Apparently there is a public event happening tonight, around 5:10 PM Pacific Standard Time, which will involve a series of well-paid and highly professional athletes pit off against each other in a televised sporting match designed around an old bat-and-ball game from the Northeastern parts of the American colonies called base-ball. I'm being told these two clubs of sportmen engage in similar activity over 150 times each year, and at any given moment during the temperate North American summer, one of ten or more of these matches can be seen on a viewscreen of your choosing. Also, I'm being told these sporting matches have happened each and every year since the American Civil War, a tradition which seems dubious at best, because surely I would have heard about it by now.
But now that I think about it, something in all this does sound familiar. I do seem to recall earlier this year--or was it this month--that I designed parts of my working day around a repeating, daily event that looked very similar to the one we will be enjoying tonight. Perhaps it was as recent as last week--but one cannot be too sure in the face of such frivolity. It seems a lifetime ago, at best, but I have to admit that my spirits have been low as of late, in spite of what has seemed to be a surge in productivity spawned by...well, exactly what I cannot say. Nights have felt emptier, days have felt longer. There has been something missing, clearly present from days past, but now as mere echo.
The thing about all this, though, is that I've recently completed papers on time, cleaned my home and kitchen, and enjoyed meaningful and captivating dialogue with my wife that I never knew I was capable of giving over a meal--almost as if there was something there before, sedating my experience of the world around me like an opiate, and I as an addict always reaching back to feel its warm embrace return me to the endless cycle. I seem to recall...something...but no. I am lost. Perhaps I will never know. Perhaps I will enjoy this sporting match ahead of me tonight, and maybe it will help me get my mind off such questions. Besides, how much mental real estate could a simple game take up inside one's head?
Here are the following sportmen taking part in tonight's ball game:
Seattle Mariners of the "American League":
P. Joe Saunders (L)
P. Bud Norris (R)