World Series 2008

World Series 2008 (Part I)

Joe Safdie

October 22 Some people think that the Tampa Bay - Philly World Series is a dud, a depressing climax to the baseball season, partly because neither team has much of a national following: the casual fan was pulling for Manny Ramirez to come back to Boston, which would, admittedly, have been compelling, but would also have brought an astronomically higher market share to Fox TV, and any diminished advertising dollars into their right wing coffers is surely a good thing. So I disagree: I think this is the most important World Series in our recent history, and not only because there’s a presidential campaign (“the most important in our recent history”) winding down at the same time. Let’s get all the trivial connections that might be made in such a piece out of the way – then we can return to what’s going on “between the lines” (how nice it would be to do lines again). A headline in today’s New York Times said Pennsylvania was still in play, even though most polls give Obama a double-digit lead. This might be wishful thinking from the McCain campaign about “the Bradley effect,” the belief that many white people in America, especially the ones in southwest PA, clinging to guns and religion, are still racists and will never vote for a black man no matter what they tell the polls. “But this year, the competing teams both feature African American stars” says the Los Angeles Times sports section. There’s no doubt that Tampa Bay is a Republican stronghold: we used to vacation in Naples, a Gulf Coast resort town south of Tampa, which had (perhaps still has) the highest ratio of registered Republicans in the nation. An AP poll came out today and said the race was almost even. And now McCain, interviewed on NBC, says “Down in money, down in polls . . . we’ve got them right where we want them.” But I disagree (as Utley hits a two-run home run in the first). I’m more in line with Roger D. Hodge, writing in Harper’s: “an eloquent, charismatic, intelligent Democratic candidate was locked in a statistical tie with a doddering old hack whose primary argument for his claim to the most powerful office on earth is that he was shot down over Vietnam and tortured for five years. If the Democratic Party loses this election, it should forever concede the presidency.” But we’ll find out in twelve days; meanwhile, three ground balls to the right side and the Rays are out in the first. I wasn’t really good in baseball as a kid, but I played until high school, and have written about it a bit. Fuck: the Phillies load the bases in the second. I’m not exactly for the Rays – I’m

neutral – but Ron Silliman lives in Philadelphia, and lately I haven’t liked a lot of what Ron’s said about poetry, so I’m leaning towards the Rays, even though they did exorcise the word “Devil” from their name last year. Oww! Upton throws Victorino out at the plate and the Phillies don’t score in the second. Since no one is reading this for what happened during the game (although live blogs have their place in today’s world), I’ll quickly summarize that the third inning saw a chance for the Rays to break through, but Upton hit into a double play with the bases loaded. Meanwhile, in the top of the fourth, the Phillie leadoff hitter bloops a base hit: Kazmir, the interestingly named Tampa Bay pitcher (Shazam!), can’t keep getting into trouble like this and survive, especially when Pedro Feliz (who started the afore-mentioned double play and who is my favorite player in this World Series, having played so many years for “my team,” the San Francisco Giants) singles solidly into center (note the alliteration). Second and third, less than two out, the most dangerous situation for any team, as I learned from my childhood reading of the “Bronc Burnett” young fiction series, a little like the Hardy Boys if they were members of a baseball team (I wonder if anyone knows what I’m talking about), as the Phillies score again on a ground ball. I missed Carl Crawford’s home run because I was filling the humidifier with water: it’s the Santa Ana winds in Southern California, and my wife’s skin reacts badly to the dry air, if not quite as badly as Charles Manson, the most famous personage identified with the Santa Anas through Joan Didion’s great piece in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (note: look up that title). Another “local angle” to this World Series is that Cole Hamels, the Phillies’ pitcher, went to high school in northern San Diego county, so what, we all went to high school somewhere. Are we the same people now as we were then? I disagree. Joe Buck says that the Tampa Bay manager, Joe Maddon, quotes from a lot of different people along the spectrum, including Alan Greenspan – being a sports announcer, he obviously doesn’t realize that nobody quotes Alan Greenspan anymore, even his wife, Andrea Mitchell – scratch that, especially his wife, Andrea Mitchell. In fact, Ayn Rand is the last person one would turn to in an economic crisis like the one we’re in: it’s doubtful that any such figure could have anything to say to us in this scary but fertile time, an alchemist’s potion, when establishment figures like the Boston Red Sox are losing face and we might elect a black

man to be President of the United States: just look at the teams in this World Series, whom nobody expected to be here. The change we need. “Facing seemingly limited options for getting to an Electoral College majority, John McCain’s path to victory likely runs through Pennsylvania, a state that no Republican presidential candidate has won in two decades, a state in which he trails in the polls by a wide margin and a state where in the past year more than a half-million new Democrats have been added to the voter registration rolls. It’s an unenviable position to be in, except for one thing: Nearly everyone in a position to know thinks the race for Pennsylvania’s 21 electoral votes is considerably tighter than what recent polls reveal.” I disagree (see the Hodge quote at the beginning of this piece): I predict a renaissance of intelligence in these States – like Walt, I’m recovering my faith in democratic vistas. The Rays just scored again in the bottom of the fifth, and it’s now only a three-two lead. Kazmir out: Howell in. Two outs, top of the seventh, the Phillies threatening again with a runner on third, Burrell up. More cowbell! Howell walks Burrell and leaves, Grant Balfour strides in from the pen and strikes that fucker out, excuse me, it’s time for “God Bless America,” but Tampa Bay refuses to get closer, still three-two going into the eighth, but that’s OK, because I’ve finally looked up the Didion essay, and I was wrong – the Santa Ana piece didn’t mention Manson, that was in another essay called “The White Album.” What she said: “There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon, some unnatural stillness, some tension. What it means is that tonight a Santa Ana will begin to blow, a hot wind from the northeast whining down through the Cajon and San Gorgonio Passes, blowing up sand storms out along Route 66, drying the hills and the nerves to flash point. For a few days now we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night. I have neither heard nor read that a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too. We know it because we feel it. The baby frets. The maid sulks. I rekindle a waning argument with the telephone company, then cut my losses and lie down, given over to whatever it is in the air. To live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior.” (Sigh). Obviously nothing I write here will match that dark, impressionistic brilliance that Didion and DeLillo, among the writers I most revere, have mined, how can a piece

about baseball (nice play in the outfield to close the top of the eighth!) ever hope to match that sort of serious examination of American culture, I’ll have to take solace in the aesthetic theory that the subject matter of the piece is immaterial compared to how it’s arranged, which is finally not so different from Pope’s “What oft was thought, but ne’er no well expressed,” but lines of poetry pale next to the news that my old friend and great poet Duncan McNaughton is seriously ill, the Rays lose and I halt this piece for now . . .