dr_mabeuse
seduce the mind
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2002
- Posts
- 11,528
The Chicago White Sox baseball team won the WOrld Series last night, defeating the Houston Astro's 1-0 to clinch a 4-game sweep in the best-of-seven series.
I avoid sports generally, but I was swept up in this one, and this morning was still choked up and weak with emotion. Of course I wanted to share my feelings, and so I wrote this. I know that a lot of poeple here don't know anything about American baseball and don't care either, which is fine. I try to explain some of what it al means here, though. I'm very happy.
-------------------
Chicago hasn't won a baseball title in something like 80 years, and that's made us something of a standing joke. We're one of the few cities that still has two baseball teams, teams that go back to the nineteenth century: the White Sox in the American League ("Socks" became "Sox" sometime in the misty past), and the Cubs in the National League. (For those who don't know, the World Series pits the winners of the American League and the National League against each other) The Cubs are on the North Side of the city, which has become something of a yuppie haven, and Cubs are the better known team, their fans are largely white and upper middle-class.
The Sox are from the South Side, from around where the infamous Chicago Stock Yards used to be but are no more. Sox fans tend to be working class, often Eastern European or Italian or Irish or of some other "immigrant" extraction. These days the south side has fallen on tough economic times, and the neighborhood around their ballpark is mostly black and Hispanic, and so their fans pretty much run the gamut. The Sox have always been a blue- collar, working man's team, and ever since some of their players were involved in a scandal to throw the 1919 World Series, they've had a slightly unsavory reputation they just couldn't shake. Cub fans tend to be more white collar and professional. The Sox play in a grim, modern, corporate-sponsored stadium. The Cubs play in a charmingly anachronistic park where it now costs an arm and a leg to get in.
When I was a kid, I lived not far from where the Cubs played (Wrigley Field, built by the chewing gum magnate, who owned the club for a long time), and so as far as I was a fan, I favored the Cubs, but that was no big deal back then, when you could follow both teams without stigma. Now, however, as the area around Wrigley Field has become more gentrified, the Cubs have become very upscale and their fans look down their noses at the Sox. In return, Sox fans have long resented all the attention that the Cubs get, and so there's a lot of bad blood between the fans and even the management Antipathies run very deep, even splitting families and friends. (A drive to invite Cub fans to join in rooting for the Sox made available tee-shirts with word "Bi-Soxual" on them.) Following the Sox' victory last night, the are around Wrigley Field was as quiet as a tomb.
The Sox have been called The Second City's Second Team, and this year they weren't expected to do much. They had a motley crew of rejects from other teams, has-beens and never-were's. Their manager is Ozzy Guillen, a former Sox shortstop from Venezuela who was a great player but was known more as a clown and a character and never really taken seriously as a manager. Ozzy has a thick accent, is very funny and excitable, and has only been managing for 2 years. No one expected much from him except some funny Spanglish quotes.
The Sox have a second baseman from Japan who doesn't speak English, a punk third baseman who insists on wearing the kind of out-of-date uniforms his heroes wore years ago, a pitching staff that looks like they're right off a prison ship, including a refugee from Cuba who floated to the US on a home-made raft and a big (6'3", 270 lbs) awkward-looking pitcher who can throw 105 mile-an-hour strikes (it would slam into the catcher's mitt so loud that you could hear it outside the stadium. The catchers had to put sponges in their gloves to protect their hands.) And then we had a catcher named A.J. Pryzinski who was let go from his last team as a trouble-maker, Paul Konerko on first base, and Scott Podsednick in the outfield, names the announcers couldn't even pronounce when the season started. The short stop (Jose Uribe) grew up playing baseball in the Dominican Republic where he developed a unique style because of all the rocks that used to be in the field where they played, and the right fielder Germaine Dye was thought by some to be mentally deficient. (He wasn't. Just pathologically shy at first.)
To see this team of rejects come together and support each other and start beating the crap out of wealthy teams filled with expensive superstars like the Yankees and California was like one of those corny sports movies. In baseball, a winning percentage of 66% is remarkable. The Sox won their last 16 out of 17 games, which is just unheard of, and they did it without any superstars or prima donnas, just playing hard, gritty, never-say-die ball. There was more than one time as I was watching them that I choked up with tears. I'm choking up now.
