Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.
Day Twenty-Nine: Tim Lincecum, San Francisco Giants
”Daddy, can you grape-dance?” Chelsea asked me.
We were watching Michael Jackson’s This is It, so I think she meant break-dance. As the girls and I viewed the film’s footage, we saw Jackson rehearse for the concerts he did not live to perform. As we watched, it was difficult to believe that a human being could perform some of the moves Jackson pulled off on stage. There were times when the man seemed to be floating, and other times when his arms and legs seemed to be operating on springs. And this was at age 50.
No, Chelsea, I cannot break-dance. Although I used to practice the moonwalk in front of my mirror, with little success. Some people, however, do move with a kinesthetic brilliance that you can only stare at in awe. Jackson was one such person, and hence his reputation as one of the great showmen in the history of entertainment.
Over on the diamond, the best show in baseball takes place every five days wherever the San Francisco Giants are playing. It starts when a 5-foot-11, 170-pound right-hander stands atop 10 inches of dirt and starts throwing 98-mile-per-hour fastballs. Tim Lincecum, the best pitcher in baseball, has been called “The Freak,” which is a baseball way of saying that he does things no one else can do.
As he kicks his left leg, Lincecum’s head tilts toward first base, his left arm flies up in the air and his right arm rears back. His left leg follows with an enormous, 7½-foot stride toward home plate. His right arm then whips around overhead, unleashing rawhide and stitches with uncommon fury.
At 25 years of age, Tim Lincecum has a career record of 45-17, and has won two straight Cy Young Awards. He has given up fewer than three runs per nine innings pitched in his career and has struck out 10 batters per every nine innings. Now 5-0 this year, Lincecum has been even more unhittable and has struck out an even higher percentage of batters than his career average.
Lincecum, like Michael Jackson before him, has a lean and flexible physique that can bend in ways most of our bodies cannot. And, like an early-1980s Jackson, Lincecum appears to be still rising toward his highest levels of brilliance. If the past few years were his Off the Wall, perhaps the next few will be his Thriller. Wherever that electric delivery takes him, Lincecum can be sure that baseball fans will be watching. “The Freak” might lack the regal ring of “The King of Pop,” but the man is a dancer nonetheless. Call his show the mound-walk. Without the white glove.
Showing posts with label Michael Jackson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Jackson. Show all posts
Friday, May 21, 2010
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Snapshots of a Decade
She wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts / She's cheer captain and I’m on the bleachers
It has been the soundtrack of our post-Christmas days, this bouncy pop song from Taylor Swift. Santa was kind enough to place an iPod Nano beneath the tree, so as soon as Daddy was able to place some songs onto Katie’s tiny orange device, Miss Swift has been gracing every room with her tale of heartbreak. Katie sings along passionately, and her little sister immediately follows suit.
The year in review. The decade in review. No matter what media outlet you’re reading, watching or listening to, you’re being fed a tidy synopsis of the most important events and personalities of the year, as well as the nine that preceded this one. For 2009, we get Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson, Tiger Woods, Derek Jeter and our beloved president, among others. For the ‘00s in review, we get everything from Jeter and Alex Rodriguez to Presidents Bush and Obama. We get Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, as well as George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson and reality television. We get Nintendo and Apple, as well as Enron and Madoff.
It’s enormously difficult to sum up a decade’s worth of news, notoriety and nostalgia. You can try and capture it all, but you’re bound to miss something. And the truth is, when it comes down to life, we rarely frame our existence inside of ten-year spans. When they talk about taking life “one day at a time” in 12-step programs, they’re on to something. At its best, life is more about snapshots than grand re-caps. It’s made up of moments we can recall with 12-megapixel clarity, and sounds we can hear with Bose-speaker crispness. And the beauty of it is that no one can remember a moment in exactly the same way.
I can feel the Boston Globe special edition in my hands as I rode the North Shore commuter rail home on September 11, 2001, and read of the madness and chaos that had enveloped the city of my birth and changed the world in which I lived. I can see the flickering candles at every intersection in Salem, Mass., three days later, as my neighbors stood vigil on their street corners in a collective show of mourning and respect for their country. I can see the charred pieces of metal still standing in Lower Manhattan when I walked by the Trade Center remains 3½ weeks later.
I can see the glistening brown hair on the head of our first-born child, and I can hear her first cries as she entered the world and nestled in her mother’s arms nearly eight years ago. I can feel the arms of my wife as we embraced after losing a child in utero two years later. More than a year after that, I can see our younger daughter’s calm demeanor develop as she took her first quiet nap in the hospital’s nursery. As I held Katie up and pointed out Chelsea to her, I can still hear Katie’s first words to Chelsea. It was an impromptu song, or perhaps a prayer: “Twinkle, twinkle little star / How I wonder what you are ... ” I can still taste the tears that slid down my cheeks at that moment.
I can feel the strong left hand of my grandfather, as I held him and explained to him that the cancer had spread throughout his body. I can see the tears as he came to grips with the reality of his situation. I can hear his nasally, North Shore-of-Staten Island accent as we talked about the Yankees in those final weeks together. I can hear him greet me with the “Peanuts” nickname he’d always given me: “Hey, Chahlie Brown,” he’d say. “Come in and eat som’in’. I got soup in dee icebox. You can heat it up. And dere’s plenty o’ ginger ale, too.” I can recall sitting down and listening to him talk about my grandmother with love, knowing that he’d be with her again, soon.
