I Am Watching Baseball
I’m watching the Chicago White Sox play the Oakland Athletics. The game will decide the first series in the truncated, bastardized 2020 season. There are more teams in the postseason because there were fewer games in the regular season so it’s an excuse to play more games and also play them on TV in order to make money for billionaire owners that are egging on the deaths of hundreds of thousands. This game is a winner-take-all in a best-of-3 series. Each team has won one game; whichever team wins this game, takes all.
The play-by-play man and the color man in the booth are both firing on all cylinders. They toss a flurry of stats around in order to deflect from their deep-seated, pervasive malaise. Everything is tinged with a forlorn gratitude. “Thank you,” their tone of voice bleeds, “for this gift of baseball. The horseman of plague taps so many shoulders each day, and death herself is busy, but Jose Abreu just hit a ball that broke the sound barrier out to left field, the booth just told us, that… yes, that was his hardest hit ball of the season. He saved it for a great time too, this is, after all, a winner-take-all game. A lot of the teams have had an outbreak of plague. Men on second and third, one out.”
A lot of very good, very talented players had terrible seasons. Greedy owners will use those terrible seasons to steal money from them. When the contract negotiations begin, those greedy owners will put graphs and projections and statistics on the table - closer to the team’s agents than the player’s - and they will say, “Look, these are the comparable stats for other players and that means you should earn a comparable salary.” They won’t say, “The season… this season… look at it. Look at everything that went wrong. Look at every challenge we faced. I mean this seriously, it is a testament to the insane amount of resources we sucked from the rest of the world, most especially the poor and disenfranchised, in order to provide normalcy to the bourgeois class. I’m not sure if we should give you guys raises or if we should all be hung. Either way, this has been an accomplishment, for good or for ill, and your baseball performance during a season like this cannot be held against you, it is only a testament to your perseverance.”
They will not say that, they will say whatever it takes to hoard more money for themselves.
I’m beginning to believe this is some sort of grand experiment. Some test that can only play itself out with the participation of the entire world. Aren’t we all dissociating at least a little bit? I’m watching baseball. There are no fans, everyone knows. Because there are hundreds of thousands of dead, no one says. The broadcast has gone to commercial. Isn’t advertising what killed us? Psychological exploitation. Look at these idiots, look at us idiots, me idiots; I am watching baseball. There are no fans (because there are hundreds of thousands of dead). But that last part stays in parentheses. The question is: can all of humanity, gaslight all of humanity? The results so far are mixed. I’m watching baseball, instead of, I don’t know, fighting for survival? Fighting for the rights of others? Fighting, fighting fighting fighting… I am not fighting.
God damn that home run went far. That ball was rocked. After he hit, the commentators breathlessly report on the launch angle, the speed the ball left the bat, and the overall distance of the home run. These statistics duly confirm that the ball was indeed rocked.
I’m a Cubs fan, but not strictly. I like the White Sox. I love Chicago. Serengeti’s favorite actor is Dennehy. I love here. The Cubs should be playing right now, but the game was postponed due to the threat of inclement weather. The most likely cause is that, last night, the longest nine-inning game in postseason history was played and while milestones are milestones, that milestone is not a great milestone for TV folks, and that milestone was due in no small part to inclement weather so they would rather not make that mistake again. I am, of course, in Chicago. The weather is fine. The game will be played tomorrow.
Everything is the most important thing in the history of the United States every day but they are not the same thing, they change daily. 5 years ago, I wrote a bit that worked medium well. The gist was that a single scandal can take down a politician, but if you have a new scandal every day, no one can focus long enough to take you down. Obviously, that has now been confirmed as not a joke but a fact and somehow tapes of the President admitting responsibility for hundreds of thousands of needless, pointless, heartless deaths were nothing more than a 24-hour news cycle. The next scandal came the next 24-hours and somehow it was also the worst scandal in history and everything is the most important thing but we cannot focus long enough to take him down. How much should we blame ourselves? A considerable amount. Not the most, not 50/50, but I’d say 40/60 might be deserved. Damn, the Sox chased the starting pitcher quick. Out of the game after only 1 and 2/3rds. Bases loaded. MVP coming up to bat.
He’s the MVP but he’s more likely to fail than he is to succeed in this situation because in terms of hitting a baseball, you are always more likely to fail than succeed and I’m not trying to say that’s a metaphor for life but if you succeed more than you fail you are a serial killer.
And he grounds out.
It’s hard to grasp, and it’s a violent s’tori, but the truth is we are all dying for imaginary pieces of paper. It’s important not to think about this fact, in the same way that it’s important to never reach enlightenment. I did once. It sucks.
Ikkyu Sojun is my teacher.
The Sox pitcher is out, too, after only an inning and a third. He pitched well, he was absolutely dominant; he tweaked something, so he’s out. Bad luck. Is this a metaphor for something? Baseball is like that. Baseball is a sport that exists purely to provide metaphors. What the fuck is the Field of Dreams about! Worst part is that the pitcher is a young kid, new to the majors, rookie. Not just any kind, the kind that they make metaphors about! He’s literally a flame-throwing rookie! He tosses a 100 mph.
The weather’s bad now, maybe they were right to delay the game.
He throws 100 mph fastballs and he’s a lefty! Randy Johnson type shit! And if he injured his arm, he might require surgery, and when you have surgery, you don’t keep throwing 100 mph fastballs. In the majors, losing your fastball is more often than not losing your career. Will he have had his cup of coffee then wash out of the league? Maybe start playing in the independent leagues, maybe find his way to Japan, maybe Korea. Maybe he’ll have had an inflated ego since his childhood. When you’re born with an arm like that… people treat you well. Some out of admiration, some out of admiration for an appendage made of dollar signs. Maybe in some far-flung corner of the world, away from the influences that made him the person he is, he turns into the person he didn’t even know he wanted to be. Maybe he makes it back to the majors. Some symbolic stuff. That’s baseball.
Or maybe he flames out, fucks up, becomes the what-could’ve-been guy at the bar or the dealership or the meat counter or he’s a small town mascot or he’s… you’ve seen the movies. That is also symbolic! There is nothing not symbolic about baseball. What if you just have a short career? Learn to appreciate your success. What about a nice, but unremarkable career? Learn to accept your limitations, while at the same time taking pride in your accomplishments. What if you were an absolute star? Youth doesn’t last forever and eventually you’ll have to transition to life without the impetus that has driven you this far! Everything is symbolic!
All but one team in the majors had an outbreak of plague this year. I’m watching baseball. I’m watching a season they half-assed, with a half-ass plan, that half-worked-but-not-really, so rich people can make money.
And I’m doing nothing about it but watching.
