Puppies

I'm guessing most Cubs fans have already seen this, but there it is, just in case.  When Mike Fontenot appeared I started fangirling so loudly that I'm pretty sure my roommate is going to come over and tell me to be quiet.  Also: Geo.

"You can live on that for a long time."

It may be bad form to post happily about yesterday's game after today's unpleasant loss.  But I was fortunate enough to be there yesterday, and I want to describe it all so I don't forget.

My friend D. was my game partner for the day.  Our seats weren't bad, in the upper deck, but right near third base, so we got to watch the players do absurd-looking stretches before the game started.  I was feeling self-conscious because of how unfortunate my permed hair looked under my Cubs hat, like my head was exploding.

For quite a while the game was - how should I put it? - bad.  The awful part was that there were three rows of Brewers fans not far in front of us and another one behind us, and their behavior was completely appalling.  I've rarely wanted to hurt anyone as much as I wanted to hurt them.  All the Cubs fans in our section united against them.  To justify my violent impulses, I'll tell you that one man had a giant "L" flag that he was wearing like a cape.  He actually turned around and addressed all the fans behind him, slobbering out, "This is for you, LOSERS.  All you do is lose!  Yeah!"  My friend and I were laughing and feeling morally superior, but I could feel snarly rage starting inside me.  "I just want to go down there and set that flag on fire," I told him.  "Or push them onto the field so the Cubs can tear them apart," he said helpfully.

These horrible people were loud and triumphant throughout the first, oh, nine innings, because we weren't playing very well at all, despite a couple of home runs.  I was disappointed, but glad to be at the park on such a gorgeous day, even as I tried to will the violent thoughts out of my mind.

The bottom of the ninth came around.  The score was still 6-2, Milwaukee.  I started getting ready to leave.  Rami managed to score, making it 6-3 with two men on base, two outs.  Geo, who hadn't done much in this game, came up.  I was trying to figure out the best way to get home, if it were possible to somehow avoid the drunken crowds on the Red Line, as I stood up with everybody else to watch Geo's at-bat.  And then - well, if you read this blog, I'm guessing you already know what happened then.

I have about ten crossed-out paragraphs in my notebook, attempts at describing what it was like to watch that ball go.  There are certain moments that have become important parts of who I am that I find impossible to describe accurately, even though I think about them all the time.  This is in that category now, with the going-away party the people at St. Withburga's threw me when I moved back to Chicago, or getting to read in front of a billion people at the Advent services, or even to some degree (and I don't mean to be irreverent) the Really Big Stuff, like when I was baptized last year.  I think any description I could give would only make those moments smaller.

The row of women in front of me, kindly-looking middle-aged women in Cubs gear, holding binoculars, all started to cry.

And I don't think this could have actually happened, not in a ballpark that loud and rowdy, but right as we realized it was going to be a home run, I seem to remember a hush, almost a moment of silence.  It was as if people wanted to stop time right then, maybe forever, just to keep that moment going.

And then, of course, pandemonium broke out.  It was louder than I've ever heard it, and I've been to a game there nearly every summer since I was born.  Complete strangers were hugging, high-fiving, pounding each other on the back.  "I can't believe it," I kept confiding to all the people around me, "I just can't believe it."  I wanted to come up with something eloquent, but I was too stunned.  I don't think anyone minded.

Oh, and those Brewers fans?  The game went on for three more innings before the Cubs actually won, but we barely heard a word out of them.  Barely even a sound.  I wish I could say I felt sorry for their destruction and humiliation.  Maybe someday, when I've gotten to a more enlightened stage of life.

When I got home, I listened to Pat and Ron calling the game.  "It's a miracle!" Pat shouted after Geo's home run, clearly overwhelmed.  Now, let me be clear: I think if it were God's policy to regularly intervene in the world that way, He would have more important priorities than reaching down and touching our catcher.  But I know what Pat was feeling, I think, and it's why I love baseball.  It's like the Giamatti passage I quoted before, or this, from Nora Gallagher's book Things Seen and Unseen, where she quotes a member of her church:

I've had that happen.  A lot of grace during a small event, more grace than the event justifies.  I think it may be that grace is always there but it gets through when we're not paying attention.  I mean, it's there for bigger things but we don't see it.  To apply it or remember it during bigger things or catch it then may take intentionality.  In any case, you can live on that for a long time.

I was beyond lucky to be there.  I'll always remember it.  Now, let's see what we can do with the rest of the season.

Hope, the anchor

So I'm going to lay this out carefully, without mentioning specific possible outcomes, because I want to avoid any chance of cursing anybody.  But:

The Cubs beat the Brewers tonight; that means our magic number is 4.  We're playing the Brewers again tomorrow, of course, and then again on Thursday.  And Thursday is the game I'm going to.

Well, there it is.  I don't mind if it doesn't happen that way; I think the Cubs have their confidence back and will probably be okay in any case.  What matters is whether they win their division, not whether I'm there to see it.  But I keep thinking of A. Bartlett Giamatti's line from "The Green Fields of the Mind," one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I know: 

The aisles are jammed, the place is on its feet, the wrappers, the programs, the Coke cups and peanut shells, the doctrines of an afternoon; the anxieties, the things that have to be done tomorrow, the regrets about yesterday, the accumulation of a summer: all forgotten, while hope, the anchor, bites and takes hold where a moment before it seemed we would be swept out with the tide.

So now - well, now I guess we wait and see.

Great. Batting ninth again.

I have a wealth of hilarious and/or exciting baseball links to share after last night and today, but for now I just need to mention this: the headline on Yahoo!Sports after today's game (in which Ted Lilly pitched almost seven scoreless innings, leading the Cubs to a 6-1 win) said, "No no-no, but not bad."