I miss my grandfather. And my grandmother, too, as well as my dog and all the other family members I’ve lost in the last 10 years. I remember them in moments that I treasure in the very core of my heart, just as I savor the moments of birth that Amy and I have experienced during this ten-year span. Birth and death, ever intertwined: It was a spring afternoon in 2001 when I leaned forward and whispered in my dying grandmother’s ear that we were expecting. She was unable to respond at this point, but I asked her to watch over the kid. At night, when Katie is drifting off to sleep, I tell her stories of the great-grandmother she never met. She listens, every time.
Snapshots. I bought Amy a camera for Christmas; it was time. In studying up on all the point-and-shoots, I learned that more megapixels do not necessarily make for a better camera. If you’re looking to bring in as much light as possible, sometimes less is more. And when the light comes in, and the angle is right, you’ve got yourself one beautiful picture. An image to hold onto, no matter what the year.
We take stock this time of year, we make resolutions, and we reflect. More than anything, though, we hold onto the pictures that fill the photo albums of our minds and souls. This is where time really does stand still, and where a decade is just a word.
Dreaming ‘bout the day when you wake up and find / That what you're lookin’ for has been here the whole time ...
You said it, Taylor. Crank up that iPod. Happy new year.
It has been the soundtrack of our post-Christmas days, this bouncy pop song from Taylor Swift. Santa was kind enough to place an iPod Nano beneath the tree, so as soon as Daddy was able to place some songs onto Katie’s tiny orange device, Miss Swift has been gracing every room with her tale of heartbreak. Katie sings along passionately, and her little sister immediately follows suit.
The year in review. The decade in review. No matter what media outlet you’re reading, watching or listening to, you’re being fed a tidy synopsis of the most important events and personalities of the year, as well as the nine that preceded this one. For 2009, we get Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson, Tiger Woods, Derek Jeter and our beloved president, among others. For the ‘00s in review, we get everything from Jeter and Alex Rodriguez to Presidents Bush and Obama. We get Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, as well as George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson and reality television. We get Nintendo and Apple, as well as Enron and Madoff.
It’s enormously difficult to sum up a decade’s worth of news, notoriety and nostalgia. You can try and capture it all, but you’re bound to miss something. And the truth is, when it comes down to life, we rarely frame our existence inside of ten-year spans. When they talk about taking life “one day at a time” in 12-step programs, they’re on to something. At its best, life is more about snapshots than grand re-caps. It’s made up of moments we can recall with 12-megapixel clarity, and sounds we can hear with Bose-speaker crispness. And the beauty of it is that no one can remember a moment in exactly the same way.
I can feel the Boston Globe special edition in my hands as I rode the North Shore commuter rail home on September 11, 2001, and read of the madness and chaos that had enveloped the city of my birth and changed the world in which I lived. I can see the flickering candles at every intersection in Salem, Mass., three days later, as my neighbors stood vigil on their street corners in a collective show of mourning and respect for their country. I can see the charred pieces of metal still standing in Lower Manhattan when I walked by the Trade Center remains 3½ weeks later.
I can see the glistening brown hair on the head of our first-born child, and I can hear her first cries as she entered the world and nestled in her mother’s arms nearly eight years ago. I can feel the arms of my wife as we embraced after losing a child in utero two years later. More than a year after that, I can see our younger daughter’s calm demeanor develop as she took her first quiet nap in the hospital’s nursery. As I held Katie up and pointed out Chelsea to her, I can still hear Katie’s first words to Chelsea. It was an impromptu song, or perhaps a prayer: “Twinkle, twinkle little star / How I wonder what you are ... ” I can still taste the tears that slid down my cheeks at that moment.
I can feel the strong left hand of my grandfather, as I held him and explained to him that the cancer had spread throughout his body. I can see the tears as he came to grips with the reality of his situation. I can hear his nasally, North Shore-of-Staten Island accent as we talked about the Yankees in those final weeks together. I can hear him greet me with the “Peanuts” nickname he’d always given me: “Hey, Chahlie Brown,” he’d say. “Come in and eat som’in’. I got soup in dee icebox. You can heat it up. And dere’s plenty o’ ginger ale, too.” I can recall sitting down and listening to him talk about my grandmother with love, knowing that he’d be with her again, soon.
I miss my grandfather. And my grandmother, too, as well as my dog and all the other family members I’ve lost in the last 10 years. I remember them in moments that I treasure in the very core of my heart, just as I savor the moments of birth that Amy and I have experienced during this ten-year span. Birth and death, ever intertwined: It was a spring afternoon in 2001 when I leaned forward and whispered in my dying grandmother’s ear that we were expecting. She was unable to respond at this point, but I asked her to watch over the kid. At night, when Katie is drifting off to sleep, I tell her stories of the great-grandmother she never met. She listens, every time.
Snapshots. I bought Amy a camera for Christmas; it was time. In studying up on all the point-and-shoots, I learned that more megapixels do not necessarily make for a better camera. If you’re looking to bring in as much light as possible, sometimes less is more. And when the light comes in, and the angle is right, you’ve got yourself one beautiful picture. An image to hold onto, no matter what the year.
We take stock this time of year, we make resolutions, and we reflect. More than anything, though, we hold onto the pictures that fill the photo albums of our minds and souls. This is where time really does stand still, and where a decade is just a word.
Dreaming ‘bout the day when you wake up and find / That what you're lookin’ for has been here the whole time ...
You said it, Taylor. Crank up that iPod. Happy new year.
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