Baseball is reaching its breaking point. An elbow-injury epidemic has become an existential threat to the sport.
The New Yorker
I went out to the mound ’cause it was nothing-to-nothing with a man on third and nobody out in the bottom of the ninth. Kind of a precarious position, to say the least. One hanging curve and we’d be headed to the showers and then to the night life of Boston, of which there ain’t much. The guys would probably fall asleep lookin’ for a gal to sit on their laps for Christ sake.
So I asked Yogi “Has he still got his stuff?” and Yogi says “What stuff?”
So I said “The stuff he started out with” and Yogi said “He didn’t start out with nothin’ so he’s still got it.”
I looked at Clarence “Cuddles” Marshall and gave him the once-over. “Whadda ya say?” I asked him in no uncertain terms. “Ya got it or not?”
“My elbow’s kinda sore,” he said. “I think I caught that elbow-injury epidemic that’s goin’ around.”
Clarence “Cuddles” Marshall
He didn’t seem that troubled by it, to tell the truth. Almost indifferent, like the universe when it considers human suffering.
“So . . . is it existential-level, or can you give me another inning or two?” I asked.
“I think it’s existential,” he said. “No amount of liniment oil is gonna fix this.”
I looked at Yogi. “You got any suggestions?” I said.
“Existence precedes essence,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “You got anybody warming up?”
“I only got Tommy Byrne and Frank Hiller–they’re both right-handers, and Ted Williams comin’ up. Ain’t that always the way.”
“It’s like freakin’ Sisyphus,” Yogi said, kicking the dirt.
I motioned to the bullpen for Tommy Byrne to start warming up.
Tommy Byrne
“Are you nuts?” Yogi said. “He pitched six innings yesterday, he’s just down there so’s he can make time with the babes on his off day without you seein’ him.”
“He who has a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any ‘how,'” I said. “You know who said that?”
“Birdie Tebbets?”
“No, you dingbat–Fred Nietzsche.”
“Is he with the Sox front office?”
Birdie Tebbets
“No, he didn’t get no further than Division II at the University of Bonn. Pretty smart guy, though.”
While we was chewin’ the fat Byrne had been making his way from the bullpen in right field to the mound.
“Don’t give this guy nothin’ to hit,” I said. “You got nobody on so put him on if you have to, set up the double play.”
“The greatest hazard of all,” Byrne says, “losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.”
“Just waste a pitch outside, see if he’ll go for it,” I says.
Byrne took the ball from me, started to rub it up. Then he looked off towards the third base line where, as Yogi says, it gets late early out there.
“You know, Skip,” Byrne says to me finally as he spat on the ground. “Once you label me, you negate me.”
Left-handers are generally nuts, that’s for sure, but that was too much for me. “Have you been drinking out there in right field?”
“That’s Kierkegaard,” he said as he picked up the rosin bag. “The father of existentialism, in case you didn’t know.”
Geez. Everybody’s a philosopher these days.
I don’t think Greek poets are going to help, on this one.