Eric: Things are so different this year, Ted. So different. Do you remember last October? When our souls thawed like springtime in a slow John Steinbeck novel for the New York Yankees? When A-Rod was the center of the universe, and names like Strasburg and Heyward offered little more than glimmering hope for a distant future? When fragments of the McCourt divorce bombshell still sizzled on streetcorners in the land of baseball?
It feels like a million years ago, last October. So much has changed. All of a sudden baseball is a young man's game, a game of Hamiltons and Vottos, Prices and Lincecums. Even the three returning postseason teams are markedly different: The Yankees are back to their evil ways as monolithic favorites (if not in practice than in my imagination). The Twins are without Justin Morneau and without a roof above their heads. The Phillies have transformed themselves from an offensive powerhouse to the 2001 Diamondbacks or 1966 Dodgers with their new-look rotation.
I've been a negligent fan lately. I'm without a horse in this playoff race. I'm utterly unqualified to pick a division series winner, much less a World Series champ. But after a tiresome September, I'm ready with an aspiration. I hope we're in for a hell of a wild month of postseason baseball. I hope there's a brawl. I hope there's a no-hitter. I hope there's an unexpected hero. Basically I want all the regular excitement. What do you want out of these playoffs?
Ted: A no-hitter would be appropriate, given the season itself. I'm with you, though. I don't have a horse. I'm in for a vicarious playoffs, and I'm excited to see the Braves, the Rangers, and the Giants, mostly because their fans will be fired up. That's the kind of fan I am in general: if I don't have a horse, I'm more than happy to jump on the bandwagon of someone around me. I enjoyed the Angels' 2002 World Series win immensely because my good friend is a fan. Heck, I became a Mariners fan this year based mostly on proximity (though it blew up in my face like a bouncing Betty).
So I'm ready to enjoy myself, and harbor no bitterness towards any team, even the Yanks. For the one key difference this year, against last year, is that my favorite player of all time plays for the team now: Lance Berkman. If he gets any significant playing time, I'm in it to win it with the Bronx Bombers. It also helps a bandwagon fan like myself that my good friend out here is a Yanks fan proper.
I will also abstain from picking any winners. I am here to enjoy myself, to watch some baseball, to soak in the atmosphere and the fun. I don't in the end care who wins, even when it comes to the Big Puma. There, I said it! I feel liberated. I burned out on baseball this year, and I'm using the playoffs as a vehicle in which to travel back to the basics.
The basics include such tourist destinations as:
- Tim Lincecum's change-up
- Neftali Feliz's easy motion
- Bronson Arroyo's efus-like curveball
- Dusty Baker's dancing toothpick
- Jason Heyward's mighty swing
- Bobby Cox's swan song
- Joey Votto, superstar
So, yes, I agree, things are different this year. It's a little brighter day, in my mind. I'm letting the sun in.
So, Eric, you are the mayor of the town of the basics. What does your population look like? Or would you leave the town of the basics and head for the hills of small sample sizes, predictions, wagers, and other madness?
Eric: The Mayor of Basics. That could be the name of an independent film. But since it isn't, and it's my title, here we go. Here are the basics I want from the 2010 MLB Playoffs:
I want The Joe Mauer to tear through the Yankees pitching staff with so much aplomb that the people of New York can't help but tip their caps in slack-jawed awe. And if The Joe Mauer can't, then I wan't The Evan Longoria to do the same thing. I want Elvis Andrus to steal second and third base on consecutive pitches. I want Roy Oswalt to be better than Roy Halladay and Edinson Volquez to be better than either of them. I want Pablo Sandoval to walk off -- but only once -- and Brian Wilson to drop to his knees in agony as a Brian McCann home run settles into the San Francisco Bay.
Is that enough? If not, I'll still hold out for that aforementioned brawl. Hockey season is coming.
You mentioned Berkman. There are quite a few more un-World Series'd veterans taking to the postseason this week. Halladay and Oswalt for two. Tim Hudson. Big Jim Thome. Arthur Rhodes. I'm sure I'm missing more.
Who, besides Berkman, would you like to see get their hands on a ring this year?
Ted: I don't think it has to be an old guy to want to see someone get a ring. Immediately, Joe Mauer comes to mind, as one of the elite players in the game. The Rays as a whole have been a really good team for a little while now, and they are the sort of young, fun team that it would be great to watch win.
