ar Game Tuesday night. Old Yankee Stadium (built in 1923) grudgingly said goodbye to the national spotlight. (Since the Yankees aren't having a very good year, it's unlikely they will get to the post-season - making this the last time "the nation" will be focused on The House That Ruth Built). Being a true Yankee-hater, I'm not shedding any Royal Blue tears over this...
Nonetheless, it was pretty awesome watching George Brett give the pre-game pep talk to the A.L. players, seeing Yogi Berra throw out the ceremonial first pitch - and, best of all, getting to see our boy, The Mexicutioner, take the mound with the game tied in the 11th.
Did I mention that the 9th inning began at the stroke of midnight - seriously. That's one reason I LOVE baseball - there are just so many odd things that happen - almost enough to turn a hardball atheist into a softball believer (whatever that means).
This is just one of my favorite examples: In 1961, on the last day of the season, Roger Maris broke Mickey Mantle's single-season home run record by hitting his 61st homer in his 161st game of the season.
(As an aside, after the 1998 season, a mathematician recognized a mathematical property BECAUSE OF the home run chase that year:
A mathematical property is named after Maris, along with Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire. Two numbers form a Maris-McGwire-Sosa pair if they are consecutive numbers such that when you add each number's digits to the digits of its prime factorization, they are equal. Engineer Mike Keith named this property after the sluggers because he noticed that the numbers 61 and 62 have this property, and McGwire and Sosa both hit home run number 62 in 1998, both passing the record of Maris, 61.)
Baseball is America in microcosm. Our history of race relations, immigration, labor vs The Man, popular culture and patriotism, wide open spaces...it's all in there.
Americans began playing baseball in the early 1800s, using local rules. But it wasn't until Cartwright formalized the modern rules of the game and formed a "league" (consisting of two teams) in 1846 that it started to become our "national pastime."
Think about it: A ballpark brings together total strangers. Since that first recorded game, baseball has blurred the social barriers of age and race and language and social status. It unites people in highly vocal rivalry (known as "heckling" and also referred to as a 2-party Democracy). It’s an urban game played on a wide open, grassy field. And: it is a game that's as much about the mind as it is the body. Whitman would be proud!
Just look at all the words and phrses we use every day that come from baseball: "In the ballpark" or "a ballpark estimate." "Batting a thousand." "Big league" and "bush league" (the latter has a whole new meaning since the Idiot-in Chief took over, eh?). The term "Charlie horse" was first used in association with baseball - and may have been coined by ballplayers. "Cover all your bases." The media threw him a "curve ball." "Way off base." "Rain check." "Pinch hit."
And then there's sex: "Getting to first base," "Getting to home" or "Striking out." "Switch hitter," "Pitcher" and "Catcher"...the lexicon goes on and on...as can a baseball game (or a blog entry)!
Seriously, though: a baseball game can, in theory, go on forever. There's no time limit and no limit put on the number of extra innings - adding to its "spiritual" or supernatural (outside the limits of time) quality. (A couple of double A teams hold the official record: the game began on Saturday, April 18, 1981 and continued through the night and into Easter morning before the league president was reached by phone and made them suspend the game.)
If you pay attention, watching a ballgame can truly be a zen-like experience. Many Americans have developed ADD and therefore think the game is too boring. But there is always some titillating match-up or strategy or sleight-of-hand going on...you just have to be aware.
Anyway, we're getting into the late innings here. The 15-inning, 5-hour mid-summer classic was a thing of beauty. The House That Ruth Built just wanted to keep that light shining on her as long as she could. Can't say that I blame the old gal.
All of this has just been a drawn-out way to give a shout-out to our boy, Joakim Soria, aka, "The Mexicutioner." He is the Royals closer and, just 24-years-old, is arguably the best at his position in baseball.
Me and Mortgage Partner thought we were in a tiny fan club of Soria-obsessed geeks. Then we saw the above illustration - which a company recently printed onto T-shirts. After pitching a flawless 11th inning in the All-Star game, it seems everyone knows him now...
...well, everyone except my friend, LT - self-proclaimed Royals fan who didn't even recognize Soria's name when I mentioned him earlier today! Oh well, let that be a lesson to each of us: we ALL need to pay a lot more attention than we do. Heck, MP had to tell me I was rooting for the wrong team one time!
