The 5th Inning

Heard Ethelbert Miller talking to Bob Edwards about his memoir The 5th Inning , the title a metaphor for approaching the end of life. A baseball game is considered "complete" and can go in the books after five innings. If a decade of living roughly corresponds to an inning, then, those of us in our 50s can only hope for a 7th inning stretch, a dramatic and satisfying 9th, and (hope against hope) extra innings ( "That's what one hopes for when the game seems to be ending.") I miss Ernie Banks ("let's play two!)... but take heart from Norman Corwin.

Miller's cool website pays homage to the generations before him.

The book features this epigraph, from an 8th century Chinese poet: "The months and the years, a running river. Then there's the day you wake up old."

Then there's the day you wake up younger than the day before. It can happen.