Yesterday Redux
1) Snow day specifics as a buildup to baseball finality
Went to Andres’ house, built a snowman, made a snow angel, watched Brad feed the pigs and the chickens, went to the school to put papers in folders, came upon an opportunity to fly to Chicago sometime in the next two months but soon found that opportunity attractive in the abstract but unfeasible in the concrete, sent out letters to Julie and Sara, came home, read some Wendell Berry and Randall Jarrell and ended the session with a few poems from this anthology edited by Milosz someone gave me for my birthday, went back to the Andres’ house for Brad’s birthday dinner, drank 3 beers, ate a buffalo burger, made disinterested small talk about the exorbitant unrealistic demands Sister Bernadette the resident nun is making on the school community with a woman who weighs at least 300 lbs., watched a Disney show about vampires with a half dozen young Catholic teacher progeny, and finally talked one of the Andres kids into switching it to ESPN to check the Sox-Sox score. Whites were up on Reds 5-4 in the 6th (whites versus reds, as far as historical analogies go, seems like a premonition – remember that I live amongst the colonized “domestic dependent” tribes, and they seem to have taken the worse end of the deal in all regards). Soon enough, the young child turned from baseball back to the vampire movie, thus forcing me to take leave of the party in an awkward note, right after the cake was cut.
I felt no need to apologize. This is October, after all, and baseball is a religion that demands as much metaphysical commitment as any silly public prostration in front of a school assembly. A month and a half into this particular employment situation, I know enough backstory to feel contemptuous of adults who bitch about church doctrine but only in whispers. If you have a problem about a matter that you truly believe is more than life-or-death, don’t mince words. I am not digging on Catholicism as such, I am digging on officeplace politics disguised as theological differences.
So after my departure from the birthday party, I went to the nearest store, purchased a six-pack, and drove away into the snowy night fervently searching for an AM station that carried the game.
Three minutes out of town, I narrowly avoided two deer, which resulted in a long, deep sigh of relief. Five minutes after I almost hit one or both of that deer pair, I found what I was looking for on 560 AM KKWK: the Game. Not that I could understand what was happening. A transcript of the broadcast, from my car, looks like this:
. . . .Damon . . . . 5-4 White Sox . . . . . 23 year old pitcher [is this a reference to the Red Sox closer? I surmise, Yes]. . . . . . Ninth Inning . . . .(HSSSSSSSSSSSSSSsss sound) . . . Damon takes his stance . . . (long interval of static, and cursing from me, another deer narrowly avoided) Damon, takes . . . 3 balls 1 strike . . . . . . Damon, weak popup . . . . Pierzynski (spelling? I know, I know, he played for the Twins, my other team – I am one of those whorish fans that by geographical ambiguity have two teams, and in my case I am even more deplorable because both teams play in the same division) catches it in foul territory . . . . . Renteria, 2-4 tonight with a double and a single . . . . Graffanino . . . . . (longer interval of static) . . . . . so the White Sox come away from tonight with a 2-0 lead in the series.
So, yes – I let out a whoop. If you let a whoop on a semi-snowy, unpopulated highway in Rosebud County, MT, five miles from the town, does anyone or anything hear it? Yes, a male mule deer AKA Muley buck, with an eight point typical rack (four tines on the right side, four on the left – “atypical” rack would be an even number of tines on one side, an odd number on the other) heard me, because in mid-whoop I came to a screeching stop and stared it down, not ten feet away from my car. I do believe that the whoop transfixed the animal, as it stood in front of my headlights for a good ten seconds, staring back at the whoop’s source. I would like to posit that this deer and I saw eye to eye on the relative merits of a White Sox victory, but that is pure speculation.
2) Hey all you baseball purists, chastise my whorishness
When I moved to Chicago, I took the White Sox as my local team of choice. I had never had a local team of choice. The Twins were my default, and I remain loyal to them, for many reasons. It’s hard not to like a team that succeeds because they do things right, and then lose many elements of their successful team because they cannot afford to retain them. On the flipside, it’s hard to like any team, no matter its chemistry or charisma, that plays in the Metrodome. And, because I had Chicago papers in front of me when I read papers, and Chicago baseball in front of me on the televisions in bars that I frequented, I came to know more, and have more intricate opinions, about the White Sox than I did the Twins. Yet when the Twins played the Yankees a few years back in the playoffs, I was on a mower, grooming a golf course, back amongst Twins fans, and my heart palpated with the ebbs and flows of a series that was doomed to be depressing from the start, even though the Twins won the first game.
My attempt to have it both ways, rooting for both the Twins and the Sox, has drawn the ire of many baseball fans with whom I have consorted. The basic argument against me is pretty straightforward: cheering for two teams in the same division is like being an agnostic who holds out hope that heaven will be his final home. And I admit that there is a certain screwy ambivalence in my particular baseball fanhood. It would be one thing if one team made its home in the National League, and the other in the American League. But my particular baseball fetish incriminates me. I admit it. Holding out for both teams is as impossible as holding out hope for both sides of an issue that can only house one conviction. You can’t be pro-choice and pro-life – you can, of course, hold no opinion on the issue, but at this point holding no opinions on baseball lacks viability. So, GO WHITE SOX! NOTE: if the White Sox lose, I will have no hesitation in rooting for the Red Sox against either the Yankees or the Angels. If that makes me a crack-addict whore, so be it. Does it make me a crack-addict whore?
