Diamond In February

We went to our first baseball game of the year this morning. This was the UC Davis team playing the University of Portland; the college season begins in early February. We spent much of the time sketching the players. The UCD Aggies ended up losing in 15 innings; we got hungry and left after the 10th to eat some Chinese food. Today’s match was a doubleheader, and the Aggies won decisively 11-2 in the second game. But we were long gone by that time.

It was foggy in the morning, and when we first arrived at the field it was partly sunny and I thought I’d end up being hot after sitting through the whole game. Big cumulus clouds came in though, and the hot-and-sour soup at the restaurant definitely hit the spot.

Back From New England

I’ll post a bit more when I gather my wits, which took a bit of a beating in today’s travel.

Dust to Silver

As I write this, the fourth World Series game has not yet started. As I write this, I look out onto a patch of ground that has been brown and dusty all summer but which is now becoming green, and the green under the brown stalks turns the landscape silver.

Every year I forget about the California early-winter silver. Every year I rediscover it.

The rains have come early: October is early for rain in these parts. The cold’s here too. So is the silver.

I’ve been thinking a lot about two people who took me to Fenway Park back in the late 80s. They were fathers of friends of mine; both were passionate about the Red Sox. One of them introduced me to baseball altogether; the other one taught me a lot more about it.

They are both gone now: two Red Sox fans (how many, many more must there have been?) who were born after 1918 and who died before they could see their team win the World Series.

Their silver hair and blue eyes swirl with the smell of hot dogs and the Boston accents and the lousy beer and the sound of bat on ball, CRACK not POCK like a cricket bat, that impossibly lush green diamond. I wish I could send them both a letter thanking them for this. I wish they could see it. Eddie’s scorecard would be trembling in his hands, the seventy or so years he’d heard “wait till next year” rolling by like innings, his yellow golf pencil clinking down onto the seat in front but lost in the roar that is not the collective victorious howl of when we beat the Yankees last week but something soft and sweet, grateful, not quite believing, like the October rain that paints this landscape silver. I think I’m hearing it now.

I think next year’s here, guys.

Postscript, Thursday morning: Red Sox flags have been turning up all over Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, according to a piece in the Boston Globe:

This will be the final, regular post to the Bambino’s Curse weblog. The site, however, and all the archives will remain online forever, as a small testament and recollection of what it was like to be a fan before the Red Sox won their first World Series since 1918. (Like anyone wants to relive that!)”

Moonstruck

Tomorrow night there will be a total lunar eclipse during the World Series game. Clearly this is portentious. Since the Red Sox won tonight’s game to go up 3-0 in the series, either they will break their 86 year-long curse, or they will collapse just as spectacularly as did the Yankees last week and add another sorrowful chapter to their long tale of woe. The moon will have her say in the matter tomorrow.

Milagro

Congratulations to the Boston Red Sox for their historic come-from-behind victory over the Yankees in the league championship series, culminating in tonight’s Game 7 thrashing 10-3.

We went to El Mariachi, our favorite taqueria in Davis, to watch most of the game. I arrived just before Johnny Damon hit his grand slam home run in top of the second inning to put the Red Sox up 6-nothing. Our friends Kevin and Denise showed up for the final three innings, and we were getting pretty rowdy by the end.

David Ortiz hit a two-run home run to start things off in the first inning, and deservedly won the series MVP award. But there were many other fine performances by other Red Sox players: Curt Schilling, Johnny Damon, Mark Bellhorn, Derek Lowe, to name a few.

When we got home the coyotes started howling in celebration, quite near to the house.

Now on to the World Series!

Fenway’s New God

Pica and I were following the Red Sox-Yankees game late this afternoon on our computers at work. Down 4-2, David Ortiz lead off the eighth inning with a home run, and the Sox tied it up with a sacrifice fly that inning. We then had to run to meet Nicole and Mike for dinner at Thai Nakorn; I left work just as the game was going into extra innings. Two hours later, we’re driving home from the restaurant and a quick trip to the coop. I turn on the radio to see if I can find out who won. Amazingly, the game is still going on! David Ortiz is at the plate, and Johnny Damon is on second. And David Ortiz singles home the winning run in the bottom of the 14th inning! This is just 22 hours after David Ortiz hit a two-run home run (at 1 in the morning Boston time) to win yesterday’s game in the 12th.

