(Once More) Unto the Breach

Ok, so I'll grant that Yankee Stadium at least deserves another blog post before its demolished, especially considering that two dyed-in-the-wool Sox fans have spoken eloquently in its defense.

Here's an excerpt of what my friend Maggie wrote:

"am i the only person who is angry and dumbfounded with the closing of yankee stadium? WHY ARE THEY CLOSING THEIR DOORS???? last night i felt a lump in my throat watching the festivities, listening to yogi and whitey ford, watching the clips -- even seeing bernie williams made me teary. that is sacred ground, and the yankees should play there forever. no one should have wanted to close its doors, but since some people are truly evil and actually wanted to for eventual financial gain, they shouldn't have had the chance -- it should be a historical site, protected by the national government.

when i am forced to have a conversation with a yankee fan, the way i get beyond my knee jerk distaste for them is by talking about not what makes us different (NYY vs BOS) but what makes us the same. what on earth could that be, you ask? our LOVE OF BASEBALL. and one of the most beautiful parts of baseball is its long and rich history...a history packed full of memories and moments that have been passed down for more than a century.

i hate the yankees more than anyone, and yet i am so so so sad they are leaving such a precious place. there aren't that many physical locations in the world where so much history has taken place...

and why didn't yankee fans protest this like they would in boston if they tried to tear down fenway park? didn't they all freak out when they renovated it in the '70s? you'd think this would bring even more criticism. us new yorkers are paying $70M of our tax dollars for this project. i feel so dirty to be involved.

i just think this is a crime. last night felt like a televised execution to me.

on the plus side, how cool would it be if the yankees never won another world series again after the move? long live The Curse Of The New Stadium!"

And my friend Marc wrote (in comments to yesterday's post)

"I have to say...it's a real shame for the place to go. Damn the infinite Sinatra loop, but that's a Yankee fan thing, not a Yankee Stadium thing. Same for the beer tosses; same for the asshole fans. You'll see: all that crap will follow the team across the street, but the stadium and its history will not. The history, the ghosts, the center of baseball's true capitol...that stuff is that stadium; it is in itself the closest connection to its past. Without all of that mystique, there would be no significance to that place; and if you can appreciate what has transpired there, the great well of baseball drama and lore that has sprung from that field, then you should mourn its demise at least somewhat. It's a symbol of baseball's great past, the site of the great blossoming in baseball's history, and it's an American landmark. That stadium served to represent so much about The Game, and that city, and none of it will be quite the same without it."

And that's two Sox fans.

Which makes Maggie's question- "why didn't yankee fans protest this like they would in boston if they tried to tear down fenway park?"- all the more salient.

Exactly. These are yankees fans we're talking about. i just googled 'save yankee stadium', and there's very little evidence of any public support. remember all those 'save fenway park' bumper stickers in the early'00s, and the public outcry? i've never noticed anything at all like that here. i don't remember anyone here saying the yankees shouldn't move. i've never seen one t shirt or bumper sticker or anything that indicates there's any public sentiment against moving.

this is entirely fitting with the yankees character; they know that they'll make more money in a new stadium, so the fans are in favor of it- that's what they care about. For the Yankees, 'meaning' is just 'money' spelled wrong.

Now, whether the park itself should be protected as a landmark, as Maggie suggests, upon the team moving out is a distinct question from whether the team should move out at all. Apparently, the building itself doesn't get protected landmark status due to the consensus that the renovations in the 70's so dramatically altered the recognizable features that it's virtually not the same park anymore. City agencies aren't even giving the issue a public hearing; if the public was clamoring that this was outrageous, I'm sure they would.

But this prompts the question as to what extent the stadium is 'owned' by the public, specifically Yankees fans, such that the fate of the park should be determined by such dubious entities as public sentiment or rancor, or whether the right thing to do would have to be independently discerned and executed independently of their desires. Perhaps Yankees fans, in their insatiable quest for escalating payrolls and third place finishes, are happy to molt their old stadium as befitting the snakes they are. (zing.) Or perhaps they should be saved from themselves; Marc is certainly right that they'll take their jerkiness with them to the new stadium, and aren't likely to change of their own accord. Perhaps History belongs not just to Yankee fans but to everyone, in which case the Yankees are being particularly selfish in hording it for themselves. Perhaps its not 'their' park at all. Why should they be exclusively proprietary over history? Why shouldn't Sox fans get to complain; it's our history, too, even it's lousy history.

The points about a common baseball history are well taken; even Joe Dimaggio counts as 'our' history, as Baseball, aka The Game, is a higher unity that transcends even sox/yankees division. And so the provincial history of the Bronx borough is lower in the hierarchy of Forms than is History, which in turn must defer to Baseball, aka The Game, as the ultimate in meaningful ideals which subsumes them all. And it would be just like the Yankees to think they're bigger than The Game, and to abandon History for the sake of a $250 million payroll and a 4th place finish (as naturally payroll and standings are inversely related, I induce.) So I can admit to feeling the twinge in the demolishing of even the hated Yankee Stadium, insofar as it is subsumed by its place in the Game, and I can even happily continue to hate the Yankees for thinking its theirs to destroy, and for Yankees fans for failing to stick up for the larger issues at stake, and place party, or team, over country, or sport.

On the other hand, its just so in character; the evil empire needs a new Death Star. How can we take that away from them? They wouldn't 'be' the Yankees if they couldn't do whatever they possibly could to be as corporate and tramply as possible.

