The Game

1

"Baseball players aren't so square
They've got beards and stringy hair"

"The Sixties"

https://open.spotify.com/track/1Uhgw36mJ8HnPyVUMNdnIa?si=4420d00af8eb421c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiwIKZuTy_c

Do you know this song? It's from T-Bone Burnett's 1983 album "Proof Through the Night." He tried to make it as an artist before he broke through as a big time producer... I'd say the Counting Crows' debut was his breakthrough...remember when there used to be a buzz on a band, when you wondered who'd they'd sign with, when you'd go to the Whisky for the record company sponsored debut? I do. And I remember seeing Counting Crows but...

But, I bought T-Bone's solo debut, "Truth Decay," because by then we knew who he was and I'd purchased the Alpha Band record, which I was disappointed in, and if you were invested in an artist, you followed them through. Which led me to "Proof Through the Night" and "The Sixties"...you should listen to it, especially now, it's a time capsule of what once was, which is kind of funny, because at the time it was a reflection upon what had come before.

Baseball players were clean-cut. Music and dope and long hair was not for players, they were part of an American institution. And then they started wearing double-knits ("Eddie, Are You Kidding?"...if you don't get the reference, you've got something to look forward to in life) and doing cocaine and it turned out being rich and famous they were further over the line than the hoi polloi. And T-Bone captured this head-scratching change in this song.

Because by the eighties, everything was up for grabs. Baseball had been supplanted by football as America's Pastime. MTV made musical stars bigger than they'd ever been. Reagan legitimized greed and even Jerry Rubin became a stockbroker (I doubt today's kids even know his name, never mind Abbie Hoffman's...) And Steinbrenner resuscitated the Yankees and the Mets had another run and then we came to the hedonistic nineties and..

Baby boomers were still invested in baseball, the same way they're invested in the Beatles, they'd been there, done that.

2

Turn seventy and your life can become one big victory lap, revisiting your old haunts, reminiscing about past activities, stuck in the mire. You can be an aged act singing songs you wrote in your twenties to those maybe a step from the grave.

Or you can re-evaluate and try to push forward. Take risks, march towards new horizons.

Or you can get even deeper into what once was.

I was baseball-crazy in the early sixties. Could tell you every player, knew the stats from the baseball cards and the magazines...but somewhere along the line I lost my dedication. Started after I realized I was never going to play in the major leagues. Which as a kid you believe you can do. Before the aforementioned Beatles it was the heart's desire of nearly every young American male (before girls started playing in the Little League).

Records were broken by faceless players, at least to you, but the game soldiered on. And compromised its gravitas in the process. Pursued the NFL instead of walking its own way. Focusing on television and the bucks as opposed to the game.

Baseball was a daylight sport, to be played in the afternoon. We hated that the World Series started while we were still in school, but we caught the full games over the weekend and...we rushed home to catch the last few innings on TV during the week...hopefully the principal put the game on the PA before class ended.

That's how big baseball was.

It's not that big anymore.

It's kind of like music. Football is Taylor Swift. Actually, bigger. And then every league has its own following. Every sport has its own following, with community available on the internet, and baseball is just another sport.

I hate that they modernized the rules, but they had to, the games were becoming interminable. Which I thought about during last night's marathon...it would have been twice as long if they'd allowed the batter to keep stepping out of the box, the pitcher to take extra time on the mound. Now the game flows, it's comprehensible.

Other than for the relief pitchers.

3

This is one thing I can't get past. It's changed the character of the game. A complete game is a rarity, akin to a diamond certified album, something from the old days. You pitch your five innings and...they bring in endless relievers.

It's all about statistics. And the statistics say not to bunt, to go for the home run, but they also say that pitch count is everything and...

You bring in a reliever and often the game changes completely. This is not a one inning closer with a smoking fastball, and when you're fresh from the bullpen how's your control?

In many cases not good. So you walk people and the whole game changes.

But that's the new sport. And I enjoy going to Dodger Stadium, love the experience, because it's still one place where all races and economic classes mix. But I never watch at home. I don't have that much time. Or I'd rather dedicate my time elsewhere. And people tell me how they're watching and I say I'll do so in the old folks home (which maybe they're already living in, in their mind anyway).

But that does not mean I don't pay attention.

But that gets harder now that the paper doesn't print the standings.

So I knew the Dodgers were playing the Blue Jays. And I followed the initial games from afar, being many time zones away, but now I was back and...was I going to watch?

Baseball, unlike basketball, is never over. You can always come back from behind. And now with the endless relief pitching, who is dominating at first might be far behind in the later innings. So I watch the score and...

Stopping Netflix for Felice's bathroom break, I switched to the game and it was the eighth inning and it was tied and...

This I was into.

And needless did I know I would be into it for another three plus hours.

4

Like George Carlin said, baseball can go on forever!

Well, not anymore. They put a runner on second.

But not in the World Series!

And by now the Blue Jays were wise. They wouldn't let Ohtani hit. And the Dodgers weren't connecting at the plate, especially the bottom of the order.

As for the Jays...

I've always been an American League fan. I hated the Dodgers when I lived in Connecticut. Started to warm up in the days of Orel Hershiser and Kirk Gibson's pinch hit home run...

But that was 1988, nearly forty years ago. Can you believe it?

