Cultured

We are who we are.  I can no more imagine life without baseball than I can without culture.  The stage, the screen, the ballfield—these are where great performances happen.

This connection for me between baseball and culture started back in freshman year of high school.  It was late September 1967, and my mother took me downtown to see “Sand Pebbles,” starring Steve McQueen and Candace Bergen.  “What the hell happened?” More than 50 years old and still a great line.

As I recall, the White Sox beat the Indians that day, to draw within one game of first place with five games to go, two against last-place Kansas City and three against eighth-place Washington; naturally, the Sox lost all five games (and the first ten of the 1968 season for added measure).  What the hell happened?

Three years ago, we heard the Chicago Symphony Orchestra play at Morton Arboretum; the Sox lost.  Two years ago, we went to an outdoor jazz concert at Elmhurst College; Cleveland demolished the Sox, 13-2.  A little over a month later, we went to see the Broadway-bound musical “War Paint,” starring Patti Lupone and Christine Ebersole.  Good show, interesting game.

I parked the car amid reports Chris Sale wouldn’t be starting; that was the day Sale took a pair of scissors to 1983 throwback uniforms he didn’t want anyone to wear.   For added excitement, David Robertson of the Sox gave up three homeruns in the top of the ninth.  I tuned in just in time to hear the Sox had rallied for the win in the bottom of the ninth.  Ask me about Lupone, and I’m likely to talk about Sale.

Yesterday, Michele and I went to see “Pamplona,” a one-man production about writer Ernest Hemingway at the end of his life, starring Stacy Keach.  Last summer, Keach suffered a heart attack on the play’s opening night, onstage no less.  There were no such problems yesterday, I’m happy to report.

When we got back home, I went downstairs to check on the score of the White Sox-Rays game.  Because I am at heart a child, I scrolled down the scoreboard to the Sox game and then counted the runs they had as the visiting team.  That would be eight, maybe enough with James Shields pitching, maybe not.  Then I scrolled down to count how many runs Tampa scored.  That would be seven.  White Sox win.

The Sox pulled ahead for good on a two-run home run by Thor the rookie, aka Daniel Palka, who launched a 439-foot shot for his 17^th homer of the season; before that, Palka had struck out four straight times.  “I just had to forget the first eight-ninths of the game and move on from there,” Palka told reporters after the game.

Hemingway couldn’t have said it better.