I'm a terrible sports fan. For one thing, I'm a worrier and a pessimist, and the pleasure I feel at a win doesn't make up for the pain I feel at a loss, so overall the emotional economics don't make sense, which is why I usually just ignore sports. Also, I know too well that my team's winning means the other team's losing, and I'm too empathetic not to care about that. Failure and loss interest me a lot more than triumph and victory, which are always shallow and evanescent, and I just naturally tend to sympathize with the loser.
The Sox played the Astro's, and there's a lot to like about them as well. They're a fairly new team as far as baseball goes, having been formed in the 1960's, and while they've won some National League championships, they've never won a World Series, so the fans down there were hungry too.
But the Astro's are sunbelt. They play in a rich and booming city with a bright future. The Sox come from a neighborhood that's been hit hard economically, surrounded by ghettos, where jobs and hope are scarce. Their fans love them with the desperate hope that comes from years of loss and deprivation and disrespect. Still, they're a team that plays a lot like the Sox, gritty and stubborn and very working-class. I felt bad that they had to lose.
Although I must say that seeing Barbara Bush's self-satisfied smile looming behind every batter (she had a perfect box seat for the two Houston games, and was joined by George Sr. on the last game) went a long way towards making me pray for an Astro's loss. Her son, our current president, made his name in Texas baseball, although not with the Astro's, and Texas is still his power base. I couldn't help but be reminded of Barbara's comments about things "working out well" for the people who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina, because, after all, they were poor, and so what did they really have to lose? This is a woman who can't even conceive of the lives lived by most White Sox fans, of hard work and lack of privilege.
The games themselves came down to a series of miracles and heroism that almost looked like it had been scripted by a Hollywood hack. Konerko's crucial grand-slam home run with two outs. Joe Crede with his punk haircut and 1919-style socks and his beautiful swing—the loveliest swing I've even seen in baseball—hitting gorgeous solo homeruns and playing third base like a man possessed; Scott Podsenick's game-winning home run when he hadn't hit a single homerun all year ("Oh no! Not Podsednick!" I'd moaned at home. "He can't do anything!" Then, bang!) Another game-winning home run by Geoff Blum. a second string player who hadn't had a hit since August.
Every game was tense, and every game was only a hit or two from going either way. Game three lasted 5 hours and 41 minutes, setting a World Series record in which 17 pitchers were used, 43 players overall, and 30 men were left stranded on base. It was a series in which every single pitch counted, and you could see the emotions of the games played out on the players' faces. The exact spot where every player stood was critical, every move had implication. Baseball's a game where nothing happens as long as the ball's under control, flying from the pitcher to the catcher, but let someone hit it, or drop it, or miss it, and all hell breaks lose. Thus, every movement became a drama in itself.
Baseball can be a strange game, and unless you know it well, it's probably both boring and baffling. A lot of tension, a lot of disappointment, punctuated by moments of astonishing elation and beauty. It's a very poetic game in which physics sets the rules and the clock doesn't matter (there is no clock. A game takes as long as it takes.) A baseball field theoretically has no limits, it just goes on and on forever. The parks they play in have limits, of course, but theoretically you could hit the ball to the moon and it would still be in play. There's a timeless laziness to it too, that reeks of hot summer days and white clouds in blue skies, the announcers droning on over the radio, a sound that's as much a part of my memories of summer as the sound of waves against the shore. Players are sometimes called "the boys of summer," and the beginning of spring training is always a sign that winter's over and a new year's begun. It's a game with a long, long history backed up by mountains of statistics that fans love to quote and research, looking for hidden patterns and buried truths, or just for the sheer joy of playing with numbers. It's a game in which the past is very much alive, and players who've been gone for 80 years or more are still revered and discussed as if they just left the diamond yesterday. It's a sweet and dream-like game, heroic without being violent, in which a player's career can last for 15 or 20 years or more, allowing them to make their mark on the game and become known and recognized
Lately baseball's been surpassed by faster, more violent and action-filled sports like ice hockey and American football, auto racing and even soccer, so that it's no longer America's favorite sport. But watching the Sox play brought back to me all that timeless beauty and elegance of the game.
