The World Serious

This blog entry’s title is due to Ring Lardner, who, in my estimation, is the all-time greatest Son of Michiana (he was born in Niles and began his reporting career in South Bend). So much lore surrounds baseball, I wish I liked the sport. I try to watch some of the Serious each year, if only to root against the Yankees (or, lately, the Astros); often, I end up rooting against almost everyone in the stadium, but I do cheer for this or that player. A pitcher in his late, late thirties, usually. One who glares like Clint Eastwood.

This year, the Astros and the Phillies have split the first two games. It’s been exciting. (But then, watching homemade YouTube videos of marbles racing each other down the gutter can be exciting.) For reasons of moral decency, I want the Phillies to win, even though that Bryce Harper fellow carries himself obnoxiously and, let’s face it, the city’s reputation isn’t good. But perhaps virtue is irrelevant in the World Serious. The sport is hardly without blemish.

“How did MLB get to [the] point where no African American players on a World Series roster isn’t a surprise to many?” asks a Yahoo! columnist, inelegantly.

The answer: economics. “Baseball is a white, suburban game reinforced by foreign labor.” Clubs can pay to develop players, or the players can pay to be developed (I mean, their parents can pay). And so the players come from two sources: academies in countries like the Dominican Republic, where it is cheap for the clubs to operate; and domestic pay-to-play leagues, which are even cheaper, because the clubs don’t pay. Pay-to-play. What an idea. Not only is it exclusionary, it’s, like, one step removed from giving your money to a casino. There’s a lot of that around South Bend, and not just in baseball.

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South Bend novelist makes it big

Here’s a pretty typical “rags to riches” story for this part of the country. One parent works for a Catholic high school; the other works for Notre Dame. Kid gets free tuition. Skips town as soon as possible. Moves to New York, then Los Angeles. Writes debut novel about how challenging it is in the Rust Belt. Becomes establishment darling.

Back in South Bend, the dozen-plus copies in the library system are all in use. People here love to root, root, root for the home team.

Newpaper profile 1 (The Guardian).

Newspaper profile 2 (Los Angeles Times).

Library event.

Some archival material

Karin & I have begun eating a diet mainly of beans. Thanksgiving week, we ate three meals at Karin’s grandpa’s house: turkey, once; Dominican food, twice. Señora Máxima cooked the two Dominican meals.

I talked a good while with sra. Máxima about Bosch and Balaguer, ex-presidents of the Dominican Republic.

In Cuba, yesterday, Fidel Castro died.

My Uncle Tim brought over to Mary’s house several boxes of letters written by my father during his missionary career. Uncle Tim wants to put this material into the denominational archives. “A treasure trove for future historians of the Missionary Church,” was how he put it. The three children of my father’s who were present (I, Mary, and Stephen; David was out of town) each glanced through the letters for mentions of themselves. I found a booklet – Animales en peligro, or Animals In Danger – that I must have written and illustrated in the second grade.

“People hunt leopards for their skin” (para su piel), the booklet said.

“Elephants are hunted for their tusks.”

“Some animals are hunted by other animals.”

“Some endangered animals are not in danger of being hunted. Fish are in danger of swimming in poisoned waters.” (The illustration for this caption showed a fish swimming above a bottle of poison on the riverbed.)

Tonight, with Stephen, I watched Barcelona take on Emelec, hoping that B.S.C. would clinch this year’s title. Due to the refereeing, this did not occur. To clinch the title, B.S.C. will have to win one of the two remaining games.

Interpreting a funeral

Antonio Valencia poses here with the medics of Manchester United, thanking them for quickly healing his broken hand. He came back from his layoff earlier than expected. He was the “man of the match” last weekend, versus Arsenal.

On Friday, Karin’s grandma died after a long illness. The funeral was held this afternoon, and I played a large part in it: I interpreted, into English, the speech given by one señora Máxima, whom Karin’s grandparents had known when they were missionaries in the Dominican Republic.

It was a lovely and very long speech. It included:

(1) Stories of how the dead woman liked to bake. (A bake shop, named after her, is now operated in the Dominican Republic by sra. Máxima’s niece.)

(2) Accounts of the dead woman’s unfailing cheer, and of her submissiveness. (“Who is this person who is being talked about?” wondered Brianna. Indeed, my own memories are of a sassier, stronger-willed woman.)

(3) An acrostic of the letters D-U-L-Z-U-R-A which, sadly, was not translatable.

(4) Detailed greetings from quite a few members of the Dominican church.

Afterward, my interpreting was praised by many of the mourners. It was nice to be recognized, but I felt like collapsing onto a sofa. Translating a half-dozen single-spaced, typed pages in front of so many people was like shoveling a mountainload of bricks.

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Martin & Mary have flown to Houston to spend Thanksgiving with Ana & David. While they’re away, Karin & I will look after Bianca.

Juan Bosch

It’s Day Two of my second spring break – the break from my highschool job – and so I have the morning off.

Martin is leisured all day long. He attends to his hobbies: watching David Cronenberg movies; reading Poe, Bierce, and Lovecraft. I told him I would read At the Mountains of Madness with him. We’ll see. This year, I haven’t been so good at finishing books.

For my college history class, I’m writing a 20–25 pp. paper about U.S./Dominican relations during the early ’60s, focusing upon the ideological (and personal) antipathy between U.S. officials and President Juan Bosch. Bosch is a lively case study. Soon after he was ousted, he wrote several books about Dominican democracy. His enduring idea, still discussed by Latin Americans, is dictadura con respaldo popular – dictatorship with popular support – a defense of non-electoral “democracy.”

(Bosch also wrote a work called David, biografía de un rey, which reviewers could make neither head nor tail of. It climaxes with Absalom’s rebellion.)

As historical analysis, I’m not sure how well my paper is turning out. As an anthology of quotations, it’s quite breezy to read.