Deep Right Field- At Principle Gallery
I said: “Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic!” He was hilarious: “That’s beautiful: the hurrah game! well — it’s our game: that’s the chief fact in connection with it: America’s game: has the snap, go fling, of the American atmosphere — belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.”
–Horace Traubel, conversation with Walt Whitman (4 July 1889)
I wrote recently about the anxiety I have been experiencing from my concerns over the upcoming election and its implications. One would think a good way to alleviate the stress would be to divert one’s attention somehow, maybe watching a leisurely game of baseball.
One would be wrong.
The NY Yankees defeated the feisty Cleveland Guardians last night to move on to this year’s World Series, winning four of five games in the best of seven series. That is kind of misleading, making it sound like they had an easy time with the Guardians.
It was anything but that.
After winning the first two games in New York, the series moved to Cleveland for the next three games. Each of the three games there were absolute classics. Two were decided in the 10th inning, including last night when Juan Soto hit a decisive three-run homer for the Yankees to drop the final curtain on the Guardian’s season.
Each game was tight and stressful, the outcome of each coming as the result of one or two plays. A great pitch. A bobbled ball. A long and loud home run. The Guardians could have easily won all three. They certainly deserved to win. The stress of watching these last three games was extreme. I took to doomscrolling political posts on social media during the games– it produced less angst!
But in the end, the Yankees prevailed, much to the dismay of Guardians fans and Yankee-haters everywhere. You might think that I’d be happy. I am, of course. However, now the next two weeks will have the stress of what promises to be a very difficult World Series stacked on top of the gut churning anxiety of the election.
I don’t know if my gut can take it. I can only hope that in a little over two weeks that I will be able to celebrate, one way or another. It might be sacrilege to other Yankee fans, but I would easily trade a World Series victory for the Yanks for an abject beatdown at the ballot box for that other New Yorker.
Though a humiliating loss for him and a Yankee victory would be the best hurrah of all.
Okay. For this week’s Sunday Morning Music selection, I am going for some real stress relief. This is one of my favorite compositions, Gymnopédie #1, from Erik Satie. I may have to listen to it a lot over the next couple of weeks…
Redtree Times 