I'm not a sports fan. As I say, the emotional economics don't make sense to me, but this was different. This was magical, and I was deeply moved. There was more than one time when I was choking back tears, and writing this this morning was no different.
I avoid sports generally, but I was swept up in this one, and this morning was still choked up and weak with emotion. Of course I wanted to share my feelings, and so I wrote this. I know that a lot of poeple here don't know anything about American baseball and don't care either, which is fine. I try to explain some of what it al means here, though. I'm very happy.
-------------------
Chicago hasn't won a baseball title in something like 80 years, and that's made us something of a standing joke. We're one of the few cities that still has two baseball teams, teams that go back to the nineteenth century: the White Sox in the American League ("Socks" became "Sox" sometime in the misty past), and the Cubs in the National League. (For those who don't know, the World Series pits the winners of the American League and the National League against each other) The Cubs are on the North Side of the city, which has become something of a yuppie haven, and Cubs are the better known team, their fans are largely white and upper middle-class.
The Sox are from the South Side, from around where the infamous Chicago Stock Yards used to be but are no more. Sox fans tend to be working class, often Eastern European or Italian or Irish or of some other "immigrant" extraction. These days the south side has fallen on tough economic times, and the neighborhood around their ballpark is mostly black and Hispanic, and so their fans pretty much run the gamut. The Sox have always been a blue- collar, working man's team, and ever since some of their players were involved in a scandal to throw the 1919 World Series, they've had a slightly unsavory reputation they just couldn't shake. Cub fans tend to be more white collar and professional. The Sox play in a grim, modern, corporate-sponsored stadium. The Cubs play in a charmingly anachronistic park where it now costs an arm and a leg to get in.
When I was a kid, I lived not far from where the Cubs played (Wrigley Field, built by the chewing gum magnate, who owned the club for a long time), and so as far as I was a fan, I favored the Cubs, but that was no big deal back then, when you could follow both teams without stigma. Now, however, as the area around Wrigley Field has become more gentrified, the Cubs have become very upscale and their fans look down their noses at the Sox. In return, Sox fans have long resented all the attention that the Cubs get, and so there's a lot of bad blood between the fans and even the management Antipathies run very deep, even splitting families and friends. (A drive to invite Cub fans to join in rooting for the Sox made available tee-shirts with word "Bi-Soxual" on them.) Following the Sox' victory last night, the are around Wrigley Field was as quiet as a tomb.
The Sox have been called The Second City's Second Team, and this year they weren't expected to do much. They had a motley crew of rejects from other teams, has-beens and never-were's. Their manager is Ozzy Guillen, a former Sox shortstop from Venezuela who was a great player but was known more as a clown and a character and never really taken seriously as a manager. Ozzy has a thick accent, is very funny and excitable, and has only been managing for 2 years. No one expected much from him except some funny Spanglish quotes.
The Sox have a second baseman from Japan who doesn't speak English, a punk third baseman who insists on wearing the kind of out-of-date uniforms his heroes wore years ago, a pitching staff that looks like they're right off a prison ship, including a refugee from Cuba who floated to the US on a home-made raft and a big (6'3", 270 lbs) awkward-looking pitcher who can throw 105 mile-an-hour strikes (it would slam into the catcher's mitt so loud that you could hear it outside the stadium. The catchers had to put sponges in their gloves to protect their hands.) And then we had a catcher named A.J. Pryzinski who was let go from his last team as a trouble-maker, Paul Konerko on first base, and Scott Podsednick in the outfield, names the announcers couldn't even pronounce when the season started. The short stop (Jose Uribe) grew up playing baseball in the Dominican Republic where he developed a unique style because of all the rocks that used to be in the field where they played, and the right fielder Germaine Dye was thought by some to be mentally deficient. (He wasn't. Just pathologically shy at first.)
To see this team of rejects come together and support each other and start beating the crap out of wealthy teams filled with expensive superstars like the Yankees and California was like one of those corny sports movies. In baseball, a winning percentage of 66% is remarkable. The Sox won their last 16 out of 17 games, which is just unheard of, and they did it without any superstars or prima donnas, just playing hard, gritty, never-say-die ball. There was more than one time as I was watching them that I choked up with tears. I'm choking up now.