Imagine: It would be funny if they were penalized for their success; suppose that because so much history took place there, they became prohibited from ever moving out, and in another 100 years when every other stadium figures out how to compress seats like microchips and have 1 million capacity stadiums, and the yankees have a fraction of that and become the lowest payroll team as they'd still be restricted to a 20th century analog stadium, and then they'd become the scrappy low payroll underdogs who'd we be forced to cheer for because of their pluck and gritty hard nosed play...

What a strange future that'd be. Maybe this is for the best.

Logical Fallacy of the Week: Says Me

It won't be until the next generation of Sox fans that the Schopenhauerian pessimism and anxiety that comprised the Sox fan identity before '04 will really be cured.

But as a positive, self-affirming, Stuart Smalley step in the here and now, to combat the scars, I'm simply going to assert that the Sox will win the division, sweep Chicago in the ALDS, beat Anaheim in 6 in the ALCS, and then win another world series title against whoever that quadruple A league throws to us lions.

And I'm going to go all zealot on this one. I'm going to say providing evidence and argument in favor of this conclusion is to concede and sew seeds of secular humanist doubt, and that real faith is just saying something and deciding it's true. Yup, I'm committing the fallacy of assertion here- that I say it, I say, is an argument for its truth.

Of course there are reasons for doubt. The Sox only scored 3 runs against Tampa's, what, number 4 starter? The pen's put the 'argh' in 'inconsistent' all year, and obviously the coin has landed heads for Anaheim in our recent head to head.

But I won't put my critical period pre-rings pre- everyday sellout psychology as a basis for worrying about the future; I'll emphasize Lester's nastiness, his season high 9 ks, his beautiful sequences, like getting a called strike two on a backdoor curve in the 2nd to Navarro, and then dropping the slider in the inside dirt, inducing a meager half swing that died and went to limbo, or a fastball for a called strike on the inside corner to Baldelli leading off the 5th, followed by a cutter further in on the hands, off the plate and on Baldelli, chopping him down as he hacked, and then freezing Rhode Island's Own on a paint job, 93 mph outside corner at the knees.

Yeah, all that instead of the 1-0 fastball Lester grooved to Pena with 2 on and 1 out, as the tying run in the 6th, that Pena just got under and skied to center, or that Perez' scorcher to lead off the 8th was caught at short, that Zobrist missed a dong by about the length of the word 'dong' two batters later, and that Pena's double that knocked Lester out of the game bounced into the stands, saving a run, or that Francona doesn't trust Okacarmen in tight spots and had Lester start the 8th already having thrown 105 pitches, ultimately tossing 119 before going to Papelbon.

No, all that con stuff is for ol' timey Sox fans, and that pro and con stuff in general is for rational people. Funk dat. I don't care about bases of inferences, only bases and outs. Sox all the way. Woo. I believe it, therefore its true.

So there.

Daily Equivocation; Giles is a Family Guy

Last week, San Diego outfielder Brian Giles rejected a trade to the Sox after being claimed on waivers, citing his desire to stay near his family.

Speaking of families, the book to which I contributed a chapter- Family Guy and Philosophy, published last year- has finally added the 'see inside this book' feature on amazon dot com. So now you can see inside this book, and see my name! (you can also see it here!)

As an academic, I'm pretty sure this is the closest I'm going to get to seeing my name in lights, after all.

(Can you tell I wasn't able to watch the Sox games this weekend? No? Crap.)

Occam's Razor- Giambi's Slump Not Due To, But Despite, Mustache

I have to admit it. There was one thing about the Yankees I could not bring myself to hate, not in a million cliches.

Jason Giambi's mustache.

Even when Giambi's weak glove rode the bench, that 'stache could never take a day off. It was business all over. All the time.

But now, alas, it's gone. Giambi, in a bit of superstition, has shaved off that gruff, solid 'stache, and gone back to his plain old thong-wearing self.
As a philosopher, I have a special affection for mustaches. Here's me around two years ago, being all wisdomy, broody and mysterious-looking at a Barnes N Noble cafe, where all the world's serious thinking gets done.
Notice how in touch with the profound truths of the universe I am? Can't you tell I'm cogitating nature's most abstract secrets?

And here's me, sans 'stache, more recently, a normal, not especially philosophical regular guy, still in front of books, but now less sure he comprehends them, and mostly thinking about which dry cleaner to go to.

I didn't treat my mustache with the respect it deserved, and now it's gone. And now I have even more reason to hope Giambi's slump continues; he lost faith in the power of the mustache, and the cosmos should let him know this is no small transgression, as it did with me.

I'm sad now. I'll leave you with two great philosopher mustaches- Nietzsche and a young Bertrand Russell.


And a ballplayer.

Manny Existing Manny

Time doesn't flow the same way for all parties concerned. Fans are fans for life. Businessmen have careers that span generations. But ballplayers can only be ballplayers for a very short period of time.

After the age of 32, every second of every day sees a ballplayer dwindle and decay, and become less and less himself. Not so for the other parties. Businessmen perhaps become more savvy in middle age. Fans become more experienced, have longer memories. They grow into their skins, develop their identities over the years.

Not ballplayers. They just get shittier and shittier until they can't be ballplayers anymore, at an age where other professions are just getting started. And then there's a whole lot of life left.

