7.18.02 BATAVIA MUCKDOGS vs MAHONING VALLEY SCRAPPERS
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Another Dicky’s epiphany: A great song never sounds better than it does on
a jukebox, in a bar where you wouldn’t expect to hear it, when you’ve got
a few beers in you and were feeling pretty good to begin with. I don’t recall
now what song it was that set me off the other day, maybe some Pixies b-side
I only vaguely remembered; in any case, it sounded great and was the perfect
complement to a hot-dog-eating, pint-swilling, baseball-watching, funny-conversation-overhearing
reverie that was already well underway. These discrete sensual pleasures were
all well and good, but it was the unexpected delight of hearing this song
in Dicky’s of all places that transformed the moment into one of near bliss,
a sensation heightened by my awareness of its fleetingness, the knowledge
that there was only one more verse and chorus after the break here, and then
the moment would end. I looked around, taking it all in, smiling inwardly
and no doubt outwardly both. Damn I love Dicky’s and hot dogs and baseball
and beer and obscure Pixies b-sides.
Were it up to my friend Mary, all of summer would be one long such moment.
As it stands, summer for Mary is a continuous quest for them, moments to be
milked, savored, picked while they’re ripe and consumed straight away, not
a drop wasted. They’re the song on the jukebox you don’t want to end. I’d
been telling her about Batavia for a while, and she was sold, on the whole
package: the convertible, the countryside, the endless skies, the desperate
kids, the town you would’ve grown up in a century ago. The perfect summertime
fix.
It took all of five minutes in stands for my case to be proved. “Stop
acting like assholes,” bellowed the no-nonsense mom behind us to the
brood of hyperactive children in her charge, “or I’ll make assholes
out of all of you!” Hey, what’s my aunt Judy doing here? I’m
sorry, but I love it when parents treat their kids with precisely the amount
of respect they deserve. More power to you, lady. (The kids, it’s worth
noting, laughed it off but shaped up, too.)
A few innings in, I noticed a familiar face up under the roof near the pressbox.
I nudged Mary. See that guy, green polo, fat, bad glasses? “Yeah…”
Well, he’s a dick. I told her the story from last
year, and the one from a couple weeks ago, and
she seethed on my behalf, staring at him, incredulous that anybody could be
such a petty, miserable bastard.
Some time later he passed before us on one of his numerous trips to the concession
stand, and I made some joke to that effect. Mary looked, then looked at me,
confused.
“Wait, that’s the guy you were talking about?” I nodded.
“Oh no!”
It turned out that Mary, as vindictive as me and fully ten years younger,
had been shooting looks of death over there the whole time—at someone
else! And the poor guy had left, no doubt wondering what he’d done to
deserve her scorn. Doh!
Nick Bourgeois had a mixed outing for the Muckdogs, giving up four runs in
as many innings, but we kept our Marxist smack to ourselves. The big surprise
was the return of G. G. Sato at DH, who was walked in each of his four
appearances and scored all three of the Muckdogs’ runs. They might’ve scored
another when second baseman Andres Silvera belted one to the corner in right
in the fifth inning; Scrappers outfielder Brian Wright had barely reached
the ball when Silvera rounded third, lost his footing in a flurry of flailing
limbs, and did a face-plant just down the line, crawling safely if bashfully
back to third. It would’ve been an inside-the-park home run for sure, but
instead he ended up stranded when Scrappers starter Michael Rogers struck
out Ryan Barthelemy for the third time to end the inning.
Meantime, Whit Bryant entered in the eighth with the Muckdogs down by just a run and issued consecutive walks followed by a single, a double, and two more singles. So much for that.
FINAL SCORE: SCRAPPERS 8, MUCKDOGS 3
LIFE DURING WARTIME: The anthem was made more stirring still by the mildly retarded kid standing near us in the concourse singing at the top of his lungs. Beautiful.