The Way To Win

A brief note on last nights win. I enjoy come from behind 9th inning wins very much. Though they are slightly less dramatic when you are the away team, it's no less exhilarating to see the 83-mph fastball go sailing over the fence.

That's the beauty of the slow game of baseball. For 3+ hours it languishes on in April. Where in basketball, football and hockey the action is always continuous, always occurring, baseball lacks that consistency. And in there is why it is so magnificent. Without the slow doldrums of the game, the apexes would lack actual peaks. Constant scoring minimizes the point of scoring sometimes. Scoring 15 runs only means you have to keep the other team from scoring 14. Scoring 1 run means you have to do everything to keep the other team from scoring. While being down a run makes a base runner seem more like water in the desert than a kid at the candy store. And so that run to tie and homer to win was a monumental thirst quencher after the parching length and pace of the game.

For The First Inning

I remember as a kid watching baseball specifically on Fridays and Sundays on TV38. It was the only time we ever got to see the Sox. Before ESPN. Before FOX. Mercifully before TBS. On one particular night, there was a depressing rain delay that pushed the first pitch past my 9-year-old bedtime. My brother and I convinced our mom that we would only watch the first inning of the game as it was getting late -- even for a Friday night. 

So we set up the black and white 13-inch TV between our double beds. Our eyes ragged and bloodshot with the daily life of a 9-year-old. The tv itself was gerry-rigged with a metal hanger for bunny ears and pliers for a UHF and VHF dial. The picture could not have been clearer to us kids. HDTV does little in comparison to the privilege to stay up late and merely watch a game. To fight sleep and airplanes for the strike count. 

Anyway, on this night about a half-hour after we all but signed legal documents promising mom we'd go to bed after the first inning, mom storms into our room. She believed most assuredly we were milking her goodwill and did not appreciate our disrespect. And for a moment we were in trouble. But just as quickly we sat up in bed trying to convince mom that it was still only the first inning and that the game had just gone well for the Sox. They were scoring runs, we swore to Mom. Only after the picture returned and all was calm did she believe us. And it came on the next pitch which resulted in the final out. Mom was bad luck. Since then, she avoided making that promise.

Tonight, Isaac was fussing and crying and would not go to sleep. So I picked him up and sat him with his mother -- the only one able to pacify him. I made him a promise: you get to watch the first inning. The same ill-fated promise my mom made to us I was making to him. The images were clearer and the sound crisper and his eyes more tired than mine. He made it through Ellsbury's walk in the first. And sure enough, it was a long inning.

I'm not sure if there's something I should've learned from mom about parenting in these situations. About making promises like that that could backfire on you. But I have not. I have only learned that staying up past one's bedtime to watch a baseball game is a privilege. And that putting your hopes in something outside of your control is a cool feeling sometimes -- even though we were routing for runs more so that we could remain awake than win a game.

Reason #37

It was good to see Buckner yesterday. See him wobble to the mound. See the Fenway True respond as they always should have. To see him throw to Dwight Evans. That was nice. Odd. Eerie. But nice. Since I was old enough to understand the game, I realized it wasn't Buckner's fault. There were others more responsible for losing that game than he. Yet he is only seen, like achievement, because he stands atop their shoulders. So I am in concord with the man when he says he has never had to forgive the fans or the organization or baseball but the media. Media love a fall guy. He was the fall guy who never needed to fall. And so the media lushed upon him yesterday. Upon his ill-begotten knees. Openly splaying forgiveness and restitution for the man they wronged. But it was good to see him where he is: with a baseball in his hand at Fenway.

Opening Day at Fenway yesterday. In my wisdom I failed to get time off and was stuck at work while my father watched the game on a projection screen. No problem, I'll enjoy my hot dogs and ice cream and soda at home and watch the game delayed online. About eight o'clock I sit down for dinner after a bad, bad day and prepare to relax in tradition. The game comes on. One second before I switch to full screen mode, MLB.tv streams across my media player a graphic that reads: Dice-K pitches great as Red Sox win Home Opener.

Reason #37 why I hate MLB the organization.