(You know what's weird? I don't really associate Tim Lincecum with Victory, and with the charge for the championship. For whatever reason, he occupies more of a theoretical slot in my baseball consciousness. Almost like Wes Anderson and the Oscars. Anderson makes consistently great films, but I don't associate Rushmore and Tenenbaums with the infrastructure of the Academy or whatever.)
As I alluded to earlier, I think it'd be epic for Bobby Cox to win it in his final year as the Braves manager. That strikes me as the storyline that could have a lot of widespread cultural weight behind it (a la ARod winning it all, Red Sox curse breaking, etc.). There's not much more basic than the old gipper winning it in his last go-round.
The irony would be, of course, that this is a young man's playoffs. Whoever wins minus the Yanks will be able to look at foundations built on youth. So maybe what I'm looking for is that classic set-up: young guys spill their blood to win one for the old guy.
And I wouldn't mind a McCovey Cove splashdown much either.
It just occurred to me that if things break the right way we could see a potential Bronson Arroyo vs. Barry Zito pitching match-up in the NLCS this postseason. (Things breaking the right way would include Zito actually making the Giants postseason roster.) This would be the first time two Pitchers & Poets Podcast Coverboys faced each other in the playoffs. If it happens, everybody is invited to Ted's house for a viewing party. (Or at least a livechat).
In this episode of the podcast, we mostly talk about the Ken Burns 10th inning documentary that we haven't seen yet, as well as the first nine innings.
My tax bracket usually dictates that I sit in the sections of the stadium where a mask will drop down if there's a loss in cabin pressure. But seeing as how this is the week of my 30th birthday, the pity is running so thick that the family treated my wife and I to some really great seats at Safeco Field.
16 rows up from the field is not Bill Gates territory, but it is occasion enough for me to talk about what it's like to sit in primo seats, where the sights and sounds extend beyond the screaming children and passing aircraft.
Entry
Heading into the stadium from the street, the first notable difference in the land of good seats is that I didn't have to hike the miles of concrete incline and stairs to find my section.
My natural orientation on entering a baseball park is to climb like an F-16 taking off from an aircraft carrier, so I had to recalibrate when we steered a downward trajectory to get to our seats. My palms sweated as we hurled earthward. I reached for the ejection lever.
Cinemascope
But the landing was soft. One row after another fell behind us. The sounds from the field faded up as the players warming up and the base coaches chit-chatting appeared first life-sized and then enormous. They are all enormous. You forget watching from a distance that the unnatural selection of major league baseball has weeded the little guys from the bunch, and all professional athletes are huge, even the mediocre players among them. Ryan Langerhans is a beast. Doug Fister in 9 feet tall.
Sitting that close is a cinematic experience. Every feed is active: the audio, the visual, even the sensory. You can feel the sound of the bat hitting the ball as well as you can hear it. Cliche as it may be, the little things rise in prominence. Langerhans patting a teammates back, Ichiro on deck.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="375" caption="This is what Ryan Langerhans looks like up close."][/caption]
My Fellow Americans
There are more middle-aged couples down in the rich seats. They are successful, cheerful people. The men have a wind-swept look. They wear class rings and windbreakers. One guy looked like he came straight from the marina to the game. A beer vendor called him Dick Van Dyke, and he looked like he led a sun-filled, smiling life. He clinked beer bottles with the other guy in their party of four, as if to toast the silvery healthfulness of each of their beards and the lives that enable those beards.
But the demographic wasn't limited to these over-privileged tables for two. There was a big family right behind us, and they were having a helluva a time. Dad had a constant commentary going, the whole game. "Look at Figgins, he's gotta smile like a horse." Then he made a horse sound and his kids laughed and laughed. "What are you doin' out there, Moore!" he bellowed when the young catcher missed an easy Big Papi pop-up right behind home plate. "Gimme the mitt, Moore, let me do it!"
There's something about being in the expensive seats that lent this jokester a likability that might not have been there in the $10 seats. He seemed, in that low-altitude context, like a rebel, a firestarter, sticking it to the man. He had on a jersey with a customized name on the back that said "Big D." He was great and so was his family.
The Game
As I alluded to, the sounds are more immediate down front. A big league bat striking the ball creates a singular sound. It's a feeling. I felt it in row 16. You don't feel that from up high. Ichiro's contact rings like an axe-fall.
Home runs sail away, the same way they do for the hitter and the pitcher. They disappear into the distance. It lends an air of the mythic, that something fades away rather than simply traveling like a common mathematical point from one position to another along the grid. Moving and leaving are distinct.
