Friday, September 26, 2003

YOU COULD SEND A BLIND MAN UP THERE, AND MAYBE HE'D DO BETTER HITTING AT THE SOUND OF THE THING: In memory of the late George Plimpton, a man mostly famous for being famous, I point you today to one of the greatest essays ever written: Plimpton's April 1, 1985 piece on Mets pitching phenom Sidd Finch:
The Mets pressed Burns. Was there any chance that Finch would come to his senses and commit himself to baseball?

"There's a chance," Burns told them. "You will remember that the Buddha himself, after what is called the Great Renunciation, finally realized that even in the most severe austerities -- though he conquered lust and fear and acquired a great deal of self-knowledge -- truth itself could not necessarily be found. So after fasting for six years he decided to eat again."

Reached by SI at the University of Maryland, where he was lecturing last week, Burns was less sanguine. "The biggest problem Finch has with baseball," he said over the phone, "is that nirvana, which is the state all Buddhists wish to reach, means literally 'the blowing out' -- specifically the purifying of oneself of greed, hatred and delusion. Baseball," Burns went on, "is symbolized to a remarkable degree by those very three aspects: greed (huge money contracts, stealing second base, robbing a guy of a base hit, charging for a seat behind an iron pillar, etc.), hatred (players despising management, pitchers hating hitters, the Cubs detesting the Mets, etc.) and delusion (the slider, the pitchout, the hidden-ball trick and so forth). So you can see why it is not easy for Finch to give himself up to a way of life so opposite to what he has been led to cherish."

Classic baseball prose.

No comments:

Post a Comment