Sitting here watching the seventh game of the NLCS on TV. Wasn't expecting to care who wins but find myself now rooting for the Dodgers. Is that the Senior Circuit equivalent of being a Yankees fan? Well, I remember in my youth trying, but failing, to dislike the Yankee teams featuring Bernie Williams, Paul O'Neill, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, the leftfielder from Japan . . . who am I missing? All the starting pitchers, but you get the idea: workaday professionals doing their job, every game, every season for years, excellence.
I don't know the Dodgers but I've always liked Justin Turner, their third baseman. Part of it is that he's a dumpy looking stump of a guy. In a track & field meet, what would be his event? Nothing. But he can play ball. In that crazy play, fourth inning, runners at second and third, nobody out, batter hits him a sharp grounder, he throws home starting a rundown that ends with him diving to tag the runner out, then he immediately twists around and, from his butt, throws out the guy from second trying to advance to third. Double play. Thinking about it now, I have no idea why the Atlanta guy waited so long before breaking for third base. If the runner on third is going right away, the guy on second has to go too: not soon, now. Turner can't run fast but I'm pretty sure that's the kind of baserunning sin he'd never commit.
Maybe the World Series, which begins Tuesday, will keep me from obsessing over the election. Here's the kind of thing that is for me like a heaping plate of french fries while high:
There is a suburban GOP-held House seat that Romney won by 15%+ and Trump won by 10%+. Today, at least two private surveys I've seen have Trump *down* 10%+ there.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 18, 2020
In the past few weeks, I've heard the word "bloodbath" uttered in multiple convos w/ GOP pollsters/ad makers.
I’ve also started reading David Copperfield: 826 pages, which should distract me till the votes are all counted. I'm about 80 in. David's mother has remarried, he's bitten his stepfather, been sent away to school. Details of David's first-person narration make it evident that his mother abandons him to pursue her own love life and that he, idealizing her, can't admit this to himself. The situation has a parallel in Dickens's own life. When he was 12, his father was incarcerated in a debtor's prison, and he was removed from school to work in a factory. A few months later, his paternal grandmother died and the family inherited £450. This got his father out of prison but his mother did not want to recall young Charles from the factory. He never forgave her.
Dodgers win, 4-3. Braves probably ran themselves out of the World Series in the top of the fourth inning.
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