The Icepick Cometh

I haven't forgotten you, loyal readers (all 2 of you). We've just been on vacation a little bit.

Watching Old-Timer's Day with My Father the would-be Sportswriter, and thinking of Thurman Munson, who died on this day 29 years ago, while trying to educate the Baby in the lore of baseball (and bunny cars).

A few days ago, the Yankees traded for Detroit's Ivan Rodriguez, and I thought the same thing this blogger did at Bronx Banter: what would Munson have thought about the Yankees acquiring a catcher with the nickname of "Pudge," the same as his hated Red Sox rival Carlton Fisk?

Anyway, more blog posts in the future, after vacation. Enjoy the summer.

What is it about baseball, or base-e-bol as The Baby calls it? (He says it almost like Chico Escuela's "beisbol been berry berry good to me," which Sammy Sosa would sometimes pay homage to in 1998.)

What is it about a late afternoon game under sunny skies and lightly breezy temperatures, about sharing a game with two people you adore and love, about a guy walking around with cold beer to sell you, about hot dogs, about soft-serve ice cream in miniature helmets, about no matter how much The Game pisses you off because of steroids, big-ego players and (shamefully) most of my fellow Yankee fans (not the true-Yankee blue Bleacher Creatures of the ’90s who were denizens of Sections 37 to 43 before alcohol was banned there, but the loud-mouth and obnoxious ones guzzling gas in SUVs with Yankee decals on their trailer hitches; perhaps many Red Sox and Mets fans feel the same way about their obnoxious cohorts)?

Despite all that, what is it that makes the game still great to see live, even if your toddler can only sit still in awe for an inning and-a-half? Is it the clichéd pastoral nature of a game that for the formative years of its inception was really a city game¹? Is it summer evenings under a waning sun? Is it the pure simplicity and complexity of the game, the only major team sport without a clock?

Whatever, we took The Baby to his first real game last weekend. He can't stop talking about it. Though this was his favorite part:




¹From George Vecsey's, Baseball, 2006, Modern Library, an imprint of Random House:

Hoboken, the birthplace of another American institution, Francis Albert Sinatra, has lobbied to be considered the home place of baseball [possibly the first big recorded game took place there on June 19, 1846, some 162 years ago last week], but its urban grit and anonymous proximity to New York City make it a poor competitor with upstate Cooperstown for the honor. In the minds of the American builders of baseball, the game needed the appeal of the woods and pastures, with the players retaining the posture of farmers and outdoorsmen. This image was more myth than reality: baseball was a city game.

Within a few miles and short ferry rides, the Knickerbockers could challenge teams like the Empires, Atlantics, Eagles, Putnams, Washingtons, Gothams, Eckfords, and Phantoms in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and New Jersey, whose rosters included men from the shops, factories, offices, and civil service of the metropolis. Some clubs were organized along ethnic lines, like soccer teams of future generations, but others represented trades or companies or neighborhoods.

Can't endorse the new Indiana Jones movie, which we saw at the drive-in last weekend while The Baby more or less slept in the back seat (Iron Man, the second half of the double feature, was much better, and since I dug out my Black Sabbath CD and started playing "Iron Man" in the car, The Baby has taken to saying "Ionman" — but I'm digressing again).

It's not that the new Indy is particularly bad, though it's not good, or that it wastes Karen Allen in a comeback role (someone on Gawker said, "Oh, that's what a MILF looks like"), or that it manages to rip off the first X-Files movie, Back to the Future, and Spike Milligan's old crazy guy from the Bastille from History of the World, Part I, while forgetting how much fun the old Indiana Jones movies could be (though Harrison Ford looks like he's having tons of fun without having to lift the undernourished Calista Flockhart around). It even wastes a pretty good premise of Indy getting older (it takes place in 1957), if no less adventuresome, proving for the fourth time in nine years that George Lucas, God bless him, should be nowhere near a laptop (somehow, he didn't write the screenplay, though Steven Spielberg does a pretty good George Lucas imitation in directing — that's not a compliment).

No, it's merely because St. Jimmy is upset that Too Short isn't in it, as Lord Jim misidentified him. He meant Short Round, and the actor who portrayed him also played Data in The Goonies. He is alive and well (though he used to be called "Ke Huy Quan" and not "Jonathan Ke Quan," as Babble calls him, but jeez, he turns 37 this year — not very funny).

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UPDATE JUNE 10: I should say that the motorcycle chase through Indy's New England college was pretty cool (and at least they weren't on skateboards, which the Back to the Future-like scene preceding it seemed to be leading to).

Also, He-Man seemed to enjoy Shia LaBeouf's performance, so the movie was not without redeeming value.

The Baby is in total Ike from "South Park" stage now — he says a three-word sentence of recognizable words, and then the equivalent of five paragraphs of baby talk. Thankfully, the top of his head doesn't detach and pop up and down like Ike's.

Here's a sample I tried to transcribe last night:
"Ameeto passh, paasch! Shtash, opeen, malk kootch. Ashtoo baasch koosh. Peete schaan. Uh-oh. Lid. All done. Vamash maam. All set. Dowsaurs. Baack. Baack a beez. Darwars. Thaas. All set. Daamee. Fwouwaur. Boossooseet."

We walked up the street and he pointed out each of the bunches of tulips growing in the sidewalk gardens, purples and reds and yellows and oranges cups coming up out of the ground, surrounded by low black iron mini-fences. He liked the steps of the brownstones, too, liked to say "stoop." He got too distracted by the lights and sounds of the burrito joint, though, so we got it to go, and went home to eat and play baseball on the back patio, the baby throwing his whole body into every pitch, so much so that he toppled onto the ground, giggling.