Rabbit

Last year at the baseball conference:

"Hub Fans Bid Rabbit Adieu"

forever young

Just wrote the last paragraph of my little Updike-Williams essay for the next "Baseball in Literature and Culture" volume. I hate shilling for corporate America but I just have to confess: I love this commercial.

A virally-infectious Pepsi commercial featuring a hip-hop-cadenced rendition of the Dylan classic “Forever Young” has been getting a lot of televised play lately. After a slew of rapid-sequence-montage clips drawing on images from sports and popular culture, and before the final, lingering image of Ruth and Jeter capped by the summary slogan “every generation refreshes the world,” we're treated to a split-second of Williams in full swing. That's the immortal image he sought and deserves. In time, let us hope, that ugly other mental picture, the one his wayward son forced upon us, just fades away. The picture of perfection is the one we want to keep.

There goes Roy Hobbs

"Sometimes when I walk down the street I bet people will say there goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was in the game."

"Isn't there something over and above earthly things— some more glorious meaning to one's life and activities?"

"In baseball?"

"Yes."

He racked his brain... (Bernard Malamud, The Natural)

As did Ted Williams, as did John Updike, as also (without bat in hand) do I. Racking our brains, tracking ever-elusive, "ever-not-quite" (William James liked to say) transcendence on Earth. It's oh-so-close, sometimes, glimmering and twinkling at us before it darts back into the dark. But while we're here in the visible world we've got to keep on tracking. And drink a toast before we go.

The Man

Speaking of Ted Williams and his peers...

Growing up in St. Louis, I always heard people contend that Stan Musial was better than Williams. I don't know about that, but I love Curt Flood's Musial anecdote. As a young ballplayer, Flood solicited the veteran's advice. How do you hit a curveball? "You wait for a strike, then you knock the shit out of it."

Who was the best? Neither Williams nor Musial, according to the The Man:

"There was never a day when I was as good as Joe DiMaggio at his best. Joe was the best, the very best I ever saw." (Baseball Almanac)

Curt Flood was the great centerfielder of my St. Louis childhood. The best I ever saw, though, was Willie Mays.

"The Last Pitch"

Grades are in! Time to refocus on my next work-in-progress, a tighter and more "publishable" version of my "Baseball in Literature and Culture" conference contribution, noted here a while back. (That's tighter as in more concise and coherent, not more sloshed or stupid. Gotta set the bar high.)

As noted: at the conference in March I paid tribute to John Updike and his classic New Yorker tribute to the great Ted Williams, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu." It was my small way of bidding "Rabbit" adieu. Ted, we learned from conference speaker and former MLB star Mudcat Grant, was one of the too-few white stars who welcomed baseball's integration and were kind to African-American ballplayers.

So this will be an homage to Williams and Updike, and a consideration of baseball as mirror to society and culture, and a meditation on death. And I promise, it will be cheerful. Stay tuned.

"Mudcat"

Yesterday I enjoyed and participated in the 14th annual "Baseball in Literature and Culture" conference, with scholars from far and wide (though I had only to amble down the hall) assembling to explore and celebrate the meaning of a game. The luncheon speaker was Jim "Mudcat" Grant, one of thirteen African-American twenty-game winners chronicled in his book The Black Aces.

He spoke of visiting the White House's Previous Occupant, who had difficulty distinguishing Dontrelle Willis from Montel Williams - to Condi Rice's evident embarrassment; of "gross" memories of a brutally-segregated America from which we've just awakened; and of the joy of living long enough to be able to tell his grandchildren, with conviction, that they COULD grow up to be president themselves one day... children whose great-great grandmother was born into slavery.

Dr. Harriett Hamilton of Alabama A&M reminisced as she paged through "Daddy's Scrapbook," the sacred memory-trove of her late father Henry Kimbro - one of the great under-sung stars of the Negro Leagues.

For my part, I paid tribute to John Updike and his classic New Yorker tribute to the great Ted Williams, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu." It was my small way of bidding "Rabbit" adieu. Ted, we learned from Mudcat, was one of the too-few white stars who welcomed baseball's integration and were kind to African-American ballplayers.

I can't wait 'til next year.