Euclidean Determinations and Beguiling Irregularities

Watching the Red Sox game and its aftermath on Friday night, I was struck by the appropriateness of a couple of famous comments on the significance of baseball: Bart Giamatti's assertion that "It is designed to break your heart," and the longer, perhaps more apt (for this meditation) suggestion by John Updike that Fenway Park in particular, but, we can conclude, all baseball stadiums in general, offer a "compromise between Man's Euclidean determinations and Nature's beguiling irregularities. . . ." Alone of America's major sports, baseball combines the rigid order of the infield structure (90' between the bases, 60'6" from pitcher's mound to the rearward tip of home plate, which is exactly 17" in width) with random outfield distances, foul areas, and distances to the backstop. Such irregularities lead to inconsistencies, marked particularly by the saying in Fenway that "The Wall giveth and the Wall taketh away": a lazy pop fly that happens to arc 310' lands in the first row of the monster seats (cf: Bucky bleepin' Dent), while a crushed line shot that never gets above 50' high ricochets from the wall so quickly that it holds the hitter to a single. In any other park the home-run/easy-fly-out conditions would be reversed. And what's a foul ball out in one park is but a souvenir in another, giving the batter another pitch and possibly keeping a rally going.

But how is this Euclidean symmetrical/Nature asymmetrical combination designed to break your heart? Because, as Giamatti also says, it proceeds along deep rhythms of threes: three strikes, three outs, three times three innings; the only disruption is four, as in a walk. Its apparent symmetry leads us to believe in the possibility of predicting any given situation. For example: the Yankees lead the Orioles by three in the bottom of the ninth, with Mariano Rivera needing but three outs to keep the Yankees in the hunt for at least a tie with the Bosox for the Eastern Division Championship. Case closed. In fact, several of the Bosox regulars shower, dress and are headed home, knowing that they will have to wait until Saturday for the next opportunity to clinch. The Orioles, after all, are a team at the nadir of their season, having fallen into an inability to pitch, field or hit, particularly in the second half of the season against the Yankees. Yet, against the historically best closer in the major leagues, the Orioles load the bases; with two outs, a triple clears them and: tie game.

Go to the tenth, when the symmetry/asymmetry of baseball plays amazing tricks on our expectations. Jeter leads off with a double, is sacrificed to third. One out, lead run on third. The basic baseball strategy is to walk the bases loaded in order to provide force outs at all bases, which the Orioles do. Now any fly ball, base hit, error or other anomaly will score the lead run. Molina, the catcher, in the game only because Posada (having his best offensive season ever) has been rested, given the insurmountable Yankee lead. He fouls out to the first baseman (a ball that is in the stands in Fenway, merely the second out at Camden Yards), bringing up Giambi. Menacing, grimacing, the veritable image of brute force, he seems the very embodiment of Euclidean order and certainty. But he's jammed, and hits a little fly ball to left. No runs; the strategy has worked.
Now the bottom of the tenth: Redmond doubles with one out, takes third on a wild pitch. One out, winning run on third. The Yankees employ exactly the same strategy as was practiced on them, and walk the bases loaded. Kevin Millar is up: more symmetry. Millar, who with the Bosox in '04 was the Cowboy-Up guy; one of the most verbal members of a team that dismembered the Yankees with four straight in the ACLS after falling behind 3-0, a comeback unprecedented in playoff history, Millar, who eats up fastballs as greedily as Giambi. Wouldn't it be grand and fitting, say all the fans still waiting in Fenway, watching this distant game on the Jumbotron high above center field, wouldn't it be absolutely appropriate for Millar to drive in the run that clinches the title for his old team? Millar watches a change-up split the plate for called strike three, perhaps the most heinous sin for any batter: to keep the bat on his shoulder with the winning run on third and less than two out. A swinging strike: OK, you tried. But a Called Third Strike? Melvin Mora up, who has the longest tenure with the team of any present Oriole. Physically the antithesis of Giambi, but at bat under exactly the same conditions. With the infield playing back to gobble up any ground ball and find a force at any base, he bunts. Totally unexpected, totally asymmetrical: this play is against all sane baseball strategy. But because the third baseman is playing so deep, all he can do is dash in, pick up the ball in his bare hand, and walk dejected past the third base line towards the dugout. Game over, Bosox clinch, fans in Fenway, who have been waiting for over an hour, shriek with delight, champagne corks pop, madness descends.

So under identical conditions in the tenth inning, the clearly superior team and batter fail the demands of symmetry, while the down and dogged team and batter spectacularly succeed, with an anomalous phenomenon perfectly executed. Baseball leads us to expect symmetry, but in its closest moments, surprises us with a beguiling irregularity. If you were a Yankee fan, that broke your heart. If you were Red Sox fans, it filled the heart with mindless joy as celebratory as the fizzed champagne that the players showered on them. We wait for these beguiling irregularities, these asymmetries, and delight or despair in them. Is there symmetry now in the reversal of the 86 World Series, in that the Bosox have won the Eastern Division Championship where the Mets have collapsed in the National League East as catastrophically as the ground ball to Buckner? It depends on our loyalties. For Red Sox and Yankee fans, at least, summer will last a while longer. But beware, both, of hope congealing into expectation, for baseball is designed to break your hearts with its beguiling irregularities.