They can't all go into broadcasting; too many already do.

Some ballplayers are lucky and develop other careers, and form new identities for themselves. Others live off their name, selling white wall tires or family friendly restaurants.

But every player knows their window is short, their skills are ephemeral, and what and who they are will die long before they do.

Manny may or may not know, believe, or agree with any of this. But it's in the back of my mind anytime I feel the urge to blame a player for wanting to be paid whatever he can get for the superhero talents he knows aren't long for this world, before he turns into Clark Kent forever. And it's in the back of my mind when I try to figure out who to side with in a dispute- the rare baseball talent who we pay to see, and whose life expectancy is just about up, or the front office business men, who I don't pay to see, and who can go on being front office business men for 50 more years (in Theo's case, at least), or me, who will keep on watching the games and going about my business.

That's not to say that Manny is absolved; by all accounts, Manny was a Grade A asshole. I'm not denying that. But I don't doubt that there's at least a half-truth in one of Manny's statements, because the Front Office probably did make Nomar and Pedro and Manny all feel one particular way, and whether it was intentional or not is immaterial. I suspect they were all made to feel that they no longer were who they had always thought they were.

Nobody wants to feel replaceable. Interchangeable. Everybody wants to feel unique. I bet guys like Pedro, Nomar and Manny have spent a good part of their lives feeling unique, and deservedly so, because they have been blessed with talent that millions of people would do unspeakable things for. Who they were, why they were loved, why they were the gods of Yawkey Way, was to be found in the arm, the legs, the hands, and the subtle harmonies only they could play.

Of course, superstars age, their skills wither. But to them, from their own point of view, they're still the same unique divinity they've always been, ever since that first scout raved about their tools or wheels or gun at their 13th birthday. But that age of 32 or so rolls around, and that OPS or ERA starts to regress to the mean, and suddenly, these guys are one thing they've never been. Replaceable. They can be substituted; after their prime, the front office can find someone else to put up those same numbers they will. The person goes, the numbers stay the same. Oh right. And the salary shrinks. Profits go up.

That's fine, that's business. But I don't blame the players for wanting "respect", or "mental peace", as Manny put it, which they always say they want instead of money, though of course they want the money. But they don't even need to be shrewd in their investments with the money they already have in order to stay rich for life. No, the money is a symbol. A symbol of being desired. A symbol of being that guy that everyone wants, and pays, to see. That's respect to them- respecting them as The Man they are. The money says that they're wanted, to a quantifiable degree that much more than everyone else. What they want is to still be treated like the stars they were, not thrown out and replaced for an cheaper model. Manny will have mental peace when he's desired the way Manny Ramirez should be desired. And Manny's now getting that. The Dodgers are raving about the Hall of Fame slugger they acquired. Manny can strut into Joe Torre's locker room and Be what he's always Been: Manny.

You can call it 'ego', and it probably is. But the sense of 'self' applies as much as 'conceit'. This is all they've been, this is all they know. All that lies ahead is decay and death. Yes, for all of us too, unfortunately- you heard it here first- but the rest of us still have a narrative, and not just the epilogue that a former ballplayer has. Sure, people will always want their autograph, and they'll always eat for free in the local joints, but any player will tell you, it's not the same. They're never really themselves ever again.

Do you know what the moral of Field of Dreams is? Heaven is where you get to be yourself. (spoiler alert.) Shoeless Joe gets to be a ballplayer again. Doc Graham gets his the one major league plate appearance, the one he should have had. And then, because he really was a doctor, not a ballplayer ('Son, if I'd never gotten to be a doctor, that would have been a tragedy'), he gets to be that again too. Terrence Mann, after years of public silence, gets to be a writer again- he promises to give a full account of what it's like out in the corn field. Ray Kinsella and his estranged father get to be an American Boy and his Dad, by having a game of catch.

But that's Hollywood. Ballplayers can never again be themselves. When Manny learned that he wasn't going to get the 4 year $100 million dollar contract extension that the great Manny Ramirez deserved, he shut down. Undoubtedly, Manny's response was immature and hurtful to those that knew him, and he let his teammates down, and he disappointed fans who cheered for him and paid to see him be himself.

But nonetheless, I find it hard to be mad at Manny. I love baseball, and I know The Game and The Team are bigger than Manny, and Manny didn't do right by The Game, or The Team. I don't condone his actions, but The Game and The Team are idealizations, not real people. They don't have to stare death in the face before they reach middle age. They go on. Ideals are forever, Plato taught us.

Yes, Manny needs to 'grow up.' He should learn to leave an identity behind, and learn to face one reality that he agreed to- his contract to finish out this year- and one he didn't- that who we are must change. He's blameworthy for the first, but not the second, of course. And I can't help suspect that behind the inflammatory statements and the knees and the jogging to first and the wanting his option to be picked up when the team has no reason to do so because he's a Hall of Famer worth $20 million which everyone should recognize NOW, dammit, is the idea that the only self Manny has ever known is dissolving, and that Manny won't be being Manny for very much longer.

Free to Exist You and Me

"David Ortiz can’t just be. He has to be David Ortiz," suggests the Herald's Rob Bradford. I am slightly amused that we sort of know what he means, despite it appearing that he is contrasting David Ortiz with existence, which doesn't really make sense.

