Inspired by a post on a blog I've occasioned, I was reminded about a story I once wrote. Of course it involves baseball. All my stories involve baseball. Also, it's a particularly good time to write about baseball as the Red Sox are playing some outstanding baseball right now.
Remember my first ever 'live blog'? Well, if you get through it you get to the point where we attend the Red Sox game in the pouring rain (and also what humorous events happened to us at the game which were even funnier in lieu of everything that happened that horrible, no good, very bad day). One of the things I love about my wife is she gets me. Completely and, sometimes, inconceivably. Despite the rain, despite the events of the day, she did not once consider or broach the idea that we should leave the game early. And more than that -- and this is why I love her -- she did not want to leave the game early.
You don't leave a baseball game early. Especially if it's the Red Sox. Especially if it's at Fenway. It is my belief that those people, and there are many of you who choose to leave, for good or for lame reasons, a baseball game before the final out, are the same sort of people who would leave church in the middle of the altar call (Been reading Faulkner, sorry about that sentence).
The altar call is the whole point (usually, but it doesn't have to be) of the sermon and church on the whole. Staying for the final out is the whole point of going to a game. Only then is the final outcome determined. Only then is the victor the victor and the loser the loser. And that's what you go to games for. For one team to win and another to lose. Sure, things may not change between the time you leave your seat and that final out. But the whole point is that they can change and so you need to stay.
My brother and some friends once attended a Red Sox game at Fenway. It was a few years ago and it was a night game in the middle of the summer. Well, like any fan going to a game's dream, it went into extra innings. Around the 14th they made an announcement that the last train was leaving at a certain time readily approaching. That train would have taken them across the city to where they had parked. Sara, one of the friends at the game, as street savvy as she is in Boston, said she knew how to walk the two dozen city blocks so they could stay. They put it to a vote. It was unanimous. They stayed.
In the bottom of the 18th the Red Sox won it on a Shea Hillenbrand home run. And they walked back. He still tells that story.
What story can you tell if you left early.
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Because, quite often, little of what I say is of any lasting value. Though in rare occasion, may I invoke your illative sense. Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem.
2 comments:
Here are some things one should not leave early from:
Your wedding ceremony
Your funeral (think this through)
A job interview
A plane before it lands
A restaurant before you get the bill
On the hopper before the job is done (except if you are at Home Depot where it is common; or, in Washington where crap is all over the place)
An appearance before a judge
Drive away while pumping gas
And, of course, a baseball game
I told that story a number of times this week. Both games I went to this week were against the Tigers (the team they played for 18 innings a few summers ago). That six hour game was my first at Fenway. And it makes a GREAT story.
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