The White Sox played a day game yesterday, a make up for a contest they had to cancel due to bad weather earlier: against the Atlanta Braves, currently sitting about six games back in the NL East. It was one of those rare times in my life when everything suddenly comes together into blissful moments that pleasantly surprise you by suggesting perfection.
The White Sox are not a good baseball team ... why, they are even saying they may be the worst in history. But they played a jewel of a game yesterday that was highlighted by excellent pitching on both teams, with the only score an early home run by the Sox. 1-0, I love games like that. The winning score means much more than usual, with players trying to surmount a single digit but never succeeding, even when a team like the Braves looked like they may pull it out in the ninth inning. One reason I like soccer, which many Americans find boring but I find meditative.
That's the cool thing about baseball. Bad teams can look better than their total record in the space of three hours or less in linear time, but seem more along the vast space of the non-linear, almost quantum in a way. Because the monthly and day-by-day record suddenly seems besides the point. Besides, baseball should have no time limits: the pitch clock is a joke, an effort to impose strict linear time on a game that has always defied the everyday markers or minutes or hours or days even.
Yesterday brought that home to me. The weather was hot in the sun but with a cool breeze whisking in that felt like you had an air conditioner next to you. The Polish sausage, while too expensive, tasted like the ribs at the best restaurant for American food in town, the glorious Miller's Pub. You could sit practically anywhere you wanted: I bought my ticket at the main gate as I plan to do from now on, due to the outrageous fees charged by greed-slime like StubHub: hey, the guy behind the counter actually gave me a paper ticket that, given the current obsession with only using smartphone tickets, makes me want to frame it.
Sat behind home plate for awhile and moved around when we started to lose sunshine in the section.
At one point, I sat behind a father teaching his son how to create a scorecard and I was instantly charmed. I never do that, by the way, because baseball is a meditative zen experience for me, akin to the regular meditation I try to do every day in my apartment for a half-hour. For example, watching the bat hit the ball, which then disappears into the air only to reappear seconds later in the mitt of a player seems like some cosmic magic act.
Ironically, you get a better view of the flying ball from the outfield seats, where I ended up for a final burst of glowing Vitamin D rays. Outstanding.
In general, my views on watching baseball are found in the closing pages of my novel, Zelda Rising ... not only the experience at a game, but the hauntingly violent act that brings an end to the infection of decadence inside the bookstore in question.
Usually, I'd expect moments like this to occur at the friendly confines at Wrigley with the sun-touched wall ivy and all, but damn if this near-perfect game didn't manifest itself at the somewhat maligned Guaranteed Rate. And all for an 11 buck ticket. Outstanding.
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I dislike most modern pop/rock/fake rap these days, so I compiled a Baseball playlist on iTunes and my smartphone. Loud to fend off the outer racket: stuff like Goon Squad by Elvis Costello, I'm So Bored with the USA by the Clash, the version of Substitute by the Sex Pistols, Ramones Beat on the Brat [with a baseball bat]. But the day game actually had some fun music later on, like Wham's Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go and Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer by Nat "The King" Cole. Still, I wanted to hear Steam's Na Na Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye song, which should be played at every Sox game. It's tradition, my friend.
Going to visit drummer Martin Atkins at his museum of post-punk and industrial music tomorrow. Special guest: Chris Connelly, who let out one of rock's greatest screams in that forever classic Revolting Cocks song Stainless Steel Providers.
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Was thinking of doing an open mic at Eli Tea Room in Andersonville tonight, reading from Zelda Rising. But feeling kind of lazy and don't want to spend money, especially considering that I just dropped a hundred bucks on front row tickets to see the very cute professional woman wrestler Maki Itoh in Chicago August 31. Gotta set priorities.
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