Folly of the Faithful Canine

The early 1900s saw a drop in baseball scores,
Especially in homers; man, I bet those games were bores.
The foul strike rule was new back then, but that is still around.
The larger ballparks meant that fewer balls would leave the grounds.
Indeed, the balls were often pitched 100 times at least,
As early baseball leagues preferred to keep their costs decreased.
The pitchers were allowed to scuff the ball or use their spit,
Including with tobacco juice when ballparks were unlit.
The era ended suddenly in 1921,
For reasons still disputed, though I’m sure the games got fun.
It’s true they outlawed spitballs and a bunch of other pitches.
The ballparks may have shrunk, and balls would need more frequent switches,
Since one ball, rather dirty, killed Ray Chapman at the plate.
A cork (not rubber)-centered ball would make the distance great.
It’s possible that players learned some lessons from Babe Ruth,
But that would not account for all improvement then in truth.
A few new rules meant more recorded runs within the stats.
In any case, the live-ball era’s got the fans more bats.

The system of scoring in tennis is strange,
With “love,” 15, 30, and 40, then “game.”
How’s that a pragmatic numerical range?
Why isn’t the interval always the same?

The 40 was once 45, as I thought.
It seems they just liked it one syllable short.
An alternate theory: The score would be brought
To still less than 60 with deuce on the court.

Now let me explain: When the players are tied
At 40, that’s “deuce,” and the next one to score
Receives an “advantage” but won’t have the pride
Of winning except if he does it once more.

And why set the limit at 60? Who knows?
It’s commonly thought that a clock formed the base.
The scoring began as advances arose
To tell quarter hours by chime or by face.

It also might come from the old jeu de paume,
Precursor to tennis, where players would move,
On scoring, a given length closer to home,
Say 10 or 15 feet, but that’s hard to prove.

And “love” meaning zero? The answer I’d heard
In youth was a basis in l’oeuf, French for “egg.”
The Dutch iets voor lof doen is sometimes preferred:
“Do something for praise.” Are they pulling my leg?

It might not be foreign: The players might play
For love of the game, not with money at stake.
Perhaps when they’re starting, ill will is at bay;
They still love each other. Well, that’s a sweet take.

One Father’s Day, my father got a tie,
But not the sort you likely had in mind;
In fact, my statement borders on a lie:
It wasn’t of the neck-encircling kind.

He saw it and he started getting tense.
He knew the tie would not persist for long,
But none of us could confidently sense
If he would find the upshot right or wrong.

Mere minutes later, Dad stood up and raved:
His day had come up roses after all!
The tie now broken, victory was saved
By Orioles remaining “on the ball.”

My dad pointed out that in 2006, Italy won the World Cup shortly before my family came -- and after we'd made the vacation plans. In light of our imminent return to Spain, he predicted that Spain would win this year's World Cup. He was right.

Incidentally, we'll be there largely for a friend named Paul. He is not an octopus, or else he's really good at camouflage and other trickery.

I wonder where we'll go in 2014. Any suggestions, soccer fans?

The other day, I heard a complaint that if a guy tells other guys he's from Seattle, they'll say, "Oh, how do you like them Seahawks/Mariners/etc.?" And if he says he doesn't follow sports, they assume he's gay. Similar problems exist for other cities' straight men who don't follow sports.

This may be a fringe benefit to living in DC these days: Our teams suck, so we're almost never asked. And if we are asked, we just need to say they suck.

Mind you, this is just a theory. I haven't spent much consecutive time in other parts of the U.S., so outside guys aren't likely to get into that chummy talk with me. I went to college in Ohio, but that was hardly a sporty school.

I attended my first Nationals game last night. My previous baseball-going experience consists of numerous Orioles games between elementary and high school, plus a couple of Bowie Baysox games since. My dad is the main baseball fan in the family. I’m a relatively neutral spectator, but I was basically rooting for the Nats – not so much out of local loyalty as out of contempt for the Cleveland Indians’ name and mascot. (Yes, I would root against the Redskins if I cared about football.)

The Nats lost, but the most important thing to me is that it got exciting. At the start of the ninth inning, they were winning 3-1. Then the Indians got a three-run homer (good thing I wasn’t too tired for another half-inning). When the Nats’ Brandon Watson came to bat, many cheered for his .444 average… and he promptly knocked the ball a short distance, mostly vertically, into a glove. Up next was Nook (pronounced “Nuke”) Logan, whose .202 was unpromising, but he got fans roaring his first name after a double. Soon the bases were loaded. Then a double play, care of Nook overrunning third base when it was too late. What a shame that his prestige came and went so quickly.

What made my stadium experience different from the past, aside from the slightly better mascots, was the mixed crowd allegiance. From where we were sitting, it sounded like equal numbers of Nat and Indian fans. This is not altogether surprising, given (1) the proportion of Washington area residents from elsewhere and (2) the newness of the team.

For a nearly neutral fan like me, it’s fairly pleasant to hear cheers no matter which team gains an advantage. And the cheers always overrode the groans.

Yesterday I saw Take Me Out, a play whose title has at least six relevant interpretations. It's about the aftermath of an African-American baseball all-star, a Darren Lemming, coming out of the closet. (Lest you be confused like many viewers, the action begins when his orientation is already common knowledge.)

Have I mentioned that I've been losing interest in pure comedies? Perhaps the trouble is that recognizing a pure comedy causes me to expect frequent laughs, thereby making them predictable. As a result, sporadically hilarious dramatic fare like The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? is more my style.

TMO was as great as any play I saw in the last year or so, including, you might recall, M. Butterfly. The humor never detracts from the angsty dead seriousness at points, nor vice versa, no matter who it involves. The breaking of the fourth wall by various characters, even with others watching, is seamless, as is the time jumping. The abstract depiction of baseball on a medium-sized stage – players not actually posed with relation to one another – works perfectly. Everyone has their sins and other flaws as well as their strengths (not sure about all having virtues). The schlemiehl-y Mason "Mars" Marzac is easily the best source of humor, but thankfully he doesn't nearly steal the show. It's hard to believe that the same actor of ribald, laconic, all-around bigoted redneck pitcher Shane Mungit also played Ernest Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest.

Here's a bad habit of mine: when I see a story that features a non-straight and people reacting to that fact about him or her, I initially assume that the ultimate message is "Homosexuality isn't bad." Such a message, while not followed by more than half the population, would already sound trite to me. Fortunately, neither Angels in America nor Walk on Water nor most other stories I know to have non-straight characters take such a simple approach. In truth, I still haven't figured out the message of TMO, but it must have something to do with communication, like "There is a time to talk and a time to keep your mouth shut." One of the narrating leads, an amiable player of indeterminate orientation, firmly believes in the healing power of speech, but all too frequently the wrong words are used.

You probably know by now that I almost never rave about a piece of entertainment without mentioning a weakness or two. In this case:

(1) It seems the playwright could have used some more communication. Besides the slight confusion at the beginning about Darren already being famously gay, there comes a point when the hostility between two friends leaves us guessing, tho we did figure it out after the play.

(2) The team, which must be based on the Yankees, is called The Empires. Not only does that sound weird for a team of human individuals, but if you didn't already know or get a good look at the uniforms, you'd think at first they were saying "umpires."