Tag: jordan winer baseball

How Zamboni knew the Cubs would win even when they were down 3-1

You’ll notice my last post was Oct 30th, when it seemed it would be lights out for the Cubs, When Cleveland had their Wahoo fingers around the necks of the cute and cuddly Cubbies, when it seemed all over. After all, coming back from being three games down to one?- it had only happened five times in 132 years of this batting game you Americans love. Yet I predicted a Cubs win. It was easy.

Zamboni knows the ultimate truth that all mortals know deep in their chotzkes:  Everything ends. Sometime. Every leaf, at some point, falls. Red Sox fans know this. Game of Thrones fans know. Mad Men watchers even faced the end. Sopranos too. Even my favorite author, Pulitzer winning Danielle Steele, may one day expire and stop spinning her beloved yarns…Fabio’s hair even, one day will cease.

Also, you remember the man who brought the billy goat into Wrigley field, was ousted and cursed them? IT WAS MY UNCLE!

Yes, this is factual and I can vilify it as well. My uncle Tormallen had come from Estonia, changed his name, and opened a pub. Of course he had his goat with him when he came over to this country and named his pub the Billy Goat Tavern as the bond between an  Estonian and his  goat is as strong as iron yet as tender and soft as a newborn baby’s willy.

And so he brought his goat to game four of the 1945 world series. Evidently the smell of his goat -which we Estonians barely notice- bothered some. Yet I believe it was intolerance to immigrants!! He was booted, and summarily spoke on his way out the turnstile, as his poor goats’ horns were entangled- “these Cubbies aint gonna win no more!”

Until last night. Because you see, even the curse of someone in the bloodline of Zamboni can only last a maximum of 71 years. (Unless of course you have the fingernail of a toothless fishmonger’s wife, the eye of a marmot, the toe of a tax collector, and an evil eye stone, put all said sundries in a bag, bury it beneath the victims home and say out loud 11 vigorous times the ancient bon mots “I FUCKING CURSE YOU GOOD MOTHERFUCKER!”, but old Tormallen did none of that. We all know an off the cuff curse has an expiration date.

And yet it is more than that. It is also due to the power of love, brotherhood and extreme emotional vulnerability. This is like a mighty wall that there is very little can trounce or triumph over.

Late in the game, Anthony Rizzo put his arms on the shoulders of veteran David Ross, and poured forth, “I can’t control myself..I’m trying my best…I’m an emotional wreck…I’m in a glass case of emotion right now…” And was at this moment when the “grit” was found to finally beat the Indians, and end the 71 year old curse, and the 108 year old drought, and win the World Series.

So there is your doggy bag  for today’s lesson. Always pour out your fears and anxieties to your friends, it is not weakness, but strength. Your little fears?- clowns, finding a bit of sand in your sandwich at the beach, the Kars for Kids commercial, who cares. But when you are in a glass case of emotion? Always.

‘I’m an emotional wreck’: Watch Anthony Rizzo’s touching dugout exchange with David Ross

A Sentence About Why I Need Baseball

(I had to write this, Zamboni doesn’t do sports)

So you snap at your kids  and they do that saracstic little OMG face and you snap back at them for that and they say, “what face?” and there are tears and it gets all ugly and you wish you hadn’t said what you did and there are more tears because now you’re angry at yourself so you get more angry at her and all the time you realize all these years are going by so fast anyway and what does it all add up to and you want to rewind or at least stop time but you know you can’t so you go home and in a huff you turn on the TV and no one’s talking but you discover that the Phillies and the Reds are in the 12th inning, tied at 4 a piece and you just start watching and the 12th becomes the 14th and everyone in Philiadephia gets up and sings again take me out to the ballgame for the 14th Inning Stretch and suddenly you and both kids are on the couch inching a little closer together and laughing sleepily because now it’s the 17th, then 19th inning and it’s 1 a.m. in Philly and they have run out of pitchers so the second baseman has come up to pitch and he retires the side with all his teamates smiling and laughing and the boy went to sleep in the 16th but the girl, the cusp of teenage girl is now asleep on your shoulder waking up just long enough for you to tell her, “they won it in the 19th” and time stopped for those 7 innings you watched because baseball has no clock and you realize that’s why you need it because sometimes you just need to stop time.

a stitch in time