Baseball

I have not been dry lately, despite my doctor’s advice in February to do so, but I do have to depend on the generosity of my bar mates at Vesuvio in order to bend a pint of ale or an Old Crow and 7 in a bucket glass. I’m afraid I’m turning into that classic bar patron who never has any money. Funny how when you’re literally starving it’s easier to cage a free drink than a meal.

But I digress.

When we’re not talking books at Vesuvio, we talk baseball. Today we were discussing Saturday’s 13-inning showdown between the Yankees and the Giants.

Al Wiggins, a barrel-chested pensioner and the resident expert on all things jazz and baseball, closed the conversation with a hollow and wistful look in his eye.

“Baseball,” Al decreed, “is not about winning. It’s about losing, about teaching young men the importance and the inevitability of losing. That’s why there’s so much cheering in the dugout when a team wins.”