Hardy’s nifty slide won game 2 for Baltimore
Sports Saturday
As a Baltimore Orioles fan, I am of course euphoric over their two victories to open a three-out-of-five series with the Detroit Tigers. A pessimist when it comes to things Oriole, I have been expecting them to fade all year long but they haven’t done so yet.
The other team in my backyard, the Washington Nationals, were less fortunate, losing their opening game against the San Francisco Giants.
If I weren’t an Orioles fan, I would be rooting for the Kansas City Royals, who have been a downtrodden team for decades. That being said, the Orioles haven’t exactly been flourishing in recent years. Nor have the Pittsburgh Pirates, who I also liked but who were bounced in the wild card playoff game by the Giants. Still, it’s good to see some teams finally breaking through after years of being mediocre or even downright bad.
Here’s a poem to celebrate baseball by Baron Wormser, former poet laureate of Maine. I like how he talks of each action holding “a tell-tale trait” and each moment convoking “an actual fate.” Because baseball is a linear rather than a range game (thanks for that distinction, Marshall McLuhan), we see a sequence of plays with crystalline clarity. The game is “player against player,” and there is a “keenness of conflict” between pitcher and batter, fielder against runner. These plays, while not having the same epic grandeur as the battles of the Homeric Greeks, nevertheless are “quiveringly real.” The mixture of “instinct, confidence, wit and strength” result in “a catch or a hit, something indicative, legible, quick.” The achievement “can be neither created nor feigned.”
However we may seek to explain success, however, there is also luck and mystery involved. Even as we watch the “tangible,” game, we cannot entirely pluck the meaning. Awestruck, we watch the struck ball as it rises and abjectly falls. What remains with baseball is what remains with poetry: “the unpredictable, adroit rhythm of it all.”
In Baseball
By Baron Wormser
Neither forces nor bodies equivocate:
Each action holds a tell-tale trait,
Each moment convokes an actual fate.
Reality, being precious, becomes a game
In which, nature-like, no two things are the same—
Whatever is remarkable is nicknamed.
The untitled fan applauds the grace of epithet
And thinks of warring Greeks, whose threats,
Stratagems, confusions, deeds though met
On a smaller scale are yet quiveringly real.
Player against player on a simple field,
It’s the keenness of conflict that appeals
To the citizen so sick of the abstract “they.”
Here, there is no such thing as a beggared day.
Achievement can be neither created nor feigned
And the whole mix of instinct, confidence, wit,
And strength emerges as a catch or a hit,
Something indicative, legible, quick
And yet as much a mystery as luck.
Lured by the tangible we strive to pluck
The meaning that cannot be awe-struck.
The exemplary fact remains—a ball,
The thing that rises and abjectly falls,
The unpredictable, adroit rhyme of it all.