I certainly can't.

And in the passing time our country has completely changed, now it's the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots, and the haves possess dugout seats, and sit behind the plate, roped-off from the hoi polloi, and by time I tuned in, a number had already left, or never got there to begin with. FOR THE WORLD SERIES??

Tickets to the Series were a dream. Unattainable. To just be there. Now if you're rich enough you can do anything, and say you did. You don't need the same passion. But passion is everything.

So the innings played out, one by one. One nailbiter after another. The commentators creating nonexistent controversies... Like the umpire expert ultimately said, if the catcher has the ball, he can block the plate. Everybody knows that. The rules are baked into us from those days back when.

Inning after inning. Like the sixties. You'd wake up and find out a game on the west coast went twenty two innings. Wow, to be there!

Now eventually, by time the game ended, at 11 PM on the west coast, a good number of people had left. But if you believed, if you were hard core, you had to be there.

And you couldn't turn the TV off.

The thing about baseball is you manage yourself. I'm sitting there thinking...doesn't Dave Roberts know he's going to run out of pitchers? Is he so baked into the data that he's lost common sense?

And first the Blue Jays burned out the bench and then the Dodgers, pinch runners and pinch hitters didn't move the needle.

And then there was little base activity and it looked like NO ONE would ever score. We know, unlike Carlin, that a game eventually ends, but would this one?

I'd say the Jays had a bit more momentum. And our pitchers were not as good.

And pitching became everything.

And at this point, I'm a Dodger fan. Felice has abdicated, resigned, she can't get over them going to the White House. We all take our personal stands.

But the thing about the Dodgers is... It's L.A! Not like New York. It's not gritty, but airy. We are not so eager to cut our heroes down and keep them in the doghouse. Baseball retains some of its core elements here. November is too late for baseball in most of the country, but not in L.A. Used to be the season never started before April and the Series was the first week of October... The Boys of Summer played in the summer.

But not anymore. Now it's about the bucks.

That was the great thing about baseball. It was pure, based on the record... If you had the best in your league, you went to the World Series. Not anymore. Which sucks.

But it's getting colder in the nation and we're still playing this game, WE'RE STILL PLAYING THIS GAME!

Roberts brings in Clayton Kershaw... If he's retiring, how old am I? And I'm worried about control, especially with all those men on base, you don't want to walk someone in.

And then Roberts pulls him after he closes out the inning.

Which leaves us with the dregs, Will Klein, who even spent part of the year in the minors. A closer who's only good for a few pitches, an inning or maybe two...

But Klein turned out to be the Hanukkah pitcher... The lamp kept burning, long after they thought the fuel was gone.

But that's not real life. In real life... Will Klein has pitched so many innings, can go so long, he can do it.

And he did. With his smoking fastball and good control.

Which started to flag at the last minute, but he closed out the Blue Jays.

And then came Freddie Freeman.

5

These are men playing a boys' game. You realize this when you're older than they are. They're no longer heroes, just engines of profit (then again, I'm glad they get fat salaries, better they get remunerated than the deep pocket owners).

But the other thing is they're professionals. Which means if the ball is catchable, if the play is doable, they will succeed. Not always, not like back in the day, the fundamentals are not imbued as much as they used to be, but when your heart sinks when you hear the crack of the bat...you know there's a good chance it's covered.

But these guys still live in the locker room. It's a different ethos. A band of brothers based on jockeying for position. You fight on the field, but also off it, albeit psychologically.

But they're out there doing it. The cash is good, but the dream is not as rosy as we thought it was when we were little. What's it like to peak before you're forty?

And it's not like anybody is a national hero anymore. We're subjected to all your warts, all your faux pas. But still, you show up and play the game.

Meanwhile, the biggest star in the game is from Japan. That'll get your head twisting like Regan in "The Exorcist."

And you knew the Dodgers always had the chance of coming back, that's the beauty of playing in your own building.

But as time wore on you had to remind yourself, when your emotions and nerve-endings were shot, that this was not the final game, it was still early in the Series, and whoever won or lost...it made a difference, but it didn't mean everything.

And then the players themselves seemed to run out of gas. You started to wonder if anybody could hit the ball. Was it going to be a matter of waiting for one of the pitchers, the last pitcher, to wear out?

And Klein's speed started to wane, and he lost some of his accuracy too. At what point would this be determinative?

And the opposing pitcher, Little, had less time on the mound.

Nobody was scoring. Everybody was waiting for the big home run.

But it never came.

Until it did.

And then Dodger Stadium erupted. And I smiled. You had to. This was the joy of the game. As Bob Costas famously said, "sports are a metaphor for life," and it's the little victories that matter.

And they are little. With so much in the pipeline only diehards can remember award winners and champions.

But in the moment...

Actually, it was the team's emotions that were the spark, in reaction to Freddie's home run. After all, this was their workplace. They'd lived half the year for this, maybe their whole lives, this was a spontaneous release.

And you could feel it.

Will we feel it tonight, going forward?

Possibly, but this contest of wills that used to be seen in baseball is not as prevalent as it was previously. There's the mid-game pitching change that can alter the momentum. And everybody's swinging for the fences... They're not eking out runs, they come in blasts, in packs. And they did earlier in last night's game, but then the contest quieted down.

It was just like the old days.

And those days were best.


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