It's Friday Night and the Giants Are Bumming Me Out: Two Paragraphs In Words

Baseball, like bowling and Phish jams and Chris Hansen's cadence, and - the BIG one, the one that we understand most intuitively - life (qua metaphor), is a succession of waves, tidal in their sureness. Ups downs, gutters strikes, pits and pearls, that kind of thing. To put it simply, things are good and then things are bad and when they are bad it's easy to forget your way out of the darkening valley. These are clichés, of course, but I recently read this, "Most lives are guided by clichés. They have a soothing effect on the mind and they express the widely accepted sentiment that, when peeled back, is seen to be a denial of silence...Death is the best soil for cliché. The trite saying is never more comforting, more restful, as in times of mourning." What I am getting at is that the Giants are running up against walls of the nevermore. Death panels are convening, so to speak. So what to do? I say we get back to simplicity. Baseball, after all, is a simple game. (More anonymous quoting), "Whatever complexities, whatever dark politics of the human mind, the heart - these are noted only within the chalked borders of the playing field. At times strange visions ripple across the turf; madness leaks out. But wherever else he goes, the [baseball player] travels the straightest of lines. His actions are wholesomely commonplace, his actions uncomplicated by history, enigma, holocaust or dream." Simplicity then. Digging in, eyes forward, the rolling up of sleeves. See the ball, hit the ball. Catch. Throw. Recapture that passion for simplicity, for the true old things.

Hope or despair? In Queens, August, in the 100 degree heat, the distinction is unclear.