October 5, 2007




Baseball Dreaming.



As the title infers, it could all be a dream, but for great moments it just about fills the bill.

The dreaded Yankees come to town with their pin stripes and 25,000.000 per year man and other assorted 'best that money can buy' ballplayers, assembled together looking like a bunch of swaggering members of the board of directors of the Chase Manhattan Bank on a company picnic.


One game does not a series make, but for this one game, against this foe of all foes, if we went no further it would be the game that lit the fuse on this bunch of young, unrecognized by the media that doesn't think baseball of any consequence is being played anywhere but on the coasts of the United States, and the imagination of all baseball fans and teams who have to make do, and compete against teams like the strutting, smirking, Yankees with teams constructed and nourished within the constrictions of a budget.


But all that aside, the game that played out in front of our eyes was Hollywood to be sure. The game is not two minutes old and the strutting, swaggering gang from the Bowery and one of their purchased hired hands are ahead one to nothing by virtue of the long ball. Ho Hum, another day at the bank, why do we have to spend another two hours of so when we could just as well end it now and go back to the bank and count our money; but no not this night.


This night it is the night of retribution of all the carefully constructed, within a budget teams, that have to operate on the amount of money that the Yankees put aside to pay someone to keep the dust off their statues to themselves and their pin stripped greatness situated out in center field.


For two hours plus the Indians, playing for themselves of course, but also for all the other teams who have had to step aside or more corrected been stepped on and over by the money bloated colossus from New York retaliate and then retaliated again and again until they tallied 12 runs against the Yankees 3. Oh joy, mighty Casey from New York has been beaten, stepped on, and left lying bleeding but not grieved over.


One game does not make a series or a season, but it makes a moment so great that if it all goes badly and those bankers come back to win it all like usual, at least we had one game, one great game, and I'll remember it forever.

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