When the game is over, the players walk towards you to leave, and they walk under you. A few players linger and say hi to friends in the stands. Mariners pitching coach John Wetteland rattled off the names of his kids' friends who were at the game. "Kyle, right?" he said, pointing at them. The kids were not much impressed that a pitching coach took the time to name them.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="467" caption="via flickr user urbanlegend"][/caption]
Perspective
This is Safeco Field I realize. The Mariners are far, far out of contention. The Red Sox were in town, but Youk, Drew, Pedroia were all out. It's a subdued vibe all around. The sweet seats at Yankee Stadium, at the Cell, at Chavez Ravine, those are gonna be different. They will be be manic and throbbing and monied and everything. In Seattle, this September, the good seats were a place to lounge and listen, and hope that some hitting broke out.
One thing we're interested in here at Pitchers & Poets is the space where baseball interacts with, well, everything else in our world. Starting now, and then through the off-season, we'll speak with folks who's day jobs aren't baseball-related but are in one way or another notable, about the old national pastime.
Our first interviewee is singer songwriter Jason Isbell, formerly a Drive-By Trucker, currently leader of his rocking band the 400 Unit. He's from the Muscle Shoals region of Alabama, and a huge Atlanta Braves fan. Next month he hits the road headlining the first ever Paste Magazine tour, along with Langhorne Slim, Jesse Sykes, and more.
We'll get right to it:
PnP: Leadbelly once said that all songs, in the end, are about baseball. With that in mind, have you written any songs about baseball?
Jason Isbell: I've attempted to do so, but it's not something I've felt success with just yet. I actually discussed doing a concept record about baseball with Will Johnson (Centro-Matic, Monsters of Folk) at one point, but I don't know if he realized I was serious. He's an expert on the game, by the way.
PnP: Do you have a favorite actually about baseball song?
Jason Isbell: I love the poem about the mighty Casey, but I guess that doesn't qualify as a song. I always liked the theme song to "Talkin' Baseball," the show they played after This Week In Baseball when there was an extra long rain-delay. Campanella is a really lyrical name.
PnP: How did you become a baseball fan? A Braves fan, specifically?
Jason Isbell: I played ball starting when I was 6, so I followed it then. I guess my Dad was initially responsible. My grandparents on Dad's side were very religious -my granddad had been a Pentecostal preacher- so there wasn't much they could look to for non-offensive family entertainment. Because I played ball, my grandparents started watching the Braves on TBS, and they wound up getting a lot of joy out of those games. As I got a little older, I realized how much they valued the afternoons and evenings we spent together watching Braves baseball, and that made the team mean something very special to me. I wish they were still around to watch Bobby's last season.
PnP: Are you worried about the Braves in a post-Cox, post-Chipper Jones era? Or are you confident in the future of the Jason Heyward Braves?
Jason Isbell: I loved them in the Gerald Perry, Dale Murphy days, and I'll love 'em if they lose again. However, I think they have a lot of strength in younger players like Heyward, Prado, and Infante, so they should be fine.
PnP: I grew up watching a lot of Braves baseball on TBS and found the Carey/Sutton broadcast team almost impossibly boring. What do you look for in a baseball broadcast?
Jason Isbell: I like the unexpected. I think the guys on Sports South do a good job, because they aren't always so serious. They make some really silly comments and crack themselves up fairly often.
PnP: Twitter seems to be your biggest outlet when it comes to expressing Braves fandom. Have you connected much with other fans or baseball press or even Braves players?
Jason Isbell: I've spoken to Dave O'Brien at the AJC quite a bit, and there are lots of Braves fans who also follow my music, so it's nice to keep in contact with them when I can. Still trying to start a conversation with the Braves organist, because he's absolutely hilarious.
PnP: How do being a baseball fan and a musician reconcile? Do you sense any of that high school strain between the rockers and the jocks, or conversely do you see the two as having a beneficial relationship.
Jason Isbell: I was not at all a jock in high school, but I know a lot of musicians who were. I think we can all get along, especially since baseball is a thinking man's game. I also feel it's not a sport that's only accessible to the relatively wealthy, like golf, so that made it easier for me to get interested. I would've never been able to afford to play golf as a kid, but you can always find an open field and a stick.
Since we recently discussed American Mythology including the subject of this particular tune, here's a video of Jason playing his song "The Day John Henry Died" acoustic. Thanks to Jason for his time.
Is that enough? If not, I'll still hold out for that aforementioned brawl. Hockey season is coming.