It's a bit Platonic, Bradford's statement, encoding, as it does, the difference between mere existence and a higher plane, giving a hint of Plato's contrast of the actual with the Ideal.

For on the one hand, we have David Ortiz, existent. Thing in the universe. Occupant of a portion of space-time. Detectable with the senses. On the other hand, we have David Ortiz, David Ortiz. Great thing. Ideal Designated Hitter. Big Papi. Team Leader. Object of incredulity and awe.

So really, there's no pressure on Big Papi at all. All David Ortiz has to do during the pennant race is not exist, but transcend existence into the realm where his true self -David Ortiz- lies; that is, for Bradford, it's not enough simply that David Ortiz- that thing that answers to the name 'David Ortiz'- exists, but that the David Ortiz that exists also exists as David Ortiz.

What I love best about philosophy is the clarity it affords.

That Old Familiar Feeling; Sox Comeback Falls Short, Lose to Yanks 2-1

Entering the 9th down 2-0 to the Yankees, against a Hall of Fame closer, scoring 1 and loading the bases with NOBODY out and stranding them there?

Now that's a classic Red Sox loss. And by 'classic', I mean a good ol' fashioned pre-2004 rip-your-heart-out-edge-of-total-victory archetypal Red Sox catastrophe.

I forgot what that felt like.

These days, it's all take the long view this, we'll come around come October that.

But this was a throwback, even without the old uni's. It has a familiar trajectory. The Sox are outplayed. 2nd best seems assured. The upcoming loss is accepted with a numb melancholy. But then a big hit, an opponent stumbles, and the numbness starts to wane. Hope emerges. Another hit. Hope becomes expectation. And just when the Sox couldn't be better positioned to win, when miraculous victory becomes not just possible but probable, they collapse, and fail.

I would have been fine, taking the long view, waiting for October, losing 2-0 on a random July afternoon. You can't expect to win 4 straight in the Bronx. But that's post- "Queer Eye" Red Sox talking. That's the 'of course we'll win 3 in a row down 3-1 in the ALCS- We're the Sox!' But they forfeited the long view by fighting back. They trigger all those old memories of being One Strike Away, of coming so close, just to fall short. They played the Red Sox. Classic Cubs is losing 2-0. Classic Sox is doing just what they did; coming back, having the bases loaded and NOBODY out, with the tieing run on 3rd, and not scoring. 3 times. To lose. To the Yankees.

This being a classic Red Sox loss, it triggered that long dormant bitter and reactionary psychology that I thought had been cured with victory and Zoloft. Instead of the ol' 'you fail 7 out of 10 times in this game and you're great' line, or falling back on lame non-explanatory cliches like 'you can't expect to win 4 straight in the Bronx', I'm screaming for Crisp's head, wanting to bench Varitek and cut Lugo.

Because, as everybodywho's ever seen baseball before knows, ANYBODY would be better than those guys. ANYBODY.

That's classic Sox talking. That's calling up WEEI and saying 'trade him for a bucket of balls'. That's the anger and the depression and the desperation, the losers' complex. That's not the attitude of a team that is just out of the division lead despite lacking their most powerful hitter for over a month, or the attitude of dropping a game on the road with the number 5 starter matched up against the opponent's ace.

Man, I haven't screamed that someone should be cut since, oh i don't know, Chad Fox or Rudy Seanez. Or Curtis Leskanic the shirtless mechanic.

I even hate it when I lose to the Yankees in a video game. I guess I'm just not totally over them yet. Minds aren't that malleable. Scars don't always heal. You can forget them, but they're there. Sometimes it takes until the next generation. Scars aren't heritable, I don't think.

Unless, of course, these are your father's Red Sox.

Lord of the Orange Groves

Wade Boggs would be rolling over in his grave.

If he were dead.

How else to express the betrayal by his beloved Tampa Bay Famous Original Rays?

In first place. Widening their lead, even. They're spitting on Bogg's legacy. And Fred McGriff's. And Brent Abernathy's. How could they?

People love an underdog. Speak truth to power. The meek shall inherit something or other.

I used to tease a friend of mine who would always root for the underdog by saying he had to switch allegiances with every lead change.

Nietzsche saw 'master morality' as the identification of strength and goodness; virility and virtue are one. Slave morality is the inverse; power is oppression and subjugation. To automatically root for the underdog is to identify weakness with goodness. It's a sort of slave morality.

Tampa's a good team. They are strong. James Shields has great 12-1 movement on his fastball (tailing back into a righthanded hitter.) Javier Lopez should not have thrown a fastball strike to the righthanded Gomes on an 0-2 count with the sacks full of Rays, but they earned it. The Sox are no longer the underdog. That aspect of the narrative has played out.

What we have here is a rivalry. When Gerald Williams charged Pedro, I was indignant. How dare a commoner? I took umbrage. That was a peasant revolt. He should have known his role. But now, well, the 3rd estate is moving up in the world. The Rays are contenders.

Sox fans who were in it for the underdog story, the plucky rag tag fighters against the Evil Empire, might have a hard time making the transition to playing the bully, the establishment, the $140 million juggernaut, squashing the upstart Rays and their impossible dream.

Not me. Last I checked, the point was winning. That master/slave thing is for losers anyway.

Pink Hat and Tails

Alright, fine. The pink hat thing.

