The great American novelist John Updike, though not a sports writer, did at times indulge his nation’s favourite pasttime. And when he did, he hit a home run.
Updike, who passed away this year, was once in Boston to visit a friend. He knocked on the door, received no answer, so with a summer’s afternoon to kill he headed to the Red Sox’s famous old home, Fenway Park, for his first visit. He picked a good day. While the press box was bloated with the city’s jaded baseball beat reporters, Updike, like a scientist who inadvertently discovers a much sought-after remedy, found he was witnessing, from the bleachers, the last game – and the memorable farewell – of Sox giant Ted Williams.
He dispatched a song of a report to the New Yorker magazine recounting poetically William’s typically cranky so-long speech and the home-run that was the denouement to a heroic career at bat. “Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs – hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn’t tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted ‘We want Ted’ for minutes after, he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.” Wow.
Those who stumbled upon the championship game in the B division of Ireland’s baseball league last Saturday may not have realised they had wandered into their own little Fenway, but I wondered what Updike might have made of the apple pie scene folded into Clondalkin all the same.
Munster Warrior players are strectched out on the grass in preparation for the final game of their maiden season. The motley playing roster are, in turn, relaxing in fold-up chairs, swapping last-minute tips, talking about their favourite TV comedy (it’s The Inbetweeners) and discussing Saturday night’s planned celebrations in Limerick city. They have a record this year of 12-0. And judging by the mood, everyone expects to make it 13 for 13 with a win over today’s opponents: The Hurricanes. Read the rest of this entry »
The same way you know it’s a general election night when Brian Farrell wears a carnation in his lapel, so too the rich sound of the Artane Band heralds a landmark day in Croke Park for many of us.
