'Baseball' a Hit

High school, summer before my senior year. That's 1991, I guess, and where I come from, THE talk of the town concerned whether or not the Braves could flag down the Dodgers to complete a worst-to-first miracle of the highest order.

Of course, life doesn't stop for the pennant race. And I was more than a little interested in seeing my first real girlfriend off to college--to Williams, actually--as we met for one final time before we would split up.

It's the kind of evening you never forget, I suppose, made more special to me by the movie we watched, one I'd never seen before--"Field of Dreams." I don't cry too often, but I cried that night. Everything was just a little too much for me to take.

I mention this because I came close to crying just the other evening, and it helped me find a new meaning to that hot, August night over three years ago.

"It" happened while I was watching Ken Burns' "Baseball"--the bottom of the ninth. And I don't really know how to explain why--all that is definite to me are the tears that I could feel welling up in my eyes, that and the centrality of our "national pastime" to both experiences.

Where to start? Channel 44 seems like the safer of the two mediums for comparison, so to WGBX it is.

I was a Red Sox fan in 1986--or to be more correct, an anti-Mets fan. And in 1987, I was kinda partial to the Cinderalla Dodgers, NL West rivalries being dormant as they were.

Which, in and of itself, brings up an important discovery: something about the World Series tends to make us take sides, when possible turning it into a Good vs. Evil battle of demonic proportions. Even though I could never lay an honest claim to the heartbreak that IS "Red Sox Nation," watching Schiraldi, Stanley, Buckner et al. screw it all up hurt just the same.

(Of course, I still thought that the Sox could win Game Seven, stupid neophyte that I was.)

When it came to 1987, I picked the underdog-slash-Mets vanquisher--and though I was too nervous to watch Kirk Gibson (and hence missed his titanic blow during a fidgety channel-change), the memory lingers with all the resonance of having been in Dodger Stadium myself.

I've said it in these pages before, but such moments really do define sport--"the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat," as Roone Arledge spelled it out for ABC long, long ago. Moments that give you chills time and time again--maybe a clutch foul shot you sank to win a game, maybe a broadcaster's patriotic outcry of "Do you believe in miracles? Yes!"--are what bring you back.

"Baseball" brought me back to the edge of that precipice. For in the midst of all the history on collusion, Curt Flood and the reserve clause [and if you are a sports fan and don't know what the above items signify, PLEASE do yourself a favor and find out], the death threats to Hank Aaron, Steinbrenner, the fall of Pete Rose...therein stood Bob Costas, a true romantic spokesman for the game, talking from the inside about Gibson and Buckner and giving their deeds an new, even shinier lustre.

And to then have John Chancellor continue his narration by mentioning the Braves' series of 1991 as an example of that which Tony LaRussa says makes the game "better than all of us," a true representation of the American spirit--I almost lost it again.

Like that night in Atlanta. The last straw, that which decisively broke my will, came at the movie's end when Kevin Costner asked his "dad" if he might want to play catch.

"I'd like that," he replied, simplistically yet eloquently, speaking volumes of feeling. A perfect rejoining of broken father-son relationships, baseball, sports, life, the cosmos.

What was left to say, to do? I knew that I'd have to say goodbye to my girlfriend that night, essentially ending the most incredible relationship of my life to date.

But I also knew that baseball was eternal, and would always be around to comfort me--even now, when the postseason should be going strong and baseball should be in the foreground of my consciousness, Gibson and Ray Kinsella are still in there somewhere, and that makes me happy.

Tears of joy, or tears of sadness? Who knows.

Let's just say that baseball--and "Baseball"--makes a great metaphor for life, and leave it at that.

Darren M. Kilfara is an Assistant Sports Editor for The Crimson.