This will require some credentials and caveats before I talk about it. I went to my first game in April of '86, cried when Buckner. I went to Rich Gedman All-American Baseball Camp for half a dozen summers, where I met Roger Clemens and Ellis Burks and Mike Greenwell, and even saw Bob Stanley throw a ball at Mark Fidrych's moving truck. He missed. Many years later, I attended Game 7, at Yankee Stadium, of the 2003 ALCS- That's right, The Grady Game- and lived to tell about it.

The moral of the story is I'm a suffering Sox fan (or was, now that we can play a ring toss game) as much as anybody my age, in contrast to, apparently, a 'pink-hat.'

Now, a caveat. I don't live in Boston anymore; Brooklyn, in fact, so I don't make it to Fenway all that often (also, as a philosopher, a ticket is about a year's salary), and I don't see much of the Kenmore rabble, so I haven't had the visceral experience of walking amongst, and feeling superior to or annoyed by, the pink hats. In fact, that expression, starting with the definite article (as opposed to a definite article?), is mostly foreign to me.

Another caveat. Not having NESN, I watch the games streaming from mlb.tv. So rather than the crisp, clean, shahp images of an HD broadcast, I get the wonders of a pixely Beckett and a blurry Manny, jumping discretely from stance to followthrough, leaving the swing merely implied, a subtle bit of subtext.

Basically, these third-world conditions have made me grateful, grateful I tell you, for whatever I can get.

So, that being said, I'm just not bothered by the pink hat thing.

But what's an opinion without a philosophical rationalization?

Notwithstanding the anachronism or meter, Its not 'take me out to the ballgame, take me to see how much the off-camera fielders cheat towards the opposite field when the hitters are behind in the count', its, well, 'take me out with (to?) the crowd'.

For many people, being a sports fan is about identification with others; feeling what the players feels, oohing and ahhing with the crowd, bonding over beers, chanting 'Yankees suck' (a metaphysical proposition, not a physical one, given their talent in previous years.) For Sox fans in particular, its about going through the drama, acting out that too familiar narrative of the team, living and dying with every pitch when none of them are even yours, physiologically speaking.

Religion is about collective bonding too; in fact, etymologically (yeah, i went there) 'religion' is related to 'ligament' or 'ligature', all of which means 'to tie together'; religion is about supernatural bonds. (perhaps a nickname for HGH Barry.) People who pray together stay together, I'm told, and this works for Sox fans as much as anybody. Maybe more.

Identifying with a collective, at least momentarily, involves taking on the traits of those others with whom you identify, blurring individuality, and allowing one, for example, to take pride in the accomplishments of others (as when I take pride in Kevin Youkilis, Gabe Kapler, and a Mr. Sandy Koufax.)

But what's the point of the group if you don't get to feel special? So one has to earn membership; initiation rites are as old as groups. For Sox fans, the initiation is suffering (as with fraternities and monasteries.) If not for this, and just anybody can get in, one risks taking on, through metaphysical osmosis, traits of those objectionable shouldn't-be members.

So to keep people out, groups define themselves in opposition to an Other which doesn't share their values or stories.

In the past, the suffering and oppressed Sox were contrasted with the tyrannical Yankees. Now that they actually suck, and we've whooped 'em good, Sox fans, as the article puts it, are having an identity crisis. Not willing to give up their identity as sufferers, they seek a new Other to define themselves in contrast to, now that vis-a-vis the Yankees, we are, at least temporarily, the ass whoopers, not the ass whoopees. (My old school Sox pessimism dies hard.)

So the pink hats are taken symbolically (whether any particular person who owns a pink hat is a 'real fan' or not is ignored- this is symbolism we're talking about), as playing the role of the Other, the fairweather fan who doesn't suffer through the storms and freezes and the being left out in the woods for a week to have a vision quest so that the 'real' Sox fans, who aren't yet comfortable in their new role as ass kickers (something with which I'm quite comfortable, I should point out. Also, I'm real- and as a philosopher, I'm an expert in existence), can maintain their traditional sense of collective self which is built around suffering. Cultures are intrinsically conservative and reactionary, Red Sox nation is no exception.

But its not an entirely symbolic attack; it's fair weather fans, presumably, that give that extra revenue bump that leads to big market victories, and so, to the extent that the Sox wins are a function of the market, the diehards can actually cite such fairweathers as a partial causes of their identity loss.

But what's with the massochism? (Bad pun intended.) The suffering is supposed to be redeemed through winning. And I like winning. I do, I admit it. I don't need another Grady Game. So the more fans, the better. They make it possible for Theo to give Julio friggin Lugo a 4 year contract and not have it sink the ship.

Also, I'm just not all that into the collective identity stuff. I'm more of a hermit monk type than a church picnic type of guy, so to speak. I watched the Sox win the Series in '04 with just one other friend. I typically watch games by myself. I enjoy a close, personal relationship with my Sox, (have you heard the good news?), unencumbered by sociality. I try to avoid thinking too much about those superfluous aspects- whether the players are really good people deep down inside or whether Wild Thing Vaughn slept with Dorn's wife last night. These get in the way of my spiritual whatever.

Look. People stink. Forget about them. I had standing room monster seats (an oxymoron) for Game 2 of the '04 World Series- Schilling pitched a gem, I recall. And who was sitting rows in front of me (in a seat, no less, the show-off) but Tom Hanks. People kept looking at him, not the game. Its the F'ing world series, I'd yell. Just watch the game. Jimmy Dugan would have told you the same thing.

a-head

From the Archive: August 14, 2006

Inside A-Rod's head? Here’s what I think, in a paragraph or so.

