… until Opening Day.
Of baseball season, that is, for all you non-baseball people.
But for all the baseball nuts out there, among whom I proudly count myself – a dubious distinction, I suppose – I want to offer up just a hint at the promise of Spring.
As I’ve already mentioned, I’m a fan of the 90s TV show “Northern Exposure.” It seemed to hit the nail on the proverbial head about certain things – issues of the day, human emotion, relationships between men and women, and just plain relationships. But “NX” also discussed ideas, both Big and small. And the show’s loquacious DJ, “Chris in the Morning” Stevens, provided some of NX’s best musings (or ramblings) on those ideas. He expounded on the Big and the small, from Descartes’ “thinking is being” (cogito ergo sum) to Jack London’s dogs, to Jung’s collective unconscious. Ideas were real to Chris, which is one of the reasons I liked the character so well.
But he was also one of the aforementioned baseball lunatics. In one episode, while attempting to complete his Master’s in comparative literature – his thesis being, “Casey at the Bat: An anti-filiopietistic metaphor for America’s role in post-Cold War geopolitics” (say that 10x fast) – Chris is stymied by the two professors who were dispatched to the tiny town of Cicely to hear him defend his thesis. Seems they’re at loggerheads as to the pre-modern vs. post-modern approach to interpreting literature, let alone as to what the hell Casey has to do with any of it. Chris comes up with a solution.
This is one of my favorite scenes. It always reminds me that the beauty of baseball – or any beloved sport, for that matter – lies in what is felt, and not in what is thunk, or over-thunk, as the case may be.
This is for Mark H., and any other lunatics out there. The 30-below and frozen tundra won’t stick around forever; it’s just around the corner, baby.