Went to Andres’ house, built a snowman, made a snow angel, watched Brad feed the pigs and the chickens, went to the school to put papers in folders, came upon an opportunity to fly to Chicago sometime in the next two months but soon found that opportunity attractive in the abstract but unfeasible in the concrete, sent out letters to Julie and Sara, came home, read some Wendell Berry and Randall Jarrell and ended the session with a few poems from this anthology edited by Milosz someone gave me for my birthday, went back to the Andres’ house for Brad’s birthday dinner, drank 3 beers, ate a buffalo burger, made disinterested small talk about the exorbitant unrealistic demands Sister Bernadette the resident nun is making on the school community with a woman who weighs at least 300 lbs., watched a Disney show about vampires with a half dozen young Catholic teacher progeny, and finally talked one of the Andres kids into switching it to ESPN to check the Sox-Sox score. Whites were up on Reds 5-4 in the 6th (whites versus reds, as far as historical analogies go, seems like a premonition – remember that I live amongst the colonized “domestic dependent” tribes, and they seem to have taken the worse end of the deal in all regards). Soon enough, the young child turned from baseball back to the vampire movie, thus forcing me to take leave of the party in an awkward note, right after the cake was cut.
I felt no need to apologize. This is October, after all, and baseball is a religion that demands as much metaphysical commitment as any silly public prostration in front of a school assembly. A month and a half into this particular employment situation, I know enough backstory to feel contemptuous of adults who bitch about church doctrine but only in whispers. If you have a problem about a matter that you truly believe is more than life-or-death, don’t mince words. I am not digging on Catholicism as such, I am digging on officeplace politics disguised as theological differences.
So after my departure from the birthday party, I went to the nearest store, purchased a six-pack, and drove away into the snowy night fervently searching for an AM station that carried the game.
Three minutes out of town, I narrowly avoided two deer, which resulted in a long, deep sigh of relief. Five minutes after I almost hit one or both of that deer pair, I found what I was looking for on 560 AM KKWK: the Game. Not that I could understand what was happening. A transcript of the broadcast, from my car, looks like this:
. . . .Damon . . . . 5-4 White Sox . . . . . 23 year old pitcher [is this a reference to the Red Sox closer? I surmise, Yes]. . . . . . Ninth Inning . . . .(HSSSSSSSSSSSSSSsss sound) . . . Damon takes his stance . . . (long interval of static, and cursing from me, another deer narrowly avoided) Damon, takes . . . 3 balls 1 strike . . . . . . Damon, weak popup . . . . Pierzynski (spelling? I know, I know, he played for the Twins, my other team – I am one of those whorish fans that by geographical ambiguity have two teams, and in my case I am even more deplorable because both teams play in the same division) catches it in foul territory . . . . . Renteria, 2-4 tonight with a double and a single . . . . Graffanino . . . . . (longer interval of static) . . . . . so the White Sox come away from tonight with a 2-0 lead in the series.
So, yes – I let out a whoop. If you let a whoop on a semi-snowy, unpopulated highway in Rosebud County, MT, five miles from the town, does anyone or anything hear it? Yes, a male mule deer AKA Muley buck, with an eight point typical rack (four tines on the right side, four on the left – “atypical” rack would be an even number of tines on one side, an odd number on the other) heard me, because in mid-whoop I came to a screeching stop and stared it down, not ten feet away from my car. I do believe that the whoop transfixed the animal, as it stood in front of my headlights for a good ten seconds, staring back at the whoop’s source. I would like to posit that this deer and I saw eye to eye on the relative merits of a White Sox victory, but that is pure speculation.
2) Hey all you baseball purists, chastise my whorishness
When I moved to Chicago, I took the White Sox as my local team of choice. I had never had a local team of choice. The Twins were my default, and I remain loyal to them, for many reasons. It’s hard not to like a team that succeeds because they do things right, and then lose many elements of their successful team because they cannot afford to retain them. On the flipside, it’s hard to like any team, no matter its chemistry or charisma, that plays in the Metrodome. And, because I had Chicago papers in front of me when I read papers, and Chicago baseball in front of me on the televisions in bars that I frequented, I came to know more, and have more intricate opinions, about the White Sox than I did the Twins. Yet when the Twins played the Yankees a few years back in the playoffs, I was on a mower, grooming a golf course, back amongst Twins fans, and my heart palpated with the ebbs and flows of a series that was doomed to be depressing from the start, even though the Twins won the first game.
My attempt to have it both ways, rooting for both the Twins and the Sox, has drawn the ire of many baseball fans with whom I have consorted. The basic argument against me is pretty straightforward: cheering for two teams in the same division is like being an agnostic who holds out hope that heaven will be his final home. And I admit that there is a certain screwy ambivalence in my particular baseball fanhood. It would be one thing if one team made its home in the National League, and the other in the American League. But my particular baseball fetish incriminates me. I admit it. Holding out for both teams is as impossible as holding out hope for both sides of an issue that can only house one conviction. You can’t be pro-choice and pro-life – you can, of course, hold no opinion on the issue, but at this point holding no opinions on baseball lacks viability. So, GO WHITE SOX! NOTE: if the White Sox lose, I will have no hesitation in rooting for the Red Sox against either the Yankees or the Angels. If that makes me a crack-addict whore, so be it. Does it make me a crack-addict whore?
posted by am at
9:58 AM
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