I think a lot of people work with an implicit distinction, however ill gotten or tenuous, between what is 'God given' and what is had by one's own will power. People may admire what is God given, but they don't necessarily respect it.

A-Rod has plenty of God given talent, one might think. But what has 'he', the person, that bundle of will power and psychic forces, done with it? People love David Eckstein more than A-rod. It is because of Eckstein's drive and will in the face of less god given ability that he earn respect. Jeter and Tom Brady are a lot alike (yes) and are very easy to hate as pretty boy superstars who can get whatever they want. But instead they are admired and respected because of their poise and command and apparent inner strength; instead of wilting in the spotlight, they can impose their will at just the right moment, even over people with perhaps more God-given talent. People don't think A-rod can impose his will. He has god given talent, but who is he, really, independently of what god gave him, they ask? He’s weak, he's soft, he can't get it done. All those fans out there have the will, but they don't have the talent. How can they not resent someone with the talent but without that ability to impose it? God gives you the cards, but you have to play the hand. A-rod folds with 4 aces.

The Shroud of Schilling

From the Archive:

November 5, 2004

Last week we deified Curt Schilling for his miraculous and heroic performances against the Yankees and Cardinals. This week Curt was deifying the deity and stumping on his tattered ankle for Bush. Curt fears no hitter, but he fears god. Good for him?
Curt is quick to point to his finding god (yet he supports for pres. a man who couldn't find...) as a turning point in his career, a source of energy and motivation for his transcending his earthly constraints. Thanking the doctors seemed an afterthought, despite their having invented a new procedure in order for him to pitch.

Is our joy tarnished by Curt's beliefs? Can we no longer root for a religious Bush-supporting nut?

I really haven't had favorite players since I was a kid. This is one of the reasons why. As soon as one looks at a player as anything other than the sum of his past statistics, and as a disposition for future ones, we're screwed. What if he's a wife beater? What if he doesn't believe in dinosaurs? What if he's an anti-Semite? What if he wouldn't sign my ball? What if he honked his car horn at me and gave me the finger?

What we have to keep in mind is that these people, as ballplayers, are not people. They are baseball automatons. They are probably all jerks, they all picked on you in high school, they stole your girl because they were jocks, they spit on your loyalty and adoration for a few extra bucks that they will never need.

This does not lessen my joy. I learned long ago to think of the players as cogs, exactly as valuable as they facilitate the functioning of the machine, the team.

I've said before that 'most of the philosophers I like are dead. All of the baseball players I like are on the same team.'

You see, I use different criteria for the two. Not only are they all on the same team, but once they're not on the team, they can go fuck themselves (although for some reason I think I’ll always be fond of daubach.)

Viewing it this way makes one less inclined for hero-worship, and perhaps takes some of the fun out of pride and vicarious living. But I know I don't want to hang out with these players. I don't even want their memorabilia- manny's bat, the jock shilling wore at his first communion, or the condom for which Nomar thanked beautiful.

Athletes sometimes take it personally when fans boo. They sometimes don't get it that just because they were cheered before, they should always be. But of course we don't cheer them, we cheer their performance. Nomar was never able to distinguish Nomar the person from Nomar the player, and so was irrevocably hurt when he was deemed replaceable. A disposition for future statistics is replaceable.

Why are athletes republicans? Simple. They believe that hard work equals success. They don’t see why if they could do it, why can’t everyone? Everyone can’t because everyone is not equally talented. Some people have no talent, and some people have talent but can’t succeed because larger forces are too overwhelming, such that no amount of work can garner success. Josh Gibson had all the talent in the world, but that larger force of segregation prevented him from succeeding. It is very easy for the athlete to forget how special they are, and that ‘special’ only makes sense in contrast to those who are not. Liberals, quite simply, believe the government should help out the less fortunate, not hang them out to dry like a bloody sock.

As has been often mentioned, why don’t athletes who praise and thank god when they win, blame god when they lose? ‘That bitch ass Jesus made me drop that popup.’ Perhaps Bill Buckner’s a Satan worshipper. As I’ve noted before, God’s all time winning percentage seems to be .500

On the other hand, athletes do seem to realize their luck- their skills are ‘god given.’ It’s just very easy for them to translate that into a god given preference for them, that they are divinely special. And for those that are not, it is because God has seen fit for them to be mediocre and poor. And why should a government step in and try to reverse god’s plan?

Blasphemy!

Identity Lost?

From the Archive:

October 29, 2004:
[Thoughts following the World Series Victory, the first for the Sox since 1918]

Do we regret it yet? Were we not careful what we wished for? By closing a window, have we opened a door... to hell? By trading Nomar and winning, have we opened a Cabrera's Box?

Many seem to think so. All this loss of identity and soul business, well, it's hard to deny that there is some amount of truth to it. But what may be more painful is the realization of the meaninglessness. Once the elation is gone, what is there still? Well, bills to pay, sickness to avoid, earlies to get up at.

Is that the painful part, the realization that we are not really the Red sox, despite our intimate and self-suspending attachment? The tenuous collective has dissolved yet again into individuals, who are back to trying and failing, and ultimately dying alone?

Geez, let's not get so dramatic here.