A Good Start

3-1 is an acceptable start. I haven't been able to catch the games with the events and timing of the past few days, but it seems like we're playing well. Ortiz came out of his struggles for a moment; I'm a little concerned Ellsbury was benched with his recent struggles at the plate. But it's still real early to analyze too much.

One thing that has been pleasant lately is to be talking baseball again. Either through banter with a Yankee fan or on the Atlanta Braves season outlook, baseball is back. I've missed the discussion that always pervades the hours between games. And I've drafted a decent fantasy team as well, thus increasing my enjoyment for the season only in its infancy.

Baseball is back.

The Silence Of Pictures

So I'm being told this one also counts.

Watched faithfully, again, at work, with a cup of coffee and the sound off. Now Baseball has amazing flexibility across mediums. It works well on the radio if you have good announcers. It succeeds on T.V. because little fails on T.V. really. There the action doesn't need commentators, but it helps to have them. You can watch the game and judge for yourself if a pitch was a fastball or not, if a batter was out, or if a pitcher looks flustered. On the radio, the good ones tell you just enough to let you judge for yourself. Radio announcers -- the good ones -- are minimalists. There is a basic assumption among the listener and announcer. It is a prerequisite of the listener to possess, if nothing else, an active imagination. A strong ability to picture and feel and assemble for yourself the details as they are presented. And it is the delight that a baseball game gives us the time and pace to do this: to imagine.

Yet, I am drawn at times more often than not, to the silence of pictures on the television. Where my imagination is acutely silenced. And I feel something is lost.

Transworld Depravity On Opening Day

So we're 1-0. Today was opening day -- or so they've lead me to believe. That this is the first playing since my team stole the fire of the gods. Well, so much for tradition. So much for hot dogs. So much for ice cream. So much for opening day.

In any other year, opening day is a proper noun complete with capitalization. But today, with the first pitch coming at 6AM EST live from Japan, there was nothing proper about it. Nothing that reminds me of Opening Day. The time when I used to run home from school or work, smell the hot dogs in the house and watch baseball. Eggs and bacon can't replace hot dogs and ice cream. And a 1-0 record, a win, can't replace this emptiness either. This feeling that I've let down my childhood because I couldn't muster the energy to get up and eat hot dogs and watch baseball before heading off to work. That somewhere, if we are to believe that every moment of time exists at the same time, a little child with a ball and glove and mustard around his lips saddeningly looked at me and this game and this version of opening day across dimensions as we sipped coffee and watch the Red Sox win. Alvin Plantinga might call this Transworld Depravity.

But they tell me this counts. They tell me this is Opening Day.

Transworld Depravity, which is used to prove that it is logical for evil to exist and their still be a good God, has proven something utterly stultifying today. And I'm sorry for that.

All Apologies For A Lack Of A Creative Post With A Creative Title

The medicine of the a cold winter has digested.

How's that for an opening sentence. Not so much? I toyed around with it for awhile. Don't much believe it myself. You see I want to write about how exciting it is that Spring Training is upon us. That the fog and mediocrity of a season without baseball has lifted. That pitchers and catchers and players have reported. That baseball is back. That it is, wait for it... wait for it... wait for it....

A spoonful of sugar!

And that's even worse. I think I've soiled any potential for readership. The boys of firejoemorgan.com are embarrassed. Tim McCarver, on the other hand, has just called: he wants his line back. And now Jerry Seinfeld's upset that I'm ripping him off. I can't win. There'll be no MacArthur award for me.

But the facts are these: spring training's upon us. Try as I might, I can't state it any better, with any more poetry or import or creativity. It is what it is. Grown men working to get back into game shape. Playing poor excuses for games that cost way too much to attend (I tried to go to a game in Fort Myers when we go to Miami in three weeks: $60+/per ticket!). Perhaps it was because the Yawkey Way folks lentus all a very quiet and inexpensive offseason. Or that we've now won the World Series twice(!) in my lifetime.

Spring training is a welcome occurrence, despite however little it does to get me geared up for the season these days. But it remains a sign of the glory to come, however bad the games are, however fat the players are, however expensive the games get.

To the point: Yada, yada, yada. Baseball is back.