Essay on a Game in Denver and the Birth of a Metaphor

One of the joys of baseball is the growth of language around it, both the metaphors used to describe the game, and the metaphors taken from it for other uses. These metaphors change with the years, of course, endlessly renewing some weird dictionary of the mind that once included "apple," "pill," and "onion" for the ball itself, as well as entries such as "the big tomato" and "Gettysburg Address" for the grand slam. Some of these terms are born of joy ("moonshot" and "cookie" for our home runs); some seem born of pain ("grenade" and "fatty" for theirs). And here in Philadelphia we have a lot of linguistic experience with baseball pain...

...none of which makes us any less interested in our Phillies, the very worst major sports franchise ever. This is an oxymoron, class.

Somewhat recently, the current incarnation of the Fightin' Phils SHOCKED THE WORLD (well, mostly their own fans) by grabbing the N.L. East Championship on the very last day of last season, instead of collapsing at that juncture, as they have done for, oh, what, the last 27 years in row? (We Philadelphians are obviously given to hyperbole when discussing our Phillies' failures. There is no local fan, for example, who does not currently believe that Adam Eaton is more of a threat to hearth and home than Osama bin Laden.)

The Phillies are Murphy's Law in red pinstripes. Our syllogisms are a bit twisted. For example:

All Phillies teams will fail.
All of this Phillies team outscored every team in the league.
Thus, this team will fail.

So it was that my wife and I found ourselves watching this very same offensive juggernaut compile a post-season batting average of .059, or some such, against a team that wears an odd cross of Ozzie Nelson's sweater vest with a black softball jersey. All the time. Like the 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers, the Colorado Rockies were on a roll, and roll the Phillies they did. The gloom on Middle Ainslie, as we call our block, was as palpable as a bayonet through the sternum; we were both in a vengeful, sniping (and surprisingly, metaphoric) mood, for we knew what we were watching, even though the score was, to some, a hopeful 1-1. One imagines fans in that situation in, say, Kansas City sitting on the edges of their seats, bouncing up and down with an expectation that looks as though a line needs to form for the bathroom. Not us, however. There had been one decent swing by the Hometowns the entire game, a marvel of bat speed by Shane Victorino that produced the metaphoric "frozen rope" of a home run into the right field stands. It was not our night. It was also about one in the morning. Bud Selig had apparently been worried that both the Rockies fans in Papua might miss this game.

My bride had gone to the kitchen for fortifications in the form of adult beverages. "Look at this nonsense," I yelled, referring to an outrage in Denver.

"What?"

"These idiots have trees in their bullpen."

"Trees?"

"Well, tall shrubbery."

"That sounds like a description of a nut: Tall shrubbery in the bullpen." And "so," to quote k.d. lang, "it shall be." The next time you see an orientation-challenged individual arguing with Boss Tweed, just think of him as having "tall shrubbery in the bullpen." It's a lot better figure than describing a home run as "gettin' jiggy wit it."