But what do we expect? What should happen? What did we think would be different?

Here's one proposal, from Pam Belluck of the New York Times: "Many wonder whether fans will turn into unseemly braggarts, in particular taking the opportunity to lord it over Yankees fans as payback for years of pinstriped abuse." (10/29/04)

You know, that ain't so bad. I think I can live with that. As someone who has been on the receiving end of beer missiles whose hate content could not be watered down by even the sleaziest Yankee stadium profit monger, I could sure use some ammo of my own.

I've been walking around Manhattan wearing my 2004 World Series champions t-shirt, staring at everyone to see if they notice it. It's great. Tonight, I’m attending a Halloween party. What am I wearing? My 2004 world series champions t-shirt. Not just because I’ve waited all my life to have one, and so I just don't feel like taking it off (which I don't), but because what could be scarier to a Yankees fan than a red sox championship?

But is that the point? If so, why watch the games in the safely homogeneous atmosphere of New England, why not come storming down I-95 and burn cars in New York?

Our problems run deeper.

We fancy our rivalry as the greatest in sports. That requires it to transcend regionalism, to attract and captivate those with no strong allegiance (like most Yankees fans).

Harvey Araton, NY Times (10/28/04) writes:"As a national entity, this team will not have the same cachet, after it is upgraded from perennial sad sack to parade-worthy supreme Sox. And in the long run, this cannot be a boon to baseball's broad appeal. Particularly at a time when baseball has been dealing with the sniff of steroid-related scandal, we have seen the tremendous promotional value of the everlasting loser these last two seasons... What will next years ALCS look like to America if it happens to match a Yankees payroll exceeding $200 million against defending world champions from Boston? What will the Red Sox represent now that they are no longer the networks' hope for another good cry? Fenway will always be cozy and charming but how can it be the same without its ghosts? No longer cursed, the Red Sox will be revealed as they truly are, one of the more blessed big-league franchises, with deep flowing revenue streams and, like the Yankees, an ever-changing cast of well-heeled mercenaries."

Jonah Goldwater, then columnist for hotmail.com, wrote on 10/10/04:
http://soxlosophy.blogspot.com/2008/06/on-identity-lost-for-tourists.html

If nothing else, my claim that this cachet crap is for outsiders was corroborated by Araton. All that lovable loser shit, that's for tourists.

Let me refer to a neat dichotomy introduced by my father- that of roles and rules.

The rules are the difference between soccer and baseball. They are each self-contained systems. Roles are played for someone else- they are not thus self-contained.

The red sox played a role for the viewing public that they can no longer play. In this Araton is correct. But you know who else can? Anyone, in any sport or scenario you can think of. It doesn't matter who it is, but what their role is. Anyone can play Hamlet. The public can move on to the next lovable loser underdog in golf or soccer or some goddam reality show or horseracing. What doesn't matter in any of these situations is what rules they are playing by. So to that extent, Araton is again correct that this is bad for baseball's broad appeal.

But why should we have to bear the burden of loserdom? Go find someone else. I'm not martyring myself so bandwagon idiots in Idaho feel like tuning into fox instead of learning to read or voting for Bush. Let's be American, and say that that's somebody else's job. Roles are played for someone else. The bigwigs don't care who plays the role for them, they're just worried that there won't be anyone else to play it. But that's the bigwigs' and Idaho’s problem. I care who plays the role, because it’s me. And I don't want to play that losers role for someone else, not anymore, not ever. What do I get in return? Nothing. I'm no martyr.

And if you don't like it, and you want to make me, why don't you go and beat my team?!!

And if this role stuff is so captivating, why don't I care about reality shows or soccer of fucking horseracing? Because they are not baseball! If some stupid soccer team hadn't won the golden shin guard or the cherished Pennzoil addidas jersey or whatever the hell they win, in 86 years, and they were playing the bloated offensive juggernaut who scored a mind boggling 2 goals a game to set the all time record, I wouldn't watch. The roles aren't intrinsically interesting, the rules are.

Its not the existential anguish that we're stuck with. Its not losing cachet. Its not that something has changed and we can never have it again. Its not even all this Calvinist hooey, that complacency drivel that tells us to work real hard for no worldly gain, because gain is sin, and now we've gained so now we're confused.

What everyone is worrying about is that now we're stuck with baseball. But if that's not interesting to you, you can go fuck off, because you're not a real fan. I'm a red sox fan because I’m from Boston, yes, but I’m a red sox fan because I’m a baseball fan first, because baseball is the greatest thing ever.

It's a shame that the game can't sell itself, and that the story lines are required, rather than providing an exciting supplement to the game itself. But if you just want story lines, watch a goddam soap opera. Go see who the real boss is on that twist ending on that big fat obnoxious sadistic voyeuristic culture boss show.

The saga is over. The climax was even anti-climactic. We are now in epilogue. Of course, we'll do all we can to springboard it into a sequel. But we all know that the sequel is always inferior.

After having finally told the story, and having lived through it, we are changed. There was a moral, and an inspirational one at that. And we do get to stick it to the Yankee fans, and we do get to see if we can do it again, and see whether the Yankees will take it away from us like they did to Brooklyn in '56, just one year after the Dodgers finally beat the Yanks in '55, or how the Empire got back at the rebels just one movie after they blew up the death star. Stories abound, thankfully, for surely it is more fun that way.

