Red Sox Quote of the Day, 2009 vol. 3 (near-annual heartbreak edition)

We'll close out the year with this thought from the late Bart Giamatti, courtesy of my Collegian pal-turned-Facebook friend Pat Johnson: It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.

"The Green Fields of the Mind"

from "A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti, et. al

This thought is not entirely applicable if you happen to live in the subtropics, where as I was listening to the Red Sox season coming to its heartbreaking end it was in the low 90s and sunny as all hell. But it captures the mood.

Oct. 12: OK this really is the last Sox quote of the year but I just had to add this line from today's Globe, from the great Dan Shaughnessy:

All you young New Englanders who shrugged whenever dad said, “The Sox will blow it, they always choke at the end,’’ . . . now you know.

Red Sox Quote of the Day, 2009 vol. 2 (Hail Mary edition)

“I made a couple of mistakes in a situation where you can’t make mistakes" -- Josh Beckett

Yep, when I fell asleep going into the seventh inning last night, our ace was still on form. Maybe the problem is my falling asleep. That won't happen at tomorrow's game, I hope.

My gut tells me this is the Yankees' year. But that won't stop me from hoping for another miracle because on a regular basis this team does deliver them.

Red Sox Quote of the Day, 2009 vol. 1

Yes, it's that time of year when I pay attention to my blog again, increase my stats with confused Red Sox fans searching for quotes who somehow find themselves on a mostly literary blog -- and celebrate the continuing renaissance of the world's greatest baseball team. Or at least my favorite. We'll start this one out with Tito, as quoted in a Boston Globe story about Kevin Youkilis, the power hitting infielder with the wiggly batting stance and hasty temper:

“Look, he hit me with a helmet once. I don’t want to get hit with a helmet. But I think sometimes Youk is misrepresented. He’s not worried about his own stats. He wants the team to win so badly.’’

Not for nothing does a certain Yankee fan friend of mine refer to him as "you kill us." Go Sox!

Mantel wins!

The Man Booker Prize was announced yesterday and -- huzzah! -- the winner was Hilary Mantel for her most recent novel Wolf Hall. Which I haven't read yet but am looking forward to mightily because 1) It's set in the Tudor era (the protagonist is Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's righthand man for a good while) and 2) My friend Mags gave it to me for my birthday. But I'm especially excited because I was already a Mantel fan having recently read her French Revolution novel A Place of Greater Safety -- and I have to say it's the best novel I've read this year. It's dense, rich, complex and so so so illuminating on the characters of three of the Revolution's main players -- Georges-Jacques Danton, Camille Desmoulin and that old villain from the Scarlet Pimpernel and so much more, Maximilien Robespierre. Mantel makes them human, even Robespierre. And reminds us that the Revolution wasn't an overnight lop-the-king's-head-off-whoops-let's-call-in-Napoleon kind of event that it can become for us ignorant Americans. I became even more of a Mantel fan when I looked her up on wikipedia and learned that she has overcome considerable personal and medical challenges in order to write these big, absorbing, excellent novels.

Anyway. just figured I'd chime in and express my delight -- and urge everyone to read Mantel. You can find her books, including A Place of Greater Safety and, soon, Wolf Hall, at the Monroe County Public Library, of course.

Florida is TOO a literary place!

Sure we're better known for Disney World, South Beach and real estate swindles but Florida has a rich and continuing literary heritage, dammit -- and in today's Miami Herald my friend and occasional editor Connie Ogle provides a list of her picks for the best. The only change I'd make is to add "The Truth About Lorin Jones" by Alison Lurie -- always my recommendation for a Key West novel, if anyone asks me. And if you want to read one book to get a pretty good sense of Florida history -- especially South Florida -- you can't beat "The Swamp" by Michael Grunwald.