life of me I couldn't remember the name of the thing. Every time I passed by the candy section in a store I'd look for it, but it hasn't appeared. I've asked several people, but no one seemed to know what I was talking about. I've dreamed about this chocolate bar, and it's as if I could taste it, but still no name. And thus, no easy way to even know if it still exists.

So this morning I'm on the return half of my walk with Waldo and I see some litter in the curb. A glimmer of familiarity. I lean over. And there it is: Sky Bar! By Necco. Oh JOY!!! Now it makes sense: Necco (New England Confectionary Company) is a Massachusetts based business. (I remember their factory near MIT!)  They don't seem to have good distribution in Pennsylvania.  It's been about forty-five years since I had one of these babies, and I'm actually pretty excited to know they're still making them. So, any friends or family in the Boston area who come upon this blog post: bring a Sky Bar to Carlisle (or to Little Compton next weekend) and make Mark a very happy man!

The Majesty of Balanchine's "Serenade"

George Balanchine's "Serenade," set to Tchaikovsky's "Serenade for Strings in C," is one amazing work of art. Last night I saw it for the second time and it took my breath away. Everyone at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, and especially the dancers who performed "Serenade," should feel very proud. After the performance I was feeling perplexed. I was quite certain that what I had just experienced was a gift of beauty of the highest order. At the same time, I had absolutely no sense of what it meant. So there's a question: does beauty need to mean something or can it just "be"? Balanchine offers just a bare tease of a story in this ballet. It's a tease I rejected: the only interpretive sense I could imagine was oriented towards geometry as a metaphor for the richness of human experience. Our lives are like lines, waves, circles... growing complex, doing and undoing, knotting and unknotting.  We are bodily creatures and "our" bodies (Balanchine is almost exclusively concerned with the female form here) are beautiful and sacred. Unfortunately, and this ballet's narrative thread reminds us, it's all temporal. Death awaits.
Feeling tremendously intrigued by this masterpiece, I did a quick search this morning and came across this interesting essay. 
I can't wait to see it again tomorrow! And I just happened to get NYCB's 2011-12 season brochure and they will be performing Serenade next May. Hope I can go.