Slate's Bizbox
the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Christopher Caldwell and Jonathan Mahler

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Christopher Caldwell

Red Sox vs. the Colonists

Posted Tuesday, Feb. 29, 2000, at 4:43 PM ET

Dear Jonathan,

It's hard for me to keep up with your New York news. That's the first I've heard of Andrew Goldstein.

I believe 1918 was the year World War I ended. On that subject, the Boston Globe has the best sports Web site in the country, as surely as it maintains the best sports page. Unfortunately, it's booby-trapped--as deceptively satisfying as a nine-game Red Sox lead on August 5. I can navigate to the home page with my three-generation-old Macintosh, but as soon as I try to click on the article concerning Pedro Martínez's off-season workout regimen, or Jeff Fassero's chances of coming back from a tough year, or the glove that Nomar Garciaparra has had since he was at Georgia Tech ... kaboom! and I'm frozen.

Yes, I like baseball. What else are you supposed to do in Boston? I mean, it's not as if we have a great symphony orchestra or anything, or the two best universities in the United States. It's not as if Boston was a capital of culture, bestriding an empire, at at time when New York was just a piddling, little, chickenshit corner of--

Excuse me. Anyway, I find it hard to muster up a passion for any team other than the Red Sox. Although my wife's family has season tix to the O's, and we go a dozen or so times a year, I've never picked up the habit. There are some years when I'll see 162-plus games (including postseason) and others when I'll pick up games here and there. Generally, when I'm riding high, I can miss a game; it's the times when I've been a bit blue and distracted that I've been driven to the crazy stuff--staying up until 3:30 a.m. to catch the end of the West Coast games, writing letters to the Boston Herald, and annotating the box scores in pen.

The problem with being a Red Sox fan is that every cosmopolitan intellectual snot in the country has adopted the team for his own and insists on intellectualizing it. In fact, just as the most ultramontane Catholics are to be found among the converts, the most obstreperous Red Sox fans are to be found among the literary classes of Beaver Gulch, Neb. One understands the feeling the poor have when confronted with social workers: the horrible sense of being condescended to by people who think you're "poetic." When John Updike talks about his "love affair" with the Red Sox, one wonders what made the Phillies (easily within radio-shot of Shillington, Pa.) such an unsuitable bride that he'd jilt them. When Doris Kearns Goodwin adopts them as a substitute for her departed Brooklyn Dodgers, she needs to be reminded that a sports team is not like a pet that can be put down and replaced with another of the same breed. When Bartlett Giamatti used to talk about how the Red Sox, like baseball, are "designed to break your heart," one wanted to suggest that he get in a relationship that was less dysfunctional. Nobody who grew up listening to Mel Parnell and Ken Coleman (or, later, to Ned Martin and Jim Woods)--on transistors on beaches and in cars, in bars and in bus stations--ever thought the Red Sox were "designed to break your heart." No--they're designed to win pennants. OK, so maybe they haven't won one since 1918. But if Pedro and Ramón stay healthy, and Fassero can come back, and if Carl Everett can hit in the AL ...

Best,
Chris

P.S. Would you like to hear my case that Bill Buckner should be in the Hall of Fame?

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Christopher Caldwell

Red Sox vs. the Colonists

Posted Tuesday, Feb. 29, 2000, at 4:43 PM ET
Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
Christopher Caldwell is senior writer at the Weekly Standard and a columnist for New York Press. Jonathan Mahler is a senior editor at Talk.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES

Highlights from The Fray:

[The Breakfast Table participants covered a wide variety of serious and political subjects this week, and as usual Fraygrants knew which were the really important topics, and were keen to participate in the life of the mind:]

The reason the quoted verse of the Steely Dan lyrics makes no sense is that you have omitted the central line:


Any major dude with half a heart
Surely will tell you, my friend
Any minor world that breaks apart
Falls together again.
When the demon is at your door,
In the morning he won't be there no more.
Any major dude can tell you

Doesn't that make it crystal clear?

--Ralph Bartlett

(To reply, click here.)


I rather think that Jonathan missed Chris' main point. Baseball teams shouldn't be adopted for their success, or for their failures. There's something mightily strange about growing up in California and rooting for the Yankees. After all, there was hardly any shortage of New York teams on the West Coast - whence the need to appropriate the only one that remained where it belonged? I'm a Red Sox fan because I was born and raised fifteen minutes from Fenway Park, because one of my strongest childhood memories is the glory of '86 (and yes, the pain), and because hope springs eternal at the end of winter. I do, however, want to compliment Chris. He may not be a native New Yorker, but he seems as smugly superior as any Yankees fan whom I have ever met.

--Yoni

(To reply, click here.)


Maybe it's one of those "you had to have been there" sort of things, but I thought The Sure Thing was charming. It was funny without being crude or stupid. And the punchline you were strugling with? After a series of catastrophes, the protagonists find themselves locked out of shelter in a downpour. The girl suddenly recalls that she has a credit card, but "I'm only supposed to use it for emergencies!"

--Bill Altreuter

(To reply, click here.)


To Bill Altreuter:
Actually that was the set-up line. The punch line followed: "Maybe one will come up."

--B.Roman

(To reply, click here.)


You should start and post a list of phrases to be banned from the press henceforth. My three nominees (for now): 1) sloe-eyed; 2) tsunami; 3) "I knew (blank) and you're no (blank)."

--Matt Murray

(To reply, click here.)


Here are some more proposed Taboo Phrases: 1) Its the *******, stupid! 2) Risky tax schemes 3) Move forward 4) Media savvy 5) Sole remaining Superpower 6) Outside the mainstream 7) Go negative.

--John McGraw

(To reply, click here.)

Washington Post
The Washington Post
OPINIONS
Assessing Sarah Palin
| Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, John Podesta and others weigh in.
Colbert King: She's No HillaryEditorial: Is She Ready for This?
PLUS » PostPartisan: Quick Takes from Opinions