I am a hopeless Phillies fan. Last fall I wrote about it here, a long autobiographical piece that begins at birth, which was noted as being five weeks before the Phils won the pennant (1950) then dropped four straight to the Yankees in the Series. And so, I was born a Phan. For those who know nothing about baseball, or nothing about baseball before they were born, something happened in Philadelphia in 1964 that allowed many of us to understand what it means to plunge headlong into the Abyss. The drama and confusion of history, set and setting, and a society in rapid transition was mirrored on the field at Connie Mack. It was perfectly, tragically Sophoclean.

And about that baseball thing that happened? Well, I’m not going to speak it, since the least mention of it could flare up the flames of Hell and consume me and the currently hapless Phils (just dropped four straight to Houston) whose bats have fallen silent at a time when they need to be loud. I don’t want to be the emitting source of some weird low-frequency bad shit psychic transmission that might morph into the Phils undoing this month. But if you must know, have a look here. Yes, Wikipedia has its very own entry on the “Phold.”

So when I read a Jeff Passan piece yesterday on the Phils newly acquired pitcher Cliff Lee and his recent two losses after five straight wins, all I could do was shake my head. Passan, a youngster, made an outrageous statement:

They [Phillies] were going to win the NL East before Ruben Amaro Jr. fortified the team with an ace [Lee]. They’re going to win the East with Lee, no matter how poorly he pitches.

All I can say is, “Kid, you might have a future in sportswriting, but you still have a lot to learn.” Calling a division winner with 27 games to go is a DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN-ism. Baseball is built on the solid understanding that there is always hope, that there is always a chance, no matter how much the odds are against it. It’s a game without time, without a clock to wind down, which allows for the appearance of the divine right up until the final out. It’s a game chockfull of numbers, but it is the unquantifiable, the uncountable that keeps us in the game until the final out, no matter how many runs your team is up or down. Yes, there are odds, and more often than not the odds tell a solid tale. But it’s the one off that keeps us in our seats, whether it’s in the park, in front of a television or, my personal preference, the radio (these days via internet).

So when someone calls it over with 27 games to go I’m thinking that somewhere this kid’s missed the point of baseball. The only way for Passan to be right would be if the Phils were up by 27.5 games. And the last time I checked, which was two minutes ago, the Phils are only up by six. And in Philadelphia that’s a “red one.”

While I hope that the Phillies are there at the end of the season – and at the end of the Series too – I would not have the audacity to be calling it a lock in the first week of September. And neither would the folks who root for the Marlins. (The Cubs, on the other hand, are another story all together. Though they are not statistically out of their division race yet, we all know that Heaven has crossed them off the waiting list for a miracle. After all, they are the Cubs, which means it has nothing to do with the “numbers” and everything to do with the “divine.”)

To further belabor a belabored point (baseball and the divine) I clearly remember the fifth game of the 1985 NLCS – LA vs St. Louis – bottom of the ninth, 2-2 and switch hitting, backflipping Ozzie Smith stepped up to the plate, batting left-handed. The announcer (perhaps Bob Costas who often had me screaming at the TV when I had the chance to watch a game) said “Smith has never hit a home run from the left side,” and he was right. In 3,009 left-handed at bats Smith had indeed never hit a home run. I also remember exclaiming loudly, “Those numbers don’t mean shit!” which was the reason I was watching the game. And on his 3,010th left-handed at bat, Ozzie ran one down the right field line for a homer and a walk-off win. What were the odds?

As any kid who’s played baseball will tell you, it ain’t over until it is. And sooner or later Jacques Rogge won’t be the lord of the IOC, and maybe then the MLB will have a little more of a future in China. And then, too, perhaps that secret baseball camp in remote Gansu will finally be revealed. Here’s to the next Sidd!

Several month ago I wrote a poem about Jet Li tossing out the first pitch with the line “man, he throws / just like my sister ….” What I didn’t realize is that I’d caught him on camera on the mound as he … well, threw just like my sister. So, in the spirit of a new baseball season and the restoration of stability, here is the photo. There is no disrespect intended towards Jet Li – I’m just using my poetic license – since I’m quite sure his sisters could whoop me good. I don’t want to even think about what he could do to me. I was very thrilled that he had the spirit and sportsmanship to get out there and get into the swing of things.

