Verda Delp

Thinking about things:

I love Roger Angell's writing. I love the way he writes about people's lives--most especially E.B.White's and his own. [As you know, I have posted his writing on my blog many times.]

I also like the way he writes about baseball. And I love the notes he makes for his writing about baseball. And that the New Yorker posts them.

So here are a few notable tidbits from last week's New Yorker

THE SPORTING SCENE

Dispatches from the playing fields by New Yorker writers.

October 28, 2011

ROGER ANGELL’S GAME SIX SCORECARD

Posted by The New Yorker

Last nights's wild Game Six between the Cardinals and Rangers is already being counted among the greatest World Series games ever played. Below is Roger Angell’s scorecard, which records every error, lead change, and clutch hit.

[click to view larger image]

October 28, 2011

CARDS WIN

Posted by Roger Angell

Yes, a great game and never mind the early stuff. Tied five times, it produced six lead changes, and rehabilitated itself, from stinker to thriller, along the way. Stricken Cardinals fans at Busch Stadium stood in silence in the ninth inning and again in the tenth, with their mittened paws covering their faces up to the eyes, while their team teetered on the brink of elimination, one strike away from winter. In the ninth, with the Redbirds down by two runs, there was a brief shot of Cardinals ace pitcher Chris Carpenter and a couple of teammates laughing about something at the dugout rail, and I thought, What’s with these guys? Now we know, and with the Series tied for the last time and the season-ending finale just ahead, there are a few hours left in which to sort over last night once again—or else, if you’re Nolan Ryan or anyone in Texas, try to think of something else.

Winning lets you play with the game a little, smiling at your goofs and gaffes: Furcal and Holliday messing up that routine fly ball in left field; David Freese dropping a tiny pop-up next to third, with each error producing a run, are perfectly O.K., aren’t they? Who cares, actually? Losing infects everything. If you love the Rangers, tiny errors by your first baseman Michael Young in the fourth and again in the sixth won’t ever go away, and, beating yourself up now, you become convinced that the manager Ron Washington’s decision to pinch-hit for his best reliever, Scott Feldman, in the top of the eleventh, is the worst mistake in franchise history. Freese, who hit that game-tying two-run triple off the right-field wall in the ninth, is the first Cardinals batter up in the bottom half, and he bops the sixth pitch from Mark Lowe into the green lawn behind center field. Walkoff.

This World Series hasn’t won big ratings, but anyone who stayed awake until 12:40 A.M., E.T., last night has felt a glow of privilege all around him this morning. With Game Seven waiting as a last gift, we’ve mastered baseball’s only sensible lesson, which is stay tuned.

Just so you know I watched Game 6 and 7.