Sunset, Tuesday, 13 October 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

I couldn’t quite figure out how to say this without sounding like a retro reactionary nostalgia-mongering reprobate anarchist out to sabotage the U.S. economy and undercut the moral fiber of our youth, not to mention our elderly, and ... everybody else. Oh well.

I also know that the core of this idea is already popular with a certain small retro reactionary (etc.) minority of sports fans, but I may have added something to it that makes it even better ... or worse.

For the temperate zones of the northern hemisphere, it should be evident that October baseball was meant to be played in the daytime. This means the World Series, of course, and, by extension into modern times, the playoffs that lead up to it. Of course I’m influenced by warm gauzy memories of Indian summer afternoons when people stopped what they were doing at work or school to follow the game. I’m well aware of the economic imperatives of prime time television revenues that drove these games into the dark ... and into perfect football weather. I also believe that we are generally much, much more driven in our busy daytime lives than we used to be – how many would dare to stop and watch baseball at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday?

My wicked solution: Go whole hog. Make the Fall Classic into a variable series of national quasi-holidays, feast days, or picnic days if you will, to celebrate America. What is more American? (Lacrosse, the fastest sport on foot, but we’ll let that go ... for now. Oh, and basketball, but ... where was I?) So, O.K., what could feel more classically American? Not only that, these are festive days we would share, increasingly, with friends in Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Panama, China, Japan, Korea, all the places where baseball has taken hold. It would be great for baseball, and would mean more money, overall, not less. It would be good for the nation and our impoverished workaday obsessions. It would be good for the soul.

And I was very happy when it dawned on me, so to speak, that this little composition isn’t really a random digression but has everything to do with the sun going down on a warm autumn day like the one we’ve just had here.

Sunset’s for someone very close who’s having a tough week. For Rev. Sister S., cheers and love from this side of the Hully Gully.