The World Turned Upside-Down

"So when the time came for the ultimate slice of excrement-flavoured birthday cake to be served, after a century-plus of big-league ball, there was no other plate you could really want it to end up on. 26 world championships in baseball, and one all-time undisputed title in the art of choking. Seems more than fair.

Tonight the subjects of the Evil Empire are all grinning imperishably. Whatever happens for the rest of our lives, we'll always have 2004--complete with Damon and Ortiz, Schilling's Reservoir Dogs stroll to the bullpen with Wakefield and Lowe in Game Five, Jeter's fridge-like defence and .200 batting average, and, of course, the Slap Heard 'Round The World --one of the funniest acts ever perpetrated on a ballfield by a man not encased in a large fuzzy animal costume. I pity anyone who was too cool and mature to enjoy it, I really do."

Cosh has the best take on the Red Sox triumph that I see in my morning rounds (whither Welch?), although I can't go that cozmik "They Deserved IT" angle on the Yanks. "Fair" is what any given team wins along the way -- which point, by the way, could broach the uncomfortable matter of teams with inferior records still standing at the end of the long-run concept that a baseball season is supposed, in the nature of things, to be. (But we won't complain about institutional fiddlers and reformers, here.) That '26' thing exists for all the reasons why last night now stands forever in the books: in one given stretch of baseball time, They just did it better. Pitch to pitch, play for play, The New York Yankees were better, twenty-six times. It does no good to complain about anything else, and it ain't about "fair". It's about Better. When it counts for the title.

Ask Johnny Damon, who, I'm sure, Colby would agree, could not have picked a better time to go 3 for 6.

The Cosh is right about this: we could only watch it once. For maybe four seconds, viddieshot Joe Torre last night, in the eighth inning: long-look profile, and he had the Deep Stare on. Looking it in the teeth, right there in the Bronx. Any given baseball game can turn on a single instant. Almost all other team sports would have to reverse time in order to wind up the same slinky tension of a desperate baseball inning: an un-answered run of double-digit points on a basketball court is futile against the tide of the universe if the points to make up won't fit in that universe's given seconds. Baseball is timeless. A bat's crack can make time disappear and hope will throb from beat to beat, pitch to pitch, and the bottom of the inning is the thing that's "fair". I saw it closing on Torre last night, and wondered who was "cursed".

Anyway, I'll point out that The Curse has not yet been reversed. The Red Sox have to win the World Series in order to ring that one down, and in light of this fact, one Yankee yet stands overall. I'd claim that if I were a New Yorker today, and even if it should fall by the bottom of some ninth inning next week, it colored most of a century.

But it was just splendid to watch these Red Sox drive it home in New York.