But now we really find out something fundamental about ourselves. And that's whether we like baseball.

Pitchers and catchers report in 15 weeks.

Go Sox

On Identity Lost- for tourists.

From the Archive:

October 10, 2004:

But what if the sox win the World Series? Won’t you lose your identity, your cachet? What happens to the Jews when the messiah comes- do they become Christian?

Bullshit. That identity, cachet crap is all for tourists. No sox fan revels in failure and disappointment. That’s just a marketing angle for outsiders, for foreigners looking in and trying to figure out what all the fuss is about. We want to win, dammit. And we want it now.

Consider an example. 'Hey there Berlin, why do you want that wall coming down? You’re the only city that is half communist and half capitalist, you are the very center of the cold war, a fault line in the greatest power struggle the world has ever known. Wouldn’t you lose that identity and cachet if they took the wall down?'

So of course the answer is fuck no, take the fucking wall down, and fuck you, we're winning this son of a bitch. You and your media cronies who want to drum up marketable interest and cast the sox and their fans as having these sellable characteristics like a fucking brochure to tour Berlin can all go fuck themselves.

We’re going to fuck y'all up, we're going to do it hard and fast, we're going to put that piece up your ass and pull the trigger until it goes click. You can have your media fantasy of the cursed losers. I want a winning fucking ball club, the kind that takes names.

And yeah, it wouldn't be meaningful without the past being exactly what it was. That’s why (among a zillion other reasons) I’m not a Yankees fan, just like tearing down the wall wouldn’t be meaningful if it didn't represent what it represents. But that doesn't mean we don't want that fucking wall down right fucking now, and that doesn't win we don't want to fucking win it all, right now.
We’re tearing down the wall of sox oppression and discrimination, and we'll be prosecuting war criminals and creating a black market and unstable currencies as we do so, and no one can stop us, because we're the fucking best.

If you smell... what the sox... are cookin’!

2003 ALDS: Game 1

FROM THE ARCHIVE:

October 2, 2003

After Game 1, ALDS, Sox down 0-1 to A’s; Sox blow lead in 9th inning, lose in 11th when Ramon Hernandez drops a bases loaded bunt single for the GW RBI.

Its not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. Or so many of us have been told. Why we should believe this is anyone's guess. Neither Leo Durocher nor Al Gore would agree with this well-worn maxim, and most likely Leon Trotsky and Al Bundy would contend otherwise as well.

But I am not going to take issue with this Sesame Street philosophy. Nor shall I take issue with the specifics of tonight's ballgame. I won't argue that in the playoffs one should go with the hot hand out of the bullpen, which in tonight's case was Mr. Timlin. I will steer clear of whether or not it always fails to walk the bases loaded. But what I do want to talk about is not how one plays the game, but how we watch the game.

I yell. I scream. I curse, I reverberate, I pontificate, I press real hard on my sinuses hoping that's how to keep my brain in my head. I order food I don't eat and I find camaraderie with those who wear a similar shirt.

And so does everyone. In a very important sense, we are all the same.

As you know, I study philosophy. (Although "study' might be a generous construal.) I am interested in the related concepts of continuity and identity. Some may think that the question of what makes something the same, or continuous, over time is irrelevant, or unanswerable, or illogical or even trivial.
But they told us, dammit, they told us that these were not our father's Red Sox. David Ortiz and Mueller and all the rest. "Who's the Babe?" has less rhetorical value that "who's the man?" But never has anyone looked more at home in a uniform than the Heroes from the Hub did tonight. They were the Red Sox. Game 1 of the division series is the least important of all playoff games. Yet there was scaffolding on my seat while a construction crew furiously extended the edge.

I am tired. And I mean that. It doesn't matter how much sleep I got last night, nor how much I will get tonight.

The soul. The soul is eternal, immutable, indivisible and some other things, too, I suppose. Testicles, on the other hand, are quite fragile, and really the opposite of the abovemention qualities. The soul has no need for testicles, as the latter are both the archives of evolution and the tray from which you may take or leave a penny, contributing to the dynamic nature of the community. The soul is something else entirely, and has no need to ensure its reproduction through history.

Tonight, though, my soul has balls, and it was kicked right in them. The heavenly choir of angels sang a truer soprano.

I'm not going to lie and say I knew that the A's would win. I didn't know. But I did know that the Red Sox made a definitive metaphysical statement. "We are the Red Sox", they blared. And more importantly, they let me know that I am a Red Sox fan.

I hate losing. I don't know why, and I don't care why. No insight would let me know that it is an attitude worth changing. All I know is that in am important regard, I am a functioning human being.

I can't imagine how I would feel in the World Series. This was Game One of the ALDS. They can still do it. Who knows?

But they are the Red Sox. I don't know why. It doesn't make sense. These guys are not related to Babe Ruth, or Bill Buckner. They may never have met. They may have .500 batting averages in the post season or may slug 1.000 against Barry Zito. But who cares?

All I know is that my throat is sore and I feel like I was shot in the gut with a cannon.

I watch the game not like I was out there on the field, but like I am sitting on a bar stool with other people wearing the same shirt. The shirt does not cover my soul, or my soul's balls, nor does it keep me warm.

But it does make me one of THEM, just like it does to the guys on the field. They are Red Sox, and so am I. And assuming we make it by the first round, we got a dozen of these to go.My soul needs to go jogging or something, to get into better shape.