I think tonight’s was the longest game by time (5 hours 49 minutes) in postseason history. Apparently the blimp overhead had to fly home before the game was over because it was out of fuel.

After the game, Pica talked to Doc Roc. Loyal Red Sox fan that she is, Doc Roc might be interested in hunting down something like this.

Baseball Exorcisms

So I was standing above a stock pond on Point Reyes yesterday, looking at a bird that somebody called a pectoral sandpiper and someone else thought might be a buff-breasted sandpiper, when a third person said to me “you’re wearing a Boston Red Sox cap!!” It’s true. I was. This person had just flown in from Massachusetts and they were getting some birding in for the weekend; she lives in Needham.

With Red Sox nation, there’s no need for small talk, you dive straight into the particulars of this play or that home run (in the event, the two-run clincher by David Ortiz on Friday). We’re hopeful, all of us, this year, the year the Red Sox might just defy history and win the World Series.

But there’s WORK to be done, viz:

I told my new friend about the Sox fans who had taken a voodoo priest down to Babe Ruth’s grave to try and get the Curse of the Bambino lifted. She countered with the story of the vegetarian who had eaten 86 hot dogs (one for each year since they last won) in an attempt to do the same thing.

Hocus-pocus, maybe, but if they win this year I’ll believe anything.

Seven Games Left

This evening Pica called with delight from the other room—“oh wow!”. She was checking the score of the Red Sox-Yankees game just after the Red Sox had scored seven runs in the bottom of the eighth. The Red Sox went on to win it 12-5. The Yankees are assured of a playoff spot, and I don’t think the Red Sox are going to overtake them to capture the division title. But they’re in very good shape for the wild-card race.

More bottom-of-the-eighth heroics in San Francisco this afternoon. The Giants very much needed to win today to stay in the playoff hunt, both for the wild-card and the division race. We were running errands this afternoon and were catching bits and pieces of the game. For lunch we stopped at El Mariachi: on the telly the Giants already down 2-0 to the Dodgers in the first inning and I was distressed. Happily Ray Durham hit a leadoff home run for the Giants in the bottom of the first to make things closer. Later on it was 4-2 Dodgers—we grew disgusted so we turned the radio to KDRT, Davis’s new low-power FM radio station. When we finally headed home after shopping at the co-op we turned on the radio and had just missed a grand slam by Pedro Feliz. Giants were up 9-5, and they held on to the lead in the top of the ninth to win.

Back east, the Cubs blew a 3-0 lead in the ninth and lost to the Mets. The Cubs are the Giants’ chief rival in the wild-card hunt, the Giants now only a half-game back of the Cubs, and 1 1/2 games back of the Dodgers in the division race. More excitement to follow, for sure.

Choking

The Red Sox are doing their thing, right on schedule. They lost yesterday 11-1 against the hated Yankees and lost to Baltimore today. You wouldn’t mind so much if they had been awful all season, but this follows a good run. They’ll probably just squeak the wildcard, do well for four games, and then JUST lose. You’d think we wouldn’t come back year after year for more, but here we are.

I don’t believe in the curse of the bambino, but the Red Sox sure as hell do.

Post the All-Star Break

Wimbledon’s over, we’re in the final week of the Tour de France, and the circus that is baseball’s All-Star game is finally put away. Now we can get serious about the various standings, start to pay attention when poor Tampa Bay beats the dreaded Yankees, as they did today.

The rivalry between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees is famously one-sided. New York smiles smugly at the little provincial New Englanders from up the coast and occasionally seems genuinely hurt by the level of vitriol hurled in its direction. Not understanding why everyone doesn’t automatically love a winner.

Remind you of anyone?