I’ve been a baseball fan ever since the days when Boston had two major league teams, the Braves and the Red Sox. As a matter of fact, I hustled peanuts and Cokes and ushered at both Fenway Park and Braves Field, and I still have an autograph book with the signatures of Boo Ferris and Tex Hughson and Whitey Wietelman. You never heard of them? Ah, well.
I was watching TV the Night of the Great Comebacks. By now everybody knows that the Tampa Bay Rays were down to the Yankees 7-0 with only six outs separating them from extinction, and, the Red Sox had the champagne ready, with closer Papelbon sitting on a 3-2 lead over Baltimore with two outs in the ninth inning.
You know what happened next, but you may not know that someone has calculated the odds of the Rays and the Orioles pulling both games out at 1 in 278 million. In the only game where “it ain’t over till it’s over,” the only game without a clock to end the contest, a miracle happened – twice, less than an hour apart.
The broadcasters and the sportswriters had a field day. But no one, not even the best of them, could capture the drama of last Wednesday night. It was one of those moments that you can appreciate only from a distance. They’ll still be talking about that night 20, 30 years from now.
So now it’s on with the playoffs, which seem destined to end just before the Super Bowl. There are eight teams still alive, which seems six too many to me. Finishing atop the league standings after 162 games ought to qualify a team for the World Series. But of course baseball is not the only offender here. All sports extend their playoffs, some to the point where it is possible for a team with a losing record to qualify for the post-season.
But we watch the games, so we can’t complain too much. And there is, occasionally, a brilliant double play or an exciting suicide squeeze or a sensational catch in the outfield. Baseball played by the best professionals is a beautiful sport to behold.
The extras are another matter. Heading the list of my pet peeves are the renditions of the national anthem. “Oh say, can you see,” the singer begins, splitting the word “see” into three notes. “See” is not a three-syllable word. God Bless America is more of the same, with the “love” in “land that I love” embellished beyond recognition. Three syllables seems to be standard, but I have heard four.
At one recent sporting event, management decided to replace the live singer with the Kate Smith recording of God Bless America. I wanted to stand up and cheer.
Let us not leave the subject of baseball without a moment’s silence in honor of the just-deposed Red Sox manager, Terry Francona. Life is unfair. Francona wasn’t the one who decided to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for the non-performers, but he will take the blame, because that’s the way the system works.
Now Red Sox Nation is all abuzz with speculation about the new manager. The possibilties include all unemployed managers, but I have my own candidate. He has never been a Big League manager, but I think he has the perfect temperament for the job, and he has obvious public relations skills. My choice for Manager of the Red Sox: Brad Pitt.
