Last Call for Baseball

In
a few short hours the most significant baseball game of the modern era
will get underway at Yankee Statium,
and I won’t be there.  I won’t be watching on TV either.  Instead
I’ll be with Dave Winer and his zany band of bloggers at the regular
Thursday night meet-up at the Berkman center.

The Dowbrigade know that when he enters the room Dave will
exclaim, "Well look who’s here.  I thought we wouldn’t see
you til next week.  Aren’t you going to watch the game?"

"Well, Dave," I will answer, "I would much prefer to pass
this evening with you guys than watching the game of the century, because
YOU, Dave, have not let me down EVERY FALL for the past 32 years.  Because
you, my friend, would never RIP my HEART from my chest and stomp it into
the dirt behind home plate!"

What can I say? Last week I skipped the bloggers meeting
to watch the game, and of course the Red Sox lost (the mangy curs). So
I HAVE to attend this week. So goes the Karma.

Of course, artound about 8:30 I will slip quietly from
the room, scamper down the street to a neighborhood bar and cast my
hopes and dreams in with a bunch of inebriated undergraduates, for better
or worse. 

Who knows how long I will last, so raw and intense are
the emotions brought to the fore on a night like tonight? How much more
can I take? Better than even money, sometime around the 7th or 8th inning,
the Dowbnrigade will drain his last beer and stagger out into the chilly
Cambridge night, ready to let the baseball gods have their way with him
and the assembled multitudes, content to wait until the morning to find
out the answer to the question he most wants answered, at that moment,
in the whole wide world.

You either trust the Universe, or you don’t.