Oh, Theodore Roosevelt.  This is not helping your inferiority complex at all, is it?

No words. Well, only a few.

I just threw on some clothes over my pajamas, including my Geo t-shirt, and RAN across the street to the library so I could watch that last inning again and again and again (my laptop is ancient and slow and has trouble with videos.)

Before that, I called my parents and begged them to TiVo any and all post-game coverage. "What did he do? How did he react? What was it like?" I said. "He fell on his knees and gave thanks to the Lord," my mother said, in a tone that implied I should definitely have known that already.

I don't think I'll ever get tired of seeing this. And this is making me tear up. I have no idea what's going to happen during the rest of the season; I'm just glad we got to see what happened tonight.

ETA: to fix photo link, and because Jessie reminded me of the game notes from Yahoo!Sports, which first set me off into fits of weeping:

THE HOME RUN BY CHICAGO LEFT FIELDER ALFONSO SORIANO LED OFF THE GAME.

CHICAGO PITCHER CARLOS ZAMBRANO HAS A NO-HITTER THROUGH SIX INNINGS.

CHICAGO PITCHER CARLOS ZAMBRANO HAS A NO-HITTER THROUGH SEVEN INNINGS.

CHICAGO PITCHER CARLOS ZAMBRANO HAS A NO-HITTER THROUGH EIGHT INNINGS.

CHICAGO PITCHER CARLOS ZAMBRANO HAS A NO-HITTER THROUGH EIGHT AND 1/3 INNINGS.

CHICAGO PITCHER CARLOS ZAMBRANO HAS A NO-HITTER THROUGH EIGHT AND 2/3 INNINGS.

CHICAGO PITCHER CARLOS ZAMBRANO HAS THROWN A NO-HITTER.

"I said, 'No, I don't think so.'"

Well, as you may be able to tell from the last post, I feel like my mental health has suffered a minor nosedive along with the Cubs' collapse. I'm going to try for a little emotional distance here: more Jesus, less baseball. But I do have to share this glorious item, which I already emailed to about 50 of you last night, but which needs to be analyzed further here.

A summary definitely wouldn't do this piece justice; you'll have to read it, but we do need to discuss this:

"Matty was driving," Piniella said, "but we actually 'Googled' the trip, and we were 'Googled' to East Liverpool, Pa. Who in the heck knows? On the sheet we had, it was 'Cincinnati to Liverpool.' I was thinking, I was in Cincinnati three years, and I didn't remember a 'Liverpool' around the area."

Actually, there is no East Liverpool, Pa., but there is an East Liverpool, Ohio, which is near the Pennsylvania border. That's not exactly near Cincinnati, but let Piniella tell the story.

"I took a nap," Piniella said, "but right before I took a nap, we passed [Interstate] 75. I said, 'You know, Dayton is only about 40 miles from Cincinnati.' But we kept going because we kept following the map.

"When I woke up, we were 80, 90 from Cleveland, Ohio," Piniella said. "I said, 'No, I don't think so.'

Let me try to explain how I felt when I read these words. A few years ago, my father announced that he was getting my mother an iPod for her birthday. I told a friend who knows my parents about this, and she said in a tone of undisguised horror, the exact horror I felt, "ALLISON, she is not going to know how to use THAT."

And that exactly captures my response to Lou's report of "being Googled" to East Liverpool, PA (which doesn't exist). That man should not be using Google, nor any other modern technology. It's just not right, and this is what it leads to: people driving in the exact wrong direction in the opposite end of the state, yet continuing because "we kept following the map."

Eventually they stopped at a gas station and - oh, just read the whole thing, it's great. If this is the only good baseball thing to come my way for a while, well, I'll take it.

The downside

I've been thinking a lot lately about this guy my mom works with. He was your classic over-the-top Cubs fan - I'm sure you all know the type. Then in 2003, when...well, you either already know what happened with the Cubs in 2003 or don't care. Anyway, the day after what my family still refers to as "that incident," everyone at her workplace wondered nervously what this man would say when he came in. Finally, he appeared.

He was dressed in every item of White Sox gear a person could possibly own. Everyone stared. He said, in a tone I can only begin to imagine, "Never mention the Cubs to me again." Then he went into his office and closed the door.

I've always laughed at that story, but let me tell you something: I'm about to ask my mom for his number.

Railcats

I'm going to ignore whatever terrible thing is going on with the Cubs at the moment (okay, just briefly: PLEASE START HITTING, GUYS. JESUS WANTS YOU TO) and instead talk about the minor-league game I went to this weekend. As I mentioned before, the teams in question were the Schaumburg Flyers vs. - prepare yourself for this - the Gary South Shore (or possibly South Side) Railcats. With a name like that, it was hard to know who to root for. Gary's pitcher really seemed very good; if I can remember his name, I wouldn't be surprised to see him in somebody's bullpen in a few years.

All of these players were young, maybe about eight or so. Also, we were sitting right behind home plate, near the visitors' dugout, so they were warming up right in front of us, and my family quickly noticed that all the players had holes in the back of their pants. Now, I'm positive that everybody who reads this blog knows I have a mother-hen complex about baseball players, so you can tell I really didn't need to have my heartstrings further tugged by that. I desperately wanted to adopt the entire team, but my room is tiny and I'm already pretty sure that Ronny Cedeno and Mike Fontenot need adopting, so I don't know where all these people are going to sleep.

Am I concerning myself over this to avoid my reading on "Earliest Fundamental Theology" that's due in the near future? You be the judge, but I tend to believe I'd be obsessing over becoming a baseball seamstress/foster mom even if I had nothing else to do.