Today’s news is bloody with black ink covering tax chicanery (as if anyone is surprised) and tectonic changes at the Supreme Court (you never really know, but people can surprise you in the end, or at least we must hope).
Not to diminish the gravity of such things, but in other, more appealing news, the “official” baseball season has ended. Truncated of necessity to 60 games, it was too short to devotees but less mind-numbing to the casual fan than the annual siege of Troy usually endured, if not enjoyed.
Tampa, Minnesota and Oakland each took their Division in the AL, with the despised Yankees and now Astros remaining alive among the Wild Card teams. Atlanta, Chicago and LA stand atop the NL with a host still hanging on and in. With the world and baseball somehow surviving these times precariously to date, the playoffs will have plenty of drama this season, and we must all hope that the game holds it together long enough to make it to the Arlington, Texas bubble for the World Series.
To the keepers of baseball history this day is notable as a red letter day for a few reasons, two sad and one unequalled. On this day in 1920, eight Black Sox players were indicted for throwing the 1919 World Series, a story too sacrilegious for true fans to comprehend. In 1930, Lou Gehrig’s 885 errorless game streak ended, since surpassed by some stellar fielders, but still among Gehrig’s many achievements.
Arguably the second greatest baseball achievement took place today, when Ted Williams ended the 1941 season with a 406 batting average, never since accomplished and unlikely, in the modern era of relief pitchers, ever to be outdone. He was a proud man, too proud to be loved by the fans, but the results of his work ethic gave him every reason to be. He could have sat out the double-header on that last day of the season with a .3995 batting average, which would have rounded up to .400. In the first game, he went 4 for 5, upping his average to .404. He played the second as well and went 2 for 3, for his .406 mark.
Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente were sports heroes, whose deeds made them true heroes and there are others who have earned that title. There is a fellow named Fauci, who will be a footnote in baseball history for an opening pitch as bad as the worst from Nuke LaLoosh, but he defines what a hero is for me, and his season belongs in the Hall of Fame.
There are two words of hope worth hearing in this year of so little, “Play Ball.”
