Ode to Summer And Fall

I hear the cicadas humming their love song, their lives soon to end. As boys in Texas, my brothers and I used to catch them, tie a string around them and let them fly at the end of the tether as we walked around the neighborhood. It marked the waning days of summer, long after Little League season ended.

I see my blonde sister in her teenhood, her hair tinged green from chlorine after hours in the pool.

I see Bob Gibson hitting an inside-the-park home run and Vada Pinson of the Reds, or were they the Red Legs back then?, knocking himself out against the wall at Busch Stadium 1 in 1965. At least that’s what I remember. Have to find the scorecard some place.

I feel the tug of fall as my brow cools and my children head back to school, full of expectations of glory, as well they should.

I thank the Good Lord that I have potable water when it seems the world is awash in what Coleridge said: “Water, water everywhere and all the boards did shrink; water, water everywhere and nor a drop to drink.”

I look forward to college football and the religious experience of rooting for the Laters (as a good friend of mine calls them) to beat Florida State and Texas.

Enough “I’s.” Summer is dying. Had some pumpkin bread the other day and “the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” as Mr. Keats pointed out, will soon be upon us.

And the Yankees, BREAK ‘EM UP.

Their Flag to April's Breeze Unfurled

The day before we entered this vale of tears Bobby Thomson fired the shot heard ‘round the world. Not the one at Concord that Emerson immortalized:

“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard 'round the world."

No, it was the one Mr. Thomson of the New York Giants cracked over the left field fence at Coogan’s Bluff to defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers in a playoff game for the senior circuit pennant. We have felt a strange connection ever since we became cognizant in early boyhood of our place in baseball history, which leads us to coin a phrase – a day late and a dollar short.

We’ve run our race, as Paul said in his second letter to Timothy. Yet we take solace in Brett Favre (how do you pronounce his name?) writing another chapter. Or Eli Manning kneeling like Y.A. Tittle, bloodied warrior.

Mr. Thomson passed away the other day, and so did a piece of our life. Ralph Branca, who threw the fateful pitch, is still with us, but is surely to join his friend in glory soon. Days defy us. Years eat us up. Decades doom us. We only wish to tell our sons and daughters that once there were Giants, like Mr. Thomson, the embattled farmers at Concord and Mr. Tittle kneeling in the end zone with blood streaming down his bald noggin.

Apologies to Emerson and the young men who serve and die.

C'mon Man

Why do ladies and gentlemen bother with silly games? Why does Rice play Texas (as it used to in the old SWC)? Why does the sun go on shining (as Skeeter Davis sang)? Ask me why and Tell me why (as The Beatles sang)? Because, as Wordsworth wrote, “The world is too much with us.”

Is there any sillier game than golf?

A club with a blade rested in a bit of dirt thought to be a random piece of scalped carpet and Dustin Johnson was consigned to the dustbin instead of a chance to raise high the Wannamaker trophy as PGA champion.

The son of a gun was corralled by some sunburned guy and told that he broke some rule by grounding his club in a hazard that had no rake and had been trampled by the crowd outside the ropes. C’mon, man. If this had happened on the first day to some unknown you wouldn’t have heard a peep.

Oh well, life is not fair and golf is what it is. We just play for fun and have no illusions about our ability. But this seems particularly unfair, given the prestige, not to mention the do-re-mi at stake. As we’ve pointed out before, Our Father sendeth his rain on the just and the unjust.

Meanwhile, take the over in every Canadian Football League game (for entertainment purposes only).