Friends of Padre Steve’s World,
The late W.P. Kinsella wrote: “Baseball is the most perfect of games, solid, true, pure and precious as diamonds. If only life were so simple. Within the baselines anything can happen. Tides can reverse; oceans can open. That’s why they say, “the game is never over until the last man is out.” Colors can change, lives can alter, anything is possible in this gentle, flawless, loving game.”
For five hours last night all the cares of the world didn’t matter. Not the raging anger of Donald Trump, not the election, not the wars and bloodshed in the Middle East, not terrorism, not the economy, not anything… except what transpired on the baseball field in Cleveland. In Game Seven of an epic World Series two teams with a combined 174 years of not winning a World Series battled into the 10th inning as the weather got worse and the rain began to fall. The tension throughout the game was electric, the mood swings as the Cubs took a 5-1 lead and then the Indians scored three runs with two outs in the bottom of the 8th inning to tie the game took one’s breath away. Watching these two teams battle it was if time itself no longer existed, just the game, a game which transfixed the nation as no sporting event has in recent memory.
Kinsella wrote something profound in his classic baseball fantasy The Iowa Baseball Confederacy:
“Name me a more perfect game!” Matthew Clarke had been fond of saying to his son. “Name me a game with more possibilities for magic, wizardry, voodoo, hoodoo, enchantment, obsession, possession.”
I have to agree, this World Series showed all of us something that no other sport can match in terms of tension, magic, and enchantment. People like to say that NFL football is exciting, but compared to this wonderful game, but the NFL has has degenerated into brutal test of strength, of declining talent, terrible injuries that the owners don’t seem to mind, with the joy taken out of it.
Instead last night we saw talented players play their hearts out, pitchers exhausted from overuse, hitters coming up big, and fielders making spectacular plays. The drama was played out as if it were a story out of ancient Greek mythology as immortals battled in front of watching mortals. I wished that it could have gone on forever and that both teams could have won, but that is not baseball. A game may go into extra innings, but when it is over, it is over. Unlike politics when the game is over there is no recount: when the final strike is called, there is no court of appeals. As Bill Veeck said: “Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can’t get you off.” But that being said there is always next year; which brings with it a hope that springs as eternal as the luxuriant green grass on the enchanted diamonds in every corner of the nation; diamonds whose foul lines theoretically extend to infinity, and whose perfection calls us to something better. Those fields await us all if we believe.
This World Series, in particular this Game Seven also called us back for just a few hours to a better time, a time of hopes and dreams that have always captivated American, a goodness that dwells within us just waiting to be released again. And it can be again, if we decide to release the cynicism and hatred that has built up over the decades which has been on such display during this election.
What happened last night reminded us of Kinsella’s classic line in his book Shoeless Joe which became the film Field of Dreams:
“The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good, and what could be again.”
Congratulations to the Cubs and to their faithful fans. 108 years is an eternity to wait for this, and thank you to the Indians, and there fans as well, and maybe for you it will be next year. But whatever, this wonderful game reminded us of the fact that American is great, because America is good, and baseball reminds us of that good, and what could be again. As Walt Whitman wrote: “I see great things in baseball. It’s our game — the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.”
Until tomorrow,
Peace
Padre Steve+
The Inglorius Padre Steve's World 