magic number

"One is a magic number," I recall from Schoolhouse Rock a couple years ago. And it happens that 1 is the magic number for "my team" the Cards, this day. A victory over Colorado tonight, or a Cubbies loss to the Giants, will put El Birdos (their silly name from my '60s youth, in the days of Gibson and Brock and Flood and Cepeda) officially into the post-season.

St. Louis	89	64	.582	-	-	-	5-5	L1	46-32	43-32	9/23 @ HOU, L 0-3	9/25 @ COL, 8:10P
Chicago	79	73	.520	9.5	1	6.5	5-5	W1	44-30	35-43	9/24 @ SF, W 3-2	9/25 @ SF, 10:15P

Of course it doesn't really matter, cosmically or globally or even locally. But then again, it really does; it matters intensely that we all find something (relatively) silly to care about, in these days of adversity and struggle and war and shouted accusations. We need to play. We need a holiday.

Roger Angell:

This belonging and caring is what our games are all about; this is what we come for. It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team... [But] caring deeply and passionately, really caring—is a capacity or emotion that has almost gone out of our lives.

He says, and he's right, that a little silliness is a small price to pay for sanity.

But there was nothing silly about this great athlete's presence on the diamond.