(click the pic for a larger version)

For the those who might be interested, my team, the Philadelphia Phillies, the reigning World Champs, lost their opener to Atalanta 4-1. Slugger Ryan Howard struck out looking with bases loaded in the ninth. According to my brother it took Phillies fans all of 17 minutes into the game before they started booing. Brotherly Love, indeed. And these guys don’t even have their championship rings yet. Batter up.

]]> http://rudenoon.com/absalletc/archives/1559/feed 0 http://rudenoon.com/absalletc/archives/766 http://rudenoon.com/absalletc/archives/766#comments Sun, 28 Dec 2008 16:10:28 +0000 jg http://rudenoon.com/absalletc/?p=766 I belong to a listserv group, one I‘ve been dropping in and out of for about 14 years. Over the years I have had face-to-face meeting with eight other members, all without the least shred of disappointment. In fact, all the meetings have been more pleasant than I could have hoped for, and I look forward to more in the future. Though I cannot say if their response was the same as mine, my gut tells me that, generally, it was.

I dropped back in a week or so before Christmas after a 6-7 month hiatus. A few days later one of the group, a long-time member – and one I have met and look forward to meeting again soon – related a tragic incident concerning a workmate, one that I will not repeat, though you will have to trust me when I say that if it happened to someone close to you there would be no question that you’d agree that it was bad. More than several people responded, and most mentioned either “pray” or “prayer.”

For the healing of wounds and remediable diseases, I always hope that there are doctors who will do what is required to fix what’s broken. But for the movement of mountains, the raising of the dead and favorable conclusions to sporting events, who, pray tell, do you ask? To whom do you direct your entreaties?  A god? The ether? The diviner at the corner tossing yarrow stalks? I’m afraid I just don’t get the deal.

I grew up in Philadelphia, a young Catholic Phillies fan, and while I still follow the Phils from wherever I am, the Catholic has been, thankfully, effectively shucked, a great weight lifted and cast off.

As a kid who still believed in God, I often watched the Phils leadoff batter, the Cuban Antonio “Tony” Taylor (8) – he left his home during the reign of Fulgencio Batista who subsequently left Cuba hours before Meyer Lansky, and a week before godless Fidel marched victorious into Havana – preceded each at-bat by standing at religious attention, solemnly bowing his helmeted head and praying over his bat, rapidly blessing himself then stepping into the batter’s box. This very public entreaty didn’t sit well with me, since I believed he was praying for a base hit. One of the few mysteries I had, by then, deciphered allowed me to firmly believe that God, if he/she was worth a hoot, had better sense than to walk on to a baseball field.

Though my disbelief in divine intercession hasn’t changed, I think that possibly I had Tony Taylor’s intentions wrong, that his prayers had nothing to do with getting on base and everything to do with not getting killed by a bean ball, and that just in case he were, he was asking for forgiveness for whatever sins he’d believed he’d committed, within and without baseball, stolen bases aside. My mother thought that his prayerful displays made him a better player and, by godly association, a better man. I knew him as a great second baseman, and, though I believed he was also a pretty good guy, I didn’t see that it had anything to do with his pre-bat beseeching. I wanted to tell my mother that I believed that, for the good of the game, God didn’t take sides and that praying just slowed things down, that there was no reason to believe that God favored Catholics, and that if that were the case someone would have already worked up that stat, which would have made it mandatory for every contract to include a conversion clause. Hadn’t she heard of the amazing Jew Sandy Koufax? But I kept my mouth shut, since I was not yet twelve and though I had strong doubts, I hadn’t yet worked out the vocabulary of dueling with adults, even if I was correct.

