The last day of baseball's regular season. My Twins and most of the other teams have been living posthumously for weeks and weeks. They've played more than fifty games now since everyone realized they were going nowhere. Tonight, as the baseball world watched the Red Sox and the Devil Rays, the Twins beat the Royals, 1-0, the lone run scoring in the bottom of the ninth when Trevor Plouffe drove in Denard Span with a two-out hit: a thrilling game of no consequence. Here's a poem by Linda Pastan that brings to life the hackneyed notion that it's all a metaphor for life:
Baseball
When you tried to tell me baseball was a metaphor
for life: the long, dusty travail
around the bases, for instance,
to try to go home again;
the Sacrifice for which you win
approval but not applause;
the way the light closes down
in the last days of the season--
I didn't believe you.
It's just a way of passing
the time, I said.
And you said: that's it.
Yes.
