World Series 2008 - 3

World Series 2008 (Part III)

Joe Safdie

October 26 What a great Series! The moon in Libra (exactly three hours in last night when the Phillies won game Three) should mean peace and harmony, more of the Obama communal spirit than the last lingering gasps of cowboy capitalism as exemplified by Senator McCain, interviewed this morning by Brokaw on Meet The Press to somewhat equivocal results, Brokaw seeming suspiciously conservative these last few months after succeeding Russert, whose untimely heart attack death this summer scared me and, no doubt, thousands of other middle-aged men, by the way, I noticed that the first few lines of this third installment accidentally got “published” on ScribD with the second part, a little like those “teasers” in mystery novels of the 60s and 70s, for example, the great Travis McGee novels of John D. McDonald, which often featured the first few pages of the next novel in the series at the end, urging the book-buying consumer, I guess, to purchase the next novel, I wonder if the poets who wrote in series, like Spicer, ever thought of that, Tristram Shandy, for example, was published in sections, bit by bit, Sterne making the voracious reading public wait a year or so before the next two sections became available, and speaking about the aesthetics of this piece, what do you think about that title page font? It’s a bit obvious, I know, but in partial defense of the question (if not the font), the Phillies’ pitcher, Joe Blanton, having arrived in the National League from Oakland (where pitchers don’t hit) just two months ago, has now HOMERED to left, making the score of Game Four 6-2 Phillies after five (ah, numbers!), and I’m not sure if I have the magic to conjure sixteen new verse paragraphs about this game, even though I a) just picked up the transmission of this report in the fifth inning and b) won’t be able to file a report tomorrow (which now looks like the LAST game of this World Series) because I’ll be teaching a Creative Nonfiction class at San Diego Mesa College (more about that later). The home run, and the score, beg the question whether the extravagant claims offered up in this piece’s first segment (“the most important Series in our collective memory,” etc.) have any merit at all, and I am chagrined not to have realized that the power of the Sympathy Card (see Part Two of this report, viz Victorino and Manuel) COMBINED with the poetic power of Ron Silliman’s blog has created a sympathetic magic for the Phillies that would be hard to contest at any time, much less an environment like tonight’s, when I don’t really care any more about

criticizing the language poets . . . Joe Buck has redeemed himself again with a popular culture referent, mentioning the Who’s “Can’t Explain” (which I’ve been listening to, happily, over the last week while driving to work) in the same sentence as Jamie Moyer (who, it now turns out, had a severe stomach ailment last night, thus expanding the “Sympathy Card” beyond all known previous effect). It’s Sunday night, when I’d ordinarily be watching premium Cable TV programs like True Blood and Entourage and Dexter and Californication, but something’s keeping me here, on the mainstream media (FOX, for god’s sake), hoping beyond hope that the Devil-less Rays come back (two on in the top of the seventh), so I don’t have to completely reveal my poetics to fill out the template established just a few nights ago. It’s a little like the Elizabethan and early 17th century poets I’m teaching this week, who needed “patrons” to keep on writing their best work, and Iwamura (God damn Jap!) is NOT being that patron (you see how easy it is to slip into racism, Frank Rich’s column today implied that this disease was not really widespread, which caused me and, perhaps, some residents of western Pennsylvania to arch our eyebrows), and then BJ Upton, initials and all, makes the final out with runners on base in the seventh, making it more obvious that this particular transmission will be more in the nature of an elegy, funereal, like Milton’s “Lycidas,” which I’ll have to teach soon in my Brit Literature Survey Class . . . oh fuck, the Rays are just NOT going to make it, no doubt Republicans all, not the social or military legs of the three-legged chair, just the economic one, which probably isn’t going to suffer much from this Economic Crisis, the loose guayaberas worn by the arrogant locals of Naples, FL (seen in the coffee shops in those rare years when we could afford taking vacations) symptomatic of their utter disregard of the state of their waiters, and (by the way) why can’t a creative piece show the signs of its deconstruction, it worked for Ezra Pound . . . Oh well, it’s now October 29, I didn’t have to miss the possible end of the Series while teaching my Creative Nonfiction class Monday night, the game suspended . . . and then again . . . the interregnum, like the period of the Civil War between British monarchs, like a caesura, like the time when souls drift in limbo before being reincarnated, “How do you get off the wheel”? a drunk guy in the audience for Baba Ram Dass-Richard Alpert kept asking in 1973, Grant Balfour doesn’t know, he wipes his brow, stares at the heavens, takes a

deep breath, and delivers the first pitch of the bottom of the sixth, some 46 hours after the last out in the top half, and Geoff Jenkins, late of my fantasy baseball team, doubles to deep center, the crowd goes wild as Rollins bunts him over to third, I do like to see a team bunt, except for when it doesn’t work, as in the Angel-Red Sox series, but it shows respect for the game, sacrificing an out to move a runner into scoring position, as Obama, whose informercial just ended, will ask us all to sacrifice for the country, and I’m sorry, Iwamura, you have to catch that ball, that play has to be made in the World Series, but the Phillies get that rain-sloshed run on Monday night back almost immediately, Iwamura obviously not the player on the Rays who reads Ashbery and Creeley in his spare time, that would be one Fernando Perez, who almost never gets into the games – the fate of most bookworms, unable to get the girls by showing athletic prowess – but at least is on the roster of a World Series team, and I’ll wager that he’s the first such person who even knows who John Ashbery or Robert Creeley is, but I should know better by now about making assumptions, as a dedicated baseball fan and someone alive on the planet for over 55 years, that things can change sometimes, quickly, mysteriously, without reason, as Rocco Baldelli HOMERS, majestically, into the left field bleachers, and they might even go ahead, as the pitcher (staying in the game in a non-DH park) bunts a runner over to second with two outs, the Phillies lose Madsen and the afore-mentioned Asian player hits a ground ball up the middle which Utley captures and, while not being able to get Iwamura, does throw the runner out at home – no controversy there, he was out, and if the Phillies win this game four to three (having scored again in the bottom of the seventh on a clutch hit by Pedro Feliz, for whom I’m happy), the decision to send that runner might be the only source of controversy (at least in terms of strategy, the two-day delay in the middle of the game having already transported this Series into history), but we’ll see, sometime before two more prose stanzas get written (OH! BJ Upton! You’re going to have to live with hitting into a double play with one out, no on, in the eighth inning for the rest of your baseball career!) But about this formal device, Ron wrote in his blog today about Donna Stonecipher, who “demonstrates just how much power is available to the writer who trusts indeterminacy, who believes that things add up, but not to the zero sum game of

vulgar narrative.” I wonder if this narrative would qualify as “vulgar,” as I extend what I hope are premature congratulations to Ron and all the other poets of Pennsylvania, while Fernando Perez, the afore-mentioned reader of Creeley and Ashbery, actually GETS into the game and STEALS SECOND in the ninth, as the Tampa Bay Devil-less Rays get the tying run in scoring position in the ninth, can the tension get any greater, and OH! I thought that was a base hit but it had “too much hang time” and the Rays are down to their last out, Eric Hinske, added to the active roster prior to this Series shifting to Philadelphia because of Cliff Floyd’s torn labrum, who, in his only at-bat, shot a pinch-hit home run to center field, is the last hope for the Tampa Bay Rays, and at 6:59 PM Pacific Coast Time this World Series is over, the Phillies are World Series Champs, and I can move on to another piece, at another time, and I thank the Gods for at least letting me see so much genuine happiness, in the face of which who could be churlish?