I'm a terrible sports fan. For one thing, I'm a worrier and a pessimist, and the pleasure I feel at a win doesn't make up for the pain I feel at a loss, so overall the emotional economics don't make sense, which is why I usually just ignore sports. Also, I know too well that my team's winning means the other team's losing, and I'm too empathetic not to care about that. Failure and loss interest me a lot more than triumph and victory, which are always shallow and evanescent, and I just naturally tend to sympathize with the loser.
The Sox played the Astro's, and there's a lot to like about them as well. They're a fairly new team as far as baseball goes, having been formed in the 1960's, and while they've won some National League championships, they've never won a World Series, so the fans down there were hungry too.
But the Astro's are sunbelt. They play in a rich and booming city with a bright future. The Sox come from a neighborhood that's been hit hard economically, surrounded by ghettos, where jobs and hope are scarce. Their fans love them with the desperate hope that comes from years of loss and deprivation and disrespect. Still, they're a team that plays a lot like the Sox, gritty and stubborn and very working-class. I felt bad that they had to lose.
Although I must say that seeing Barbara Bush's self-satisfied smile looming behind every batter (she had a perfect box seat for the two Houston games, and was joined by George Sr. on the last game) went a long way towards making me pray for an Astro's loss. Her son, our current president, made his name in Texas baseball, although not with the Astro's, and Texas is still his power base. I couldn't help but be reminded of Barbara's comments about things "working out well" for the people who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina, because, after all, they were poor, and so what did they really have to lose? This is a woman who can't even conceive of the lives lived by most White Sox fans, of hard work and lack of privilege.
The games themselves came down to a series of miracles and heroism that almost looked like it had been scripted by a Hollywood hack. Konerko's crucial grand-slam home run with two outs. Joe Crede with his punk haircut and 1919-style socks and his beautiful swing—the loveliest swing I've even seen in baseball—hitting gorgeous solo homeruns and playing third base like a man possessed; Scott Podsenick's game-winning home run when he hadn't hit a single homerun all year ("Oh no! Not Podsednick!" I'd moaned at home. "He can't do anything!" Then, bang!) Another game-winning home run by Geoff Blum. a second string player who hadn't had a hit since August.
Every game was tense, and every game was only a hit or two from going either way. Game three lasted 5 hours and 41 minutes, setting a World Series record in which 17 pitchers were used, 43 players overall, and 30 men were left stranded on base. It was a series in which every single pitch counted, and you could see the emotions of the games played out on the players' faces. The exact spot where every player stood was critical, every move had implication. Baseball's a game where nothing happens as long as the ball's under control, flying from the pitcher to the catcher, but let someone hit it, or drop it, or miss it, and all hell breaks lose. Thus, every movement became a drama in itself.
Baseball can be a strange game, and unless you know it well, it's probably both boring and baffling. A lot of tension, a lot of disappointment, punctuated by moments of astonishing elation and beauty. It's a very poetic game in which physics sets the rules and the clock doesn't matter (there is no clock. A game takes as long as it takes.) A baseball field theoretically has no limits, it just goes on and on forever. The parks they play in have limits, of course, but theoretically you could hit the ball to the moon and it would still be in play. There's a timeless laziness to it too, that reeks of hot summer days and white clouds in blue skies, the announcers droning on over the radio, a sound that's as much a part of my memories of summer as the sound of waves against the shore. Players are sometimes called "the boys of summer," and the beginning of spring training is always a sign that winter's over and a new year's begun. It's a game with a long, long history backed up by mountains of statistics that fans love to quote and research, looking for hidden patterns and buried truths, or just for the sheer joy of playing with numbers. It's a game in which the past is very much alive, and players who've been gone for 80 years or more are still revered and discussed as if they just left the diamond yesterday. It's a sweet and dream-like game, heroic without being violent, in which a player's career can last for 15 or 20 years or more, allowing them to make their mark on the game and become known and recognized
Lately baseball's been surpassed by faster, more violent and action-filled sports like ice hockey and American football, auto racing and even soccer, so that it's no longer America's favorite sport. But watching the Sox play brought back to me all that timeless beauty and elegance of the game.
I'm not a sports fan. As I say, the emotional economics don't make sense to me, but this was different. This was magical, and I was deeply moved. There was more than one time when I was choking back tears, and writing this this morning was no different.
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