Going Home
I admit it. I turned off the radio last night with the Astros up 2-1 and a Philly on base. I have a weak constitution. I knew if they blew the lead and lost the game, I’d being going to bed feeling bad and it would be hard to sleep. I was tired anyway. So, I turned it off. Sometimes instant gratification is over-rated. This morning I woke up, rested, better able to deal with a loss, and discovered they’d won with some great pitching and sterling defense. Just like you’d want them to win.
Now we come home with two chances to win one game. We’ve been here before in 2019 when we lost to Washington who beat us twice at home to win it all, and in 1980 when Philly beat us twice at home in the NLCS. But history seldom repeats itself in baseball. No two situations are exactly the same, and the odds are in our favor, and the odds usually win out which is why casinos are insanely profitable. Still, they have to play the game, and I know the history of baseball and improbable things happen. I just hope they happen for us rather than against us.
With that said, I now wait for Saturday. I’ll be at a house concert when the game starts. Music and baseball. Fairly sympatico things. There’s a poetry to both. A lyricism. I’ve been at many a show where the score of the Astro game, wherever it is being played, has been called out from the audience to the musician on stage. The game goes on, the show goes on, songs are sung, we remember our youth, we think of our children, we wait for the score. How many times did we touch home? How many times did they? And you have to love a game where the object is to go home.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver's Tale