Saturday, June 24, 2006
Do you see this baseball here on the left? The Official Major League Baseball? I have it right now in my little hands and here is the list of things, in backwards order, that it last touched.
1. My hands
2. My dad's hands
3. My dad's seat at Fenway
4. The floor of the grandstand
5. My dad's arm (when he got home from the game, you could still see the mark from the stitches on the ball, on his arm)
6. Jason Varitek's bat (!!!)
7. Brett Myers' hands
Yes. A foul ball off of Tek's bat. Because my dad is as awesome as awesome can be, and gave it to me, so now it is mine and it is marvelous.
There's something about a game-used ball, isn't there? That pleasing tensile weight, the neat flat thread stitching, the softly stippled texture of the surface of the thing (made visible by the dirt ground into it... Fenway dirt! eeeeeeeeeeeee *has fresh spasm of glee*), all of it makes a baseball cry out to be handled, doesn't it? A baseball lying down won't remain there for long; it's like the human brain is somehow wired to biologically want to pick it up, and, once it's picked up, throw it around, or at least up and down in the air.
If you examine it minutely (as, naturally, I do), you can find the little smudge of what looks like green paint, smashed in with the dirt, probably marking where it hit the stands. You can see the slightly whiter, minutely scraped oval where the bat probably made contact with it. You know that Brett Myer threw it, probably while the crowd was jeering him mercilessly for his off-field activities (rightly so), and that Jason Varitek hit it. It's a whole little story all its own, in addition to the aesthetically pleasing little sphere that it is at its most formalist.
In other words: yay!
I almost don't need to say anything else about the game, right? David Ortiz continues to do insane things that make sane people join him in his happy, happy insanity. Jon(athan) Papelbon continues to make everyone--male, female, any combination thereof, or neuter-- become inappropriately aroused with excitement. Mike Lowell and Josh Beckett continue to make the Marlins look stupid (not that that's saying much). The grounds crew continues to work ridiculous miracles.
Weather permitting, I'll be at the game tomorrow. Here's hoping the rains hold off and the bats stay on.Labels: baseball, gameball, Jason Varitek, MLB, Red Sox
10:14 PM
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