Wednesday, August 08, 2007

The Loneliest Number

With one swing a lifetime of work is undone. Shattered. Splintered. There is now a new fence to swing for. A new record. The flight of the ball cut through the heart of the field last night. Soared into the stands. Out of reach. For now. So much for silence. For controlled and perpetrated apathy by baseball fans. Money always wins.

Chills run down my back still as I watch it. But there is no joy. No happiness. Mudville fans were more delighted in their misfortune than I am at baseball's misfortune. To have the mightiest record in sports fall in such a way. To have the sacred spit upon like a Perry pitch. To round the bases like a vulture circling a helpless, dying soul. And then you stood at home.

No. 756 brings me no joy. Brings me no happiness. But I applaud your achievement. Your life's work. Measured only in numbers.

This one, number 756, the loneliest of all.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

BABE RUTH still rocks..

Anonymous said...

Is this real history in the making? Or, is this even a metaphor for post-modernism? I will make truth what I want it to be, you can keep the ball, I know what I did.

It is not the first nor will it be the last of sport's sordid attempt to have high standards of achievement against a backdrop of the means justifying the end.