jwg

When I was a kid I was a Yankees fan - I lived in NYC. My father was a NY Giants fan. We occasionally listened to games on the radio and I went with my father to several games at the Polo Grounds, Ebbets Field and the original Yankee Stadium. And to several more at Yankees games with a school friend. Then I lost interest.

One summer at camp I became a Milwaukee Braves fan (was Boston Braves, now Atlanta Braves) and listened to a few games. Then I lost interest and ignored the sport.

In 1986 I remarked to Robert (rsc) "Oh the RedSox are in the World Series - let's watch some games" and we did. Little did we know what this was going to do to us. We started paying a bit of attention to games. In 1989 we went to some games in Fenway Park and continued doing this for a few years. And in 1994 we got Season's tickets (weekday games) and shared with several other people and started going to 10-15 games each year.

We watch most games on TV - and part-time on the radio during dinner or in the car.

While travelling we have gone to games in both the completely redone old Yankee Stadium and then the new Yankee Stadiums, Giant's games in Candlestick and then Oracle park, Twins in Metropolitan Park in Minneapolis, old Tiger stadium in Detroit, Mariners at Safeco field in Seattle, Phillies at Veteran's and Citizen's Park in Philadelphia, Cubs at Wrigley field in Chicago, Mets at Shea statium (me only), Athletics at Oakland Coliseum. And the RedSox triple A team in Pawtucket. I've been in Rogers Centre in Toronto (Blue Jays) not for a game but a computer conference.

So I've seen games in 17 stadiums and been in one other.

The UserPic is for the Canterbury RedSox (New Zealand - softball) - they weren't playing when we were there.

Last night we went to our next-to-last Red Sox game for the season.

We saw several "impossible" things.

I'm not counting as impossible the fact that the RedSox bats were lively and they scored 11 runs for an easy win. The game took 3 hours and 40 minutes (the Mariners-Jays game took one hour and 59 minutes). Our game could have taken longer. The first two innings were 55 minutes, and the second two were an hour and 5 minutes. At that rate it would have been 4 1/2 hours.

Impossible thing 1:
The Score Board said the Angels/Athletic score was 4 - 4 and the game was over. Baseball games can't end in a tie (well one All-Star game did). Once we went to a gamed that took 19 inning to break the tie - we had to walk home since the T had already stopped. Fortunately the Sox won so the long wait and the walk home was much pleasant than it could have been. Eventually the score on the board was corrected to 5 - 4; you'd think that someone would check things like this.

Impossible thing 2:
There was a wave and it went counter-clockwise. Waves in Fenway Park are always clockwise. They start in the Center Field Bleachers and go around clockwise - eventually crossing the Green Monster and back through the Bleachers. They often last about 3 rounds - usually stopped when some baseball event actually happens.

Last night's started in the left grandstand and went around 3 times. In the several hundred games I've attended I've seen attempts to start a counter clockwise wave from that spot; more frequently there are attempts to start waves in other portions of the ballpark but they never take. This was a first.

Last weekend was Spring Dance Camp. It takes place at a YMCA Camp in Connecticut. As usual we had a great time with lots of great Contra Dancing and English Country Dancing, the variety show, and lots of hanging around.

There was a small baseball field - Fenway park looked a bit like this a few years before its more recent renovations - they even had a net on the top of the wall:



In a Yurt where we had a few dance sessions there was this amusing banner from last summer.



And there was a band session out on the dock.

A while ago I read a great book by Jared Diamond: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. In this he describes his theory of reasons why this happens: climate change, hostile neighbors, collapse of trading partners, environmental problems, and failure to adapt to environmental issues. He gives an analysis to many occurrences in history.

We have just seen the collapse of another nation - RedSox Nation.

Last night the floundering tribe lost a battle for a number of reasons but one of the important hurling-warriors floundered at a critical moment and gave up a fatal blow. At the same time two other warring tribes were battling and the one most known for its empire was not using its best hurling-warriors and gave up its dominant lead to the current RedSox Nation enemy in an earlier-that-evening battle and then moments after the RedSox failure that tribe suckomed.

Now what were the causes of this? Many people believed at the beginning of the year that RedSox Nation was destined for World Domination by the end of the year. The General-Chief had acquired several club-wielding warriors at great expense and the battery of hurling-warriors looked quite formidable. Several other warriors had recovered from serious injuries incurred in last year's battles.

