Is Mike Torrez looming? Is that what you’re telling me, universe? I go to Holland with my team on cruise control, enjoying a lead as big as any they’ve had since, well, since 1978, when the man pictured here was in his first season for the Red Sox. And I return home to find them sputtering and flailing. Minutes ago (yes, it’s a first on Cardboard Gods–a real-world, real-time update) the Red Sox lost another to the Kansas City Royals. Meanwhile, the Yankees have a comfortable late-inning lead. Where is this all going?Does anybody know anything about narrative therapy? I know next to nothing, but once a guy explained to me that it was based on the idea that we can change the stories of perpetual failure that we tell ourselves. Something like that. There’s more than just collapses, one bad thing giving way to the next, causing it, a snowball effect of doubt. Pesky holding the ball, Torrez serving up the homer to Dent, Stanley uncorking the wild pitch, Mookie Wilson pulling a grounder toward first. There’s more than all that. There are other possibilities. There is Millar drawing a walk, then Dave Roberts stealing second, then Mueller grounding one past a sprawling, finally human Rivera, Dave Roberts flying home to tie the score. There are stories that go that way and keep going: We’re alive!
So even though I just got back from one trip I’m off on another, but this one’s a mission: I’m going to Vermont then on to Fenway for Saturday’s game. I hope to furnish a full report when I get back, and I hope it to be free of Torrez-ian gloom.
Cardboard Gods 