Big life issues seem to always lead me back to baseball, and in this case, to Tony Taylor, and his inexorable attempts to bring God into the game. I cannot imagine using prayer to petition an entity that would have influence on any sort of earthly outcome. It’s not that I begrudge anyone’s belief in a god or a higher power. It’s just that I don’t have any special insights to say it’s so, and therefore I have to stick to the very human hope. This doesn’t cause me any palm wringing or shortness of breath, no heart palpitations, or anything that would change the way I conduct my life. Bad things happen, and if they haven’t happened to you yet, rest assured that they will. It’s the price of the ticket. The tragedy that got me writing this is really a tough one. But life’s full of them, each day, every day, Christmas or Bloomsday. I always heartily hope for favorable results, but when it comes to prayer and praying, well, I just don’t know what to do with that. Then again, Tony Taylor is seventy-three years old (as is Sandy Koufax), and has yet to be killed by a bean ball. So, I guess you can say that his prayers were answered, unless, of course he was actually praying for base hits; he had a career batting average of .261, which is only slightly better than one out of four. Good enough for baseball, but prayer is a wholly other game.

There appears to be no truth to the rumor that Mr Bush then whispered to Mr Maliki, “Good thing it wasn’t Dick. It woulda took his friggin’ head off, just like he tried doing to Whittington.”

Mr Zaidi’s employer, al-Baghdadiya television, has demanded his release, “in accordance with the democratic era and the freedom of expression that Iraqis were promised by U.S. authorities.”

Democratic values aside, there also appears to be no truth to the rumors that the Philadelphia Phillies have tentatively signed Mr. Zaidi to a one-year contract and that former Phillie Curt Schilling (R-Red Sox) said, “Put that reporter at the plate and I’ll show him how to hit a f*ckin’ head.”

Pardon pending.

Now there’s something that ought to be understood here in China, and the MLB ought to use it as a marketing tool.

The Phillies won the game in the bottom of the ninth.

Saturday afternoons he’d often find his ways to Hogan’s where he’d drink beer with other WWII vets and cheer for the team that could never quite get there. Sometimes he’d take me along, and I’d sit on one of the high stools sipping 7-Up as the men with their bottomless pilsners drank Piels, Ballantine, Ortliebs on tap. It was always dark, smoky and loud, full of the smell of men. There was pinball, shuffleboard and sawdust as small money and fast talk passed back and forth. I didn’t mind going since I’d usually end up with a pocketful of nickels. Sometimes there were fights, which were shoved out onto the street. But there was also a TV that always seemed to be showing baseball, though in those early days of television I know that cannot be right. There just always seemed to be baseball. And that’s what stuck.

My first game at Connie Mack Stadium, when I was 6, was a twi-night doubleheader, the Phillies vs. Cubs. My father, who had changed jobs and was home every night, had somehow gotten two front row seats up against the thick backstop glass directly behind home plate, literally, the best seats in the house. My mother thought that a pair of games for one so young was far too much for me to handle; factoring in bus and subway rides, I’d not get home until after midnight, she’d argued. I can almost hear her saying, “My Lord, Jim, he’s only six,” her voice an octave higher than it was before the tickets showed up. She obviously didn’t understand baseball. [Aside: After Willie ‘Puddin Head’ Jones, the Phillies’ third baseman (1947-59), had divorced his wife, my mother, a tireless Irish Catholic, in scenes reminiscent of the Joyce’s Dedalus family Christmas dinner, would quietly rage about the split up, as she wondered how the management could even let him play. I remember as a boy, thinking, “But he's a good third baseman. What does this have to do with divorce?”] Though my father didn’t hold that against her, he also wasn’t about to let an opportunity like this be trumped by the ignorance of a non-believer. A half-century later the images from that game are still lively in my head. The deepest impressions were of Ernie Banks, the first black Cubs player – at the time the Phillies were still all-white – and Stan Lopata, who I am sure hit a home run in one of the games. All the players seemed like giants as they moved about just feet away from where I sat next to my father. I was as close as one could possibly get, and the dense glass added an element of oddness and distortion – as if I were in a fish bowl looking out – almost certainly intensifying the memory.

