My good luck tricks seemed to have worked once more for the Yankees—i.e. last night during the second Yankees-Angels game, I posted my elephant baseball picture AND, at a certain critical juncture, stopped watching.   (See earlier post re good luck “Talismans” and my personal effect on Yankees’ baseball.)

I won’t take all the credit for the victory—there was also Jeter, Cano, and Mariano, Jerry Hairston, Jr., A-Rod, and Damon (who made some really terrific catches), Melky Cabrera, Phil Coke, and Joba (who still seems a little pudgy boy to me especially when he celebrates), and Molina, who had a really hard job as catcher for A.J. Burnett, who also, as starter, deserves some credit, despite the way in which his wild pitches can drive a fan crazy.  (The frustration he causes is frankly not completely redeemed by the whipped cream pies.)

Then, there was just the Yankee grit, that somehow, so frequently, manages to just hang on and on and on.

Watching the videos of the end of the game this morning made me think (yes, it’s a cliché) of baseball as a paradigm of life.  Yes, again, yes, it’s a cliché.  Still, it seems somehow a more appropriate paradigm than a lot of other big sports.  (Which I have to confess don’t interest me enough to know much about them.  Still, I hate to think of any sports in which (i) people are repeatedly tackled and concussed, or (ii) forced to chase around constantly with little chance of achieving many goals, as better paradigms.)
What is unusual about baseball is simply how fast everything moves when it does, finally, move at all.   The replays of the last moments of last night’s October 17^th game against the Angels are particularly striking.  On the Yankees’ site, they show footage taken from nearly every angle, even one that simply shows Cabrera running, relatively quickly for a big guy, to first.

In case, you didn’t follow the game, in the thirteenth inning, with a man on first and second, Yankee Melky Cabrera hit a ball that bounced between first and second.  The Angels’ second baseman, Maicer Izturis, stopped the ball, then, trying for a double play, threw it hard and fast to Angels’ short stop Erik Aybar, who stood at second, and who frankly seems like a really a surly, cocky sort of guy (if you are a Yankee’s fan), who missed it.  The Angel’s third baseman, Chone Figgins, stopped Izturis’s throw, but bobbled the ball.  In the meantime, Hairston Jr., who’d been holding on third before Izturis’s error, dashed towards home. Hairston was immediately overrun by the rest of the Yankees’ team and quickly assumed a fetal position on the ground as they all energetically patted him.

The long and short of that detailed explanation is simply that, although it takes a long time to write it all down, the play actually happened in an incredibly short period of time:  boom (Cabrera connected with the ball), boom (Iztura stopped and immediately threw it), boom (it slid below Aymer’s glove), boom (Figgins bobbled it), boom (Hairston slid into home).  When the footage that just focuses on Cabrera is shown, you see from the way that he turns, delighted, that the run has already been scored even as he makes it to first base.

The speed of it all is especially amazing because most of baseball is so slow.  The pitcher stands and postures, eyes narrowing and re-narrowing, with little shakes or nods of the head to the catcher, the batter (if Jeter especially), re-tightens his gloves (two or three or four times), re-squares his shoulders, gently sways the bat,  everyone constantly repositions their stances (usually spitting or blowing a bubble at the same time in a sort of homage to old-time multi-tasking).  Everyone, pitcher, batter, catcher, batter, in and out fielders, both wait and prepares.  Even the audience waits, though it doesn’t prepare so much as eats and drinks, crosses its fingers and yells. So much waiting, so much preparation, so much eating and drinking, finger-crossing  and yelling.  And then, boom, boom, boom, boom.  The moment arrives and players are suddenly expect to act, react, not just to make decisions, but to carry them out – boom boom boom.

Okay, you get it.  This is where the paradigm part comes in. There are obvious parallels to situations in the marketplace–buying and selling on the stock market, buying and selling anything, anywhere.  And also to moving around a potentially dangerous world–driving a car, for example,  especially in, or around, an accident.  The way action unfolds in baseball parallels many emergency situations actually; an emergency, a threat, that can also turn into an opportunity (i.e. the near double-play that becomes a winning score for the opposite side.)

So many parallels:  the need to be able to act even in the midst of a mouthful! The need to keep a mouthful going in order to be able to act!  The blink factor!  Or, maybe it’s the not-blinking factor!  The waiting, the planning, the practice, and then the OMG moment, which never takes exactly the shape anticipated, and frequently involves both a solo effort AND team work, and if not exactly team work, at least the avoidance of collision.  (A-Rod and Mariano were a great example of that in the tenth inning when they both ran towards a flying bunt, which was then caught by Mariano.)

Ah, Mariano….