Marathon

Good god, that game was like working a part-time job.

I rarely watch baseball on television. It's a magical game live, but watching it on the small screen is a lot like seeing Rembrandt's monumental canvas Night Watch reproduced on a postage stamp. It needs to be seen live and in context to have any meaning or impact.

I make exceptions for the playoffs, when the pressure of the situation helps overcome the flattened affect of the televised game. And I've even been known to take in an occasional regular season game with my friend James, who has the kind of relationship with baseball that would destaiblize most marriages.

Combine the heightened awareness of the World Series with the unexpected availability of James on a game night and my opitions were limited...the only real question was which liquor store to swing by on my way home.

And we were rewarded with the sort of spectacle only baseball can provide.
The premise of one of my favorite novels on any sport (The Iowa Baseball Confederacy by WP Kinsella, much better known as the author of Shoeless Joe from which the mawkish film Field of Dreams was extracted, like the confession of a man undergoing torture) is that baseball is entirely open-ended. There is no prespecified end to a game, given the right circumstances it can theoretically go on forever.

Which is what this game threatened.

There was drama, but it was drama drawn out to a point where it ceased being exhilarating and became a responsibility and even a burden. Extra innings in baseball are a thrill, but a thrill that usually last around 20 minutes before one team's depleted pitching staff coughs its last and surrenders the game.
The World Series is different, especially in what was for all intents and purposes an elimination game (down 2-0 with their best pitcher on the mound, the Astros well and truly had their backs against the wall). Both teams have solid, deep bullpens, and both teams used every qualified pitcher before the end, the Sox even tapping game two's starting pitcher to get the crucial final out.

We started getting delirious around the 12th inning, when it seemed neither team was ever going to win. The Sox kept trying to give the game away by spotting the Astros two or three baserunners every inning, but the Astros played the gracious host and refused to take advantage of the inexplicable generosity of their guests.
Meanwhile the Sox were going down meekly in order, not wanting to give offense.

James and I hate Roger Clemens with a passion, and hold a grudge against the entire state of Texas for birthing the current criminal cabal responsible for steering the ship of state onto the rocks in Washington, so we were pulling for the Sox (in spite of their catcher, a former Giant who James took every opportunity to excorciate).

The game went on so long we stopped careing who won, and were pulling for someone, ANYONE, to come through with a big hit. And as happens so often in these things, the telling blow was struck not by a mega-salaried superstar, but by a no-name late season pickup, a guy who came over from my own San Diego Padres, in fact.

The deflating, incredible double play moments before was forgotten as cobwebbed, dusty bench player ripped a laser beam out of the park. It went out on a line, not getting much higher than the outfield wall, but making up for this lack of parabolic majesty with amazing speed. The bases loaded walk issued later in the inning was like a beer chaser following a double shot of grain alcohol.

An excellent evening. I anticipate anticlimax tonight, but will tune in anyway. Hope springs eternal following an epic contest in any sport, baseball is no different.