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6-26-2007 Jim Atwell The latter's especially true this year since I grew up in Annapolis, just down the road from the Orioles; and of course Cal Ripken, Jr., is everything we'd all want a ballplayer to be. But I don't memorize stats. I'm hazy about some of the game's more arcane rules and don't even follow a team. That's heresy around here, where baseball is our local smokeless industry. And, truth be told, it's probably the most practiced religion. We have a really big shrine for pilgrimages, saints to be venerated, relics to be viewed with awe. But in the baseball faith, I'm among the unsaved. With that said, I still love the game for the way it's woven into the fabric of American popular culture and for - dare I say it? - the choreography of the game, as so beautifully described by baseball's greatest writer, Roger Angell. More about that later. First I'll share two great pieces of local baseball news. The first concerns a dinner theater offer to be repeated each weekend, starting in August. The venue is one of our oldest and most beautifully sited restaurants, The Lake House. (That place has been catering to the hungry and thirsty for over 160 years.) Starting on August weekends, in a tent right down at lakeside, The Lake House will be hosting performances of "The National Pastime." The comedy is a Leatherstocking Theater Production starring Sam Goodyear and directed by Mary-Jo Merk. Need I say more? Great food, great location, great entertainment. Sounds like an unbeatable summer evening to me. Now, here's another great recent local baseball event. Well, really it's a sidebar to THE biggest recent baseball event, the Perfect Game pitched in Oneonta on July 15. Even a baseball ignoramus like me knows that a Perfect Game is something astoundingly rare. In a Perfect Game, a single pitcher wipes out, in turn, every batter for all nine innings. No one gets to first base. Batters go nowhere but back to the dugout. In the major leagues, a Perfect Game has only happened 17 times since 1880, and only once in a World Series game. In the wider world of organized ball, the average is about once every 20,000 games. Well, on July 15, down on Oenonta's Damaschke Field, Tigers pitcher Guillermo Moscoso gave the electrified crowd a home-town Perfect Game. He snuffed every single Batavia batter. But here's the sidebar story, the one that delights me. Attending that historic event was none other than Benjamin Wiles, brand-new first child of Tim Wiles, baseball zealot and the Hall of Fame's Director of Research. Mind you, Ben's first time at a ball park and he sees a Perfect Game! OK, maybe he slept through a lot of it (he's not many weeks old), but never mind! My question, and surely Tim's, is this: What does that event portend for his lad's future links with baseball? I have my own guess. At his 2057 induction in the Hall of Fame, pitcher Ben Wiles will recall that day and game and Moscoso . "That's when baseball took hold of me," he'll say fervently. "That's when I caught fire." (Hey, I hope he cites this column, too.) Well, if I'm excited about Ben's first baseball experience, you can imagine the shape his dad's in. You know Tim as a genial man about Cooperstown, as Doubleday Cafe's favorite customer, as a selfless worker for the Concert Series and other public projects. But in his heart of hearts, Tim lives baseball. When he got that research directorship at the Hall of Fame, he thought he'd reached his life's peak. But now his eyes are opened. Tim sees that what seemed like his life's highpoint was only prologue. It was just a step toward his scion's meteoric baseball career and triumphant 2057 Induction. What more could a new dad ask for? Hurray, Tim and Ben! (And, of course, Marie.) But back to Roger Angell and what I love about baseball. I love its leisured pace - and the sudden break from it when there's the crack of a bat, the high arc of a ball. Everything, everybody comes to life. I don't mean in the stands. I mean on the field. If Tim were next to me in the stands at such a moment, he'd have been anticipating, watching pitcher, watching catcher, studying outfielders' fine-tuning to the new batter. Further, he'd have been rolling stats in his head for all those guys out there - how good the outfielders are, what kind of heat the pitcher has, what's the batter's recent past. And when bat met ball, Tim would instantly be weighing all the possibilities, flashing through all the scenarios. I don't have all that to bring to bear on what I see out there. I mostly know what the rules are, what each player can and can't do; and I can apply that to what I see. But, like Tim, I can also enjoy what Roger Angell, that brilliant essayist, has called baseball's choreography: How all those suddenly antic players interact, qualify, and change, second by second, one another's performances. That vital pattern, spread out across the green field, has the beauty of dance. As does, in fact, the whole long, leisured game of baseball. You can enjoy it like art. Some art forms can be looked at and enjoyed all at once; that's the way it is with a painting or a sculpture. The object is before you, a finished work, for you to see and enjoy. But not so with performing arts like music or dance. They actually exist only in time, only during the span of time that performance requires. You can enjoy parts of the music as they are heard and parts of the dance as they are seen; but, paradoxically, the whole work doesn't exist until it's done. And, right then, at that instant of our fullest enjoyment, the event slips away into the past. And we're left to turn to someone, anyone, and shout exultantly, "That was great! I can't believe it!" It's like the end of a Perfect Game. Read about Jim Atwell's new book, "From Fly Creek - Celebrating Life in Leatherstocking Country" at JimAtwell.com. |
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