But despite this early anointing what slowly became clear was that being a fan meant that misery was actually a quantifiable phenomenon, measured by the number of games behind the Phils ended each season. In 1961 I prayed that it wouldn’t get to 7-squared, and when the last game finished I breathed a sigh of relief; they’d only missed first place by 46. I listened to tales of what coulda, oughta, shoulda happened but somehow never did. Almost seemed to be a permanent state of being, even as its limits continued to grow. I learned early on that disappointment was as natural as getting punched in the head. Through the fifties and early sixties the stories of the Whiz Kids tailed off into acute frustration and spiritual desolation, and though I never quite forgot that the Yankees had their own special room in Hell waiting, here on earth we Philadelphia fans silently lived each day in our very own state of un-grace. And so early on I learned to swear, no doubt adding to the number of times I ended up getting punched in the head as I yearned to be saved.
________

One of the divine truths of baseball is that, more often than not, we don’t choose the teams we end up with. Although this was never addressed in the Baltimore Catechism (which probably explains why I fell away), I am pretty sure that I’m onto something here. Somewhere in the deepest fog of the infinitely unknowable we are assigned teams for reasons that only, for lack of a better word, God knows. People born in places like Tuva or Kentucky have the freedom to choose whom they’ll follow. But when you’re born in a city that has a team that predates your arrival in the game by generations, one can only conclude that there is an explanation for ending up here rooting for this particular team. I am heartened to know that there are souls who in … I’m speculating here … another life did something worse than those of us who love the Phillies. I can only imagine what Cubs fans did to end up in Chicago and the misty fringes of northern Indiana and southern Wisconsin, though I’m thinking it must have something to do with having ridden with Genghis Khan and having done a lot of things that were seriously not right. I know it sounds like I’m staking it all on karma here, but I live in China, I know a lot of Tibetans, what can I say. There’s a reason for all our pain. Or maybe not.
________

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has another team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, who, in 1960, won the National League pennant 36 games ahead of the Phillies, who, in last place – one game behind the Cubs – had only managed 59 wins in the season. In one of the greatest upsets in World Series history, Pittsburgh beat the mighty Yanks in seven, a dramatic Bill Mazeroski homer in the bottom of the ninth. I’d rushed home from school to see it clear the wall at Forbes Field. Though I was happy that the Yanks had lost, this was hardly retribution, not when my team was home watching it too. It was Pittsburgh, which in the Phillies cosmogony might as well have been in Ohio. The only Phillie who had reached the top of any of the 1960 league leader boards was Pancho Herrera who struck out 136 times, beating out the next closest whiffer by 23. While Mazeroski had sent Mickey, Roger, Yogi and the rest of the pin-striped demons to perdition, Phillies’ fans were still wondering whether the sun would continue to rise.

The following season the Phillies managed only 47 wins. I was 11 and on the edge of utter despair. They lost 107 games.
________

I started high school in 1964. 1964. Those who know, know, and those who don’t, don’t need to know. But it’s my story and I get to tell it, even if after 4+ decades I still can’t find the words. Don’t even try to tell me that the collapsing Mets of the past two seasons even come close. They don’t. They haven’t suffered enough yet to know what meltdown really means. Come back in a half-century of spectacular disappointments and then possibly you’ll have some idea of what happened in 1964 in Philadelphia. But even then you won’t know, since whatever can happen to you has already happened before, in Philadelphia where we bled out.

From the ashes of the late fifties and early-sixties the Phillies under Gene Mauch rose in 1964 higher than anyone could ever have predicted, could ever have possibly imagined. They played the best 150 game season that most Philadelphians had ever seen. The problem was that there were still a dozen games to play, and they were only up by 6 1/2. They lost 10 of the final 12 games and finished the season a game short. I can’t begin to tell it. There’s a book that explains it, September Swoon: Richie Allen, the ’64 Phillies, and Racial Integration by William Kashatus; it’s on my shelf here in Tianjin beside Whom Gods Destroy: Elements of Greek and Tragic Madness. The arrangement is by design, a constant reminder that anything can happen and that, if you’re from Philadelphia, more often than not it does.
________

Somehow I made it through high school, though there hardly seemed to be any real point to it. In 1968 baseball was set aside, and I wandered. To sea. To foreign lands. To places I couldn’t spell. There was a foggy low spot that was the seventies, and somewhere in it was me, though I’m not really quite sure where. It’s like a series of pictures from ‘Where’s Waldo?” only there’s no Waldo in any of the pictures. You look and look and keep on looking, until finally you just give up and say, “There is no Waldo,” and I say, ”Yeah, I know.”

