Baseball is the only sport I follow, currently thrilled by the reign of a Japanese superstar being hailed the greatest of all time, yet I was too much a wimp last night to watch this one out. But this morning, I awoke to this fabulous prose in The New York Times by
"LOS ANGELES — On a night when Shohei Ohtani could not be subdued, on a night when one of baseball’s cathedrals offered its entrants a baptism in the sport’s capacity for agony and ecstasy, on a night when the shame that the game had to end morphed into the fear that it never would, the Los Angeles Dodgers captured control of the World Series in a 6-5 Game 3 victory in 18 innings over the Toronto Blue Jays.
At 11:50 p.m., six hours and 39 minutes after the first pitch arrived, Freddie Freeman supplied the walk-off home run off Toronto reliever Brendon Little to send the Dodger Stadium crowd into the sort of rapture possible only after two full games’ worth of teeth-grinding, stomach-turning, heart-rending baseball. At the end of the joint-longest game in World Series history, the fans were exhausted. They were exhilarated. As Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” blared across Chavez Ravine, they were heading to the parking lots knowing the Dodgers were two victories away from a second consecutive world championship."
Way to go, L.A.!
2 comments:
There is something about baseball, that it can appeal to those who are not interested in sports. I fall into that category. When I was with the Big Apple Circus we played the parking lot of the Somerset Patriots Baseball team in March each year at Bridgewater NJ. The facility has a retro look. One of my responsibilities required checking in with the Management of the team occasionally. On a mild March day, after a meeting, I would wander into the seats and could imagine myself enjoying a beer and and hot dog and of course, the game.
That's me, Jim. I am already waiting for next spring to arrive, as the local Sacramento Athletics, formerly the A's. will be back at it and are on the rise. I like the long seasons, the almost daily games, which I can listen to in whole or in part, back and forth between other shows. I saw them at the Colosseum one night in 1972, during their three-season world series reign. Warm autumn night. They made the game look like ballet. And this year the Dodgers broke records by playing to 4 million in the stands. They, L.A. and Ohtani were made for each other
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