Many onlookers and scribes think that the chiefs did not properly respond to anticipated climate changes in their choice of the correct warriors and then as the climate changed during the year as a result of the many battles between warring tribes they didn't do a good job of choice of warriors in critical situations.

Several of the hostile neighbors turned out to be stronger than originally anticipated. Proper steps were not taken to deal with the changing situation. In the battles in the last month there were significant failures at every level.

There was definitely a problem with trading partners because as some of the warriors got injured in the many battles during the year good trades were not able to be made.

The environment is tough for these warriors - they fight a battle almost every day, sometimes in poor weather or timing conditions and have to travel during the middle of the night to seek out other tribes. Earlier this month the tribe was in a good position relative to other tribes but then many battles were lost and the environment was completely different. Some think that the training and conditioning earlier in the year was not good enough and made some of the warriors more vulnerable to injuries or just tiring - and there were several critical and a number of minor ones. Appropriate replacements were not found or used properly.

What the next steps will be is unknown.

- Some of the current warriors may defect to other tribes.

- There will be negotiation with other tribes.

- The highest level chiefs may decide to replace the operational chiefs.

- New medicine men with various skill sets might be found to deal rehabilitation and conditioning.

- And a long shot: maybe the root cause is the water supply and a new vendor will be found.

One of the players drafted by the Red Sox is Seth Schwindenhammer. If he makes it to the team his name will be the longest ever (beating out Saltalamacchia by a letter - he plays for the Rangers). This presents a challenge to the people who sew names on the backs of uniforms.

As Yogi Berra said: "It ain't over till it's over"

We were at the Red Sox game tonight. It dragged and it was slow and the Red Sox were behind 7-0 at the middle of the 7th inning. The game was boring; some fans had already left. It was pretty demoralizing but we hung in and still sung a spirited Take Me Out To the Ballgame at the Seventh inning stretch.

Then the Sox scored 4 runs in the bottom of the 7th and from then on everyone stood up and cheered with passion. In the 8th they scored 3 more to tie it up. Sweet Caroline was quite sweet ; rsc goes to the men's room at that time but I belt it out.

And then in the bottom of the 9th with 2 outs another run got scored.

I Love that Dirty Water.

The crowd was extremely loud for that last almost an hour (I should have brought ear plugs - post season is noisier). It was an unbelievable win. One of the best we've ever been to - well there was game 5 of the ALCS in 2004 which lasted 5 hrs and 49 minutes; this one was a bit over 4 hours.

I wonder what those people who left early think. I suppose some will wake up tomorrow to read the headlines and be somewhat surprised. A bit like reverse of the Dewey Wins headlines.

Now we have to beat the Rays twice in St Petersburg.

Last night we went to the RedSox / Yankees Circus at Fenway Park. The game started late because of rain and because of a celebration to honor the 40th anniversary of the Impossible Dream team that brought the Sox out of many years of doldrums (they did lose the world series in game 7) and brought them back to being popular. What is odd to me is that I lived in Cambridge at the time (1967) and had no idea that this was happening - I completely ignored baseball and as I recall didn't read the newspaper or see TV news - maybe we didn't even have a TV set then. During the rain delay they played Sergeant Pepper over the sound system - what a great album; that I do remember when it came out.

What is usually a 3 hour game took just under 4 hours, 4 batters were hit by pitches, there were 3 pitches by Wakefield, the Red Sox Knuckleball pitcher (that means the ball is thrown in such a way that it doesn't spin which makes it difficult to hit and difficult to aim) that couldn't be caught by the catcher several of which resulted in Yankee runs scoring, he walked 6 batters and the Sox lost 9-5. The Yankees manager was ejected for arguing with an Umpire, and a Yankees pitcher was ejected for throwing at a batter. And two Red Sox left the game with mild injuries.

There were lots of security people around; more beer was being consumed than usual at least by the people sitting in our row and the row in front of us since we had to get up an awful lot of times to let them pass. Some fans were wearing blond wigs because A-Rod, the Yankee third baseman that everybody in Boston loves to hate, had been seen with a blond who was not his wife at several places when the Yankees were in Toronto earlier this week (a picture of this appeared on the front page of the New York Post and Daily News).

One disturbing thing is that we have gone to 4 games and seen the Sox lose 3 of them even though they have won 36 and lost 17 games (the best record in baseball at the moment). We have 8 more to go to; I hope this trend doesn't continue.

This afternoon we will watch the game on TV and then probably go to Gloucester Stage Company to see Hillary and Monica (a not very good play according to the one review I read in the Globe).