Someone would mention baseball, and I’d turn away. I was still in the process of falling, waiting for the bottom to rise and meet me halfway, something which it never seemed to do. And so I fell even farther. The game had become nothing more than a series of fragmented images: a hopping Carlton Fisk waving a home run fair, (but all for naught, all for naught), Steve Yeager with a shard of a broken bat in his neck and Mike Schmidt in burgundy in an All-Star game.

And so I wandered more.
________

In the spring of 1980 I stumbled into northern Wyoming and took a job on a sheep ranch. When they needed someone to take a band of sheep out on the range for the season, I said, “Why not.” So out I went into the badlands of the Bighorn Basin. I had a horse, a wagon, a good dog, 950 sheep, a radio and a stash of batteries. As the snowline lifted I gradually trailed them up into the high country. In the high basin and higher mountains I could pick up radio stations for a thousand miles in any direction. And so I rediscovered baseball. As a former Phillies fan I couldn’t have picked a more fortuitous year. The Phils were hot, and when they were west of the Mississippi I could listen to their games. Though I’d left Philadelphia 12 years earlier, Philadelphia had hardly left me. And so I listened, though with a great deal of apprehension, and, begrudgingly, a modicum of hope.

I scanned the airwaves each night looking for the company of a game in the high, beautiful, solitary Bighorns as summer waned and the August snow squalls blew through unannounced. As the season ended I’d already trailed the sheep to the winter pasture in the McCullough Peaks, a strange and isolated geologic anomaly in the northwestern Bighorn Basin. I listened and screamed and sweated through the Phillies-Astros playoff series with nothing but a horse, two dogs and 1,800 sheep to hear me. And when the Phils emerged victorious, clinching their first World Series spot since 1950, I felt as if I’d broken the sky. They were going to play Kansas City.

By the time the Series began the first shot of winter had come, a blinding snowstorm that blew for a day and a half. I’d lost all the sheep—not dead, just gone—and I spent the next 24-hours unsuccessfully looking for them in the cold, clear and snowy isolation of the Peaks. That night, Game 1, I was distracted. I hadn’t found them, and I was cold, miserable and not looking forward to the next morning; when you’re herding sheep you’re not supposed to lose them. I found them the following day after riding 10 miles to the nearest farmhouse, calling the ranch and explaining the situation. The camp tender showed up in his truck and found them within an hour. That’s when I told him I’d had it. Six months alone was long enough; I wanted to go to town. It took several days to find another herder, and I listened to the first five games of the Series beside the woodstove in the windblown wagon. I came to town the morning of Game 6, the Phillies up 3-2.

Lovell, Wyoming is small, and if anyone there was a baseball fan, I certainly didn’t know them. I knew about six people in the entire county, and the only television I had access to was in the Wagon Wheel Bar. It was a weeknight and the place was relatively quiet. The television was in the back room, along with a phone booth and two pool tables. Three Mexicans ranch hands were quietly playing 8-ball on the table by the rear exit, and there weren’t any rowdy drunks looking to leg wrestle or fight. I drank my beers and watched the game and got cranked as the Phils, who were at home, went up 4-0. From 2,000 miles away I watched the crowd in Veterans Stadium get wilder and wilder. In the top of the ninth I sat in the phone booth with the door open and called my younger brother who was at home in suburban Philadelphia. We talked and watched together as Tug McGraw, on the verge of breaking into blossom, pitched the Phillies to their first and only World Series title. It was a feeling both wonderful and odd: I was alone in a western bar with a cowboy hat on my head, quietly getting drunk in a phone booth, and for the first time backing a hometown winner.
________

Though the Phils made it back to the Series in 1983 when they lost to Baltimore – scoring only 9 runs in 5 games – and again in ’93 when they lost to Canada in six, I think they’re both intentional blocks. Now they’re back in the Series again, playing Tampa Bay, and I’m living in eastern China wondering where I’m going to watch it. I must admit that I’m disappointed that they’re not playing Boston, since, in the spirit of the Franklins and the Adamses, I really wanted to see an 2008 AmRev series. Maybe that one will come along next year. It’s baseball, and I’ll take it the way it is. That’s what I’ve learned from the road where, despite the odds, hope finds a way of getting by.