Good morning,
A potpourri today of thoughts and comments today:
FREDDIE FREEMAN, KIRK GIBSON, AND THE NATURAL
The Dodgers are up 2-games-to-one against the Yankees and head to New York for the next games. While Saturday night’s game was exciting, it was Friday night’s Game 1 of the that will go down as one of the epic battles in World Series history. Despite predictions of a high scoring game because each team possessed a deep lineup that would be facing depleted and exhausted pitching, this was a nail-biter of a game through nine innings that resulted in a 2-2 tie, requiring extra innings. After the Yankees scored in the top of the 10th and with the Dodgers down to their final out with the bases loaded, all eyes were on Freddie Freeman, nursing a sore ankle. Yet, as impossible as it might seem, he unleashed a walk-off grand slam (the first in 125 years of World Series history) that wasn’t in doubt from the moment the bat made contact.
It is hard not to recall the Kirk Gibson homer in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. He also was nursing an injury when he came to bat. He also, in the most unlikely of circumstances, won the game on a home run. As the Los Angeles Times headline said Saturday morning, “Let’s Party Like It’s 1988!” [Note: To those of you not old enough to remember, there was the Prince song, “1999” (Let’s Party ‘til It’s 1999), which once seemed like a long time in the future…]
Leave it to Glenn Raines to find the perfect literary accompaniment to Freeman’s feat, digging this up from The Natural, by Bernard Malamud (later made into a movie starring Robert Redford). It’s in my opinion, the greatest baseball novel and the best baseball movie out there. It is one of the few times when I think a movie was better than the book upon which it was based. For context, “Wonderboy” is the name of the bat fashioned Hobbs and used in the game that will decide the pennant. The movie and the book diverge near the end. In the book, Hobbs swings “Wonderboy” (as described below). In the movie, Wonderboy is cracked and the batboy presents Hobbs with his own “Savoy Special” to use. The result is the same. This is from the book:
“Wonderboy flashed in the sun. It caught the sphere where it was biggest. A noise like a twenty-one gun salute cracked the sky. There was a straining, ripping sound and a few drops of rain spattered to the ground. The ball screamed toward the pitcher and seemed suddenly to dive down at his feet. He grabbed it to throw to first and realized to his horror that he held only the cover. The rest of it, unraveling cotton thread as it rode, was headed into the outfield.”
Roy Hobbs, Kirk Gibson, and now Freddie Freeman—naturals…
HAPPY VS. GOOD?
Bruce Levinson shared the following from a friend of his, writing about his thoughts on his son’s wedding. It touches on happiness and goodness, a subject I’m taking on in a future Musing:
“What do we want for our children? We certainly want them to be happy. But is what we want most for our children to be happy?
Let's test it. Imagine telling your kids the following:
· ‘I don't mind if you are not nice, as long as you are happy.’
· ‘It's okay to be dishonest if it gets you what you want.’
· ‘Do what makes you feel good without worrying about other people's feelings.’
· ‘If you see it and you like it, take it. Don't think about the consequences.’
No good parent would utter any of these statements. But this is what our kids hear if we tell them happiness comes first. The message we really want to convey to our children is this:
‘The most important thing is to be a good person. How you behave matters more than how you feel.
I would rather you do the right thing even though it's hard, than do what's wrong even though it feels good. Kindness, compassion, purpose and integrity are higher than happiness.
If it's hard to be nice, so be it. If it's uncomfortable for you to own up to the truth, do it anyway. If it's inconvenient to do the right thing, it is still the right thing…’
And here's the secret: When we prioritize goodness over happiness, we get both. We learn that happiness comes from not focusing on oneself, but transcending oneself. When you put others first, when you serve a purpose beyond yourself, you find true happiness.
If happiness is our goal, we become self-centered and never happy. If goodness is our ideal, one becomes a mensch who is happy to share, to give, to learn.”
WEDDING IN PALM SPRINGS
We were in Palm Springs this weekend for my cousin’s son’s wedding (for those genealogy mavens, that’s my first cousin, once-removed—more later). Saturday morning I took a walk (before the 94 degree heat set in). Along Palm Canyon Drive are a number of stars, a la the Hollywood Walk of Fame, celebrating famous people associated with the desert community, as well as artists, architects, civic leaders and others. Some of the names likely will span generations, like Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, though I expect their fame will fade and in a hundred years be distant memories like Edwin Booth and Billie Holliday. Others who were famous in our youth already have seen their stars fade—like Hal Linden, Buddy Hackett, Art Laboe and Peggy Lee.
It was striking to me how brief is the fame of even the most famous of our time. They will be footnotes in entertainment history, yet memorialized in film and recording. The rest of us will fade away even sooner, to become in a couple of generations the stuff of stories and old photographs. In a hundred or so years, one will need a family tree to determine who we were. We may well be the subject of some school project. As my father said to me about the fleeting nature of our brief existence on this Earth, “In 200 years, they won’t recall whether I was your father or you were mine…” Food for thought. We are but candles in the wind, or dust in the wind, or whatever musical metaphor you want to use!
AND IF YOU HAVE THE TIME
Here’s the entire final scene of The Natural, complete with the lead-up, the home run, the two women in his life witnessing the feat, the celebration and, of course, the ball climbing in the sky and falling back to Earth to be caught years later (figuratively, of course), by Hobbs’s son. It recalls the games of catch of fathers and sons (including my father and sons) over the generations.
Have a great day,
Glenn
Unless you know something the rest of us don't, the Dodgers are up in the series 2-0 not 2-1.