Hope For Us All

For a Mets fan in Boston, the native inhabitants of the Red Sox Nation were always a little bit scary. When I was at B.U., The Curse was alive and well and the crowds at Fenway were still capable of mood swings so violent they made Norman Bates look like Norman Rockwell.

Yesterday's flawless champ could be tomorrow's charmless bum. Even worse, sometimes "yesterday" meant "last inning" and "tomorrow" meant "did-you-see-that-fuckah-drop-the-bahl? right now." Now, I don't know how much the atmosphere there has changed since they finally managed to assuage the Bambino (twice), but there are good portents.

Bill Buckner got a hero's welcome yesterday. I was only seven when the fateful play occurred - and the Mets winning the '86 Series was a formative experience for my fandom - but I still say that Buckner got a raw deal. One night a Boston poet named Jack McCarthy did a reading at school at the behest of Liz Jones. I still love his poem about Buckner. I've read it in previous years to macho senior boys who were, shall we say, skeptical about the merits of poetry. And though I doubt they're now knee-deep in sonnets and haikus, they like Jack McCarthy, which means they have a little taste. It won't be as good if you can't hear him read it, but I'm going to post it anyway:


THE WALK OF LIFE


You weren't here that long
near the end of a career
that wasn't quite Hall of Fame.
We knew you through the box scores
and the car radio.

And I remember as that fateful season neared its end
almost hearing tears in the announcer's voice
as he tried to describe the sight of you
careering around second on your two
terribly damaged legs
stretching a double into a triple.
"Gallant" was the word he used
and gallant is how I remember you.

But we live in a time
when Nike erects a billboard
in sight of the Olympic athletes:
"You Don't Win Silver,
You Lose Gold,"
and so it is that some remember only
the nightmare tenth inning of Game Six
the big bouncing grounder
that found its way
between those gallant legs, condemning you
to the underworld of those who made it to
within a whisker of the top,
who beat all the competition

except one.
The inmost circle of that underworld's reserved
for the Fred Merkles, and Roy Reigelses
Denny Galehouses, and Mike Dukakises
for those second-place finishers
destined to be remembered particularly
for their hammartia
that one error in judgment
the base untouched
the photo-op in the tank

Oh, Billy Buck,
why did it have to happen to you?

I once saw a music video
that began with a long string of clips
of athletes looking foolish-
stone-fingered tight end
juggles ball five times
before linebacker demolishes him
and ball drops harmless out of bounds;
runner trips over second base as though
surprised that it was there;
tall Caucasian butchers slam dunk,
comes away bleeding.
Then suddenly it changes-
wide receiver soars in the end zone
gets one hand on the ball
but it sticks
and he cradles it to his belly
surrendering his body to the furious crash
of the cornerback he just burned
in a moment of such violent airborne beauty
such conspicuous gallantry
that you thank God videotape exists
and you pray that long after we've destroyed ourselves
aliens will land and find this tape
and wonder at the mad grace
of such a race.
And the soundtrack sings
"You do the walk,
you do the walk of li-hi-hife..."

I was surrounded by children
when I saw that video
my daughters and their cousins
and like someone suddenly filled with the spirit
I stood up and began to preach
the brilliance of what they were watching:
that if you want to achieve
anything spectacular in life
you have to risk humiliation
and this one time they all listened to me
fascinated like...
pigeons in Assisi.

And I can still see you
standing stiff and tall,
the ball bouncing toward you big and slow
and I know you're thinking,
"Thank God, at least we're out of the inning,"
but then it's a little too slow
and the batter is tearassing down the line toward you
faster than anyone named Mookie has a right to move

so you reach deep into
the gallant center of your soul
and you will the ball to get there
a little quicker
because now it has to
and there is one tired instant in there
when you believe that you can do this,
that you can will the ball there-
it's believing in yourself too much...

[long sigh]

I guess what bothers me most is our dishonesty.
We know this happens to a thousand people
one way or another every hour of every day.
But we can't live with that knowledge.
So we joke, we say,
"Like Bill Buckner, ho ho ho"
fostering the pretense we're too good
for this too happen to us
when what is spectacularly obvious
is we're not even close to being good enough
ever to be exposed to anything this bad
our errors go unnoticed
because we go unnoticed
and we like it that way....

If we were honest, your name would be spoken
only after the lights were out
and then only between two persons
who had achieved the deepest intimacy
who knew that they could turn to one another
in the darkness
when the fear was on them
one of them might gently brush
the shoulder of the other
and the other one might
swim up from the depths of sleep and whisper
"What is it, my darling?"
and the one might sigh,
"Bill Buckner,"
and the other might
caress the one and whisper

"Shhh. It's all right.
Sleep will come,
when you're not looking.
Morning will come, and breakfast,
and things that should be easy
will be easy once more.
It's the Walk of Life.
You've walked it before
and you will walk it again.
Shhh now beloved."