The box score as narrative poem, sports fans and purpose, the end of seasons

Monday 5/4/26

Baseball box scores have always been special spaces to me. They were an unchanging--because they were always what they needed to be--informational treasure box of sorts. You could read the a game, so to speak, if you knew how.

A 1907 box score, a 1951 box score, a 1986 box score, a 2020 box score all served to show how connected the game was over the course of its eras. A game that had "lived" through so much in the world, but here was a constant, the box score.

And now the box score is diminished, reduced in stature and seriousness, by a block detailing the results of ABS Challenges, which is beneath the dignity of the box score. But everything gets worse--that is the way of our world.

Nothing is immune. We come blundering in herd-style, or corporate-style, and cheapen it, dumb it down, pare back individuality, implement rules and expectations of blandness, thoughtlessness, and essentially bar nuance, which in turn makes people less and less capable of discernment and critical thinking and being themselves or having selves to be. Knowing what a self is.

ABS Challenges. It's like reporting the minutes of a game show. "And then he bought a vowel..."

The Houston Astros are 14-21. They took two out of three from the Red Sox over the weekend after having already swept the Sox in the second series of the year. Meaning, five of their wins--over a third of their win total--have come against Boston. Ah, you John Henry/Craig Breslow Red Sox. The lowly Old Towne Team.

The Red Sox offense is hapless. I could be wrong, but I believe they've only won two games in which they didn't score first. They aren't going to score much.

On message boards, I watch Red Sox fans praising Roman Anthony, saying they know they have a superstar in him. "I just want to see this amazing, talented young core continue to get experience and get better."

That's me paraphrasing. You wouldn't see correct grammar like that. And no one knows how to use a comma. When you encounter commas used correctly, it's typically because that person used AI.

Do people never think?

The amazing, talented young core? Because of where these players were drafted?

Lots of high draft picks never become anything. Are people unaware of this? Do they disregard it when it comes to their team? Are they that obtuse?

Roman Anthony is on pace for 5 home runs this year and 25 RBI. I have seen nothing since he debuted to make me think he has power. He looks to me like a 15 homer--maybe--60 RBI--maybe--.273--maybe--hitter. Who strikes out 170 times a year. But maybe walks 70 times.

Yes, he's twenty-one. I'm simply saying what I've seen thus far. I don't assume numbers or that someone's game is going to greatly improve.

Why would I do that? Why would anyone? What are you seeing that makes you think he's going to be a great player? What are you actually seeing with your eyes?

I also have no reason to think Marcelo Mayer will be good. Again, based off what? That he's a former highly rated prospect?

Different sport, but look at someone like Connor Bedard. Touted as can't-miss. And while you can't say that he's missed already, he was talked about like a player who'd be one of the two or three best in the world for a long time.

What are the chances that Connor Bedard ever has a single year as good as the one that nineteen-year-old Macklin Celebrini just had? Would you bet that he does if your life depended on you being correct?

I'm going to say that the odds are that he doesn't. And if he doesn't, that would mean he missed insofar as what he was expected to be, or that so many declared would be.

You can't go by things like that. The hat is hung on what ultimately happens on the playing surface. Why are people not disabused of these notions that they have? Experience is supposed to be this great teacher, right?

Well, we experience this--as in, see examples of it--all the time. It's a sports staple. So how is that lost on people? Is there nothing that can't fail to elude their comprehensive grasp?

I saw a post yesterday from someone on a discussion board complaining about how the second round of the NHL playoffs starts before all the first round games are done, with the poster saying this is definitely a new development.

No one knows anything. It's like they live their lives as if they're not allowed to try and know anything.

I rarely comment, but I did, pointing out that on April 24, 1983, the Boston Bruins were finishing their second round series as the Edmonton Oilers began theirs, and thus this wasn't a new thing at all, with there being many more examples.

This, of course, results in downvoting, because along came someone who actually knows, and the people who don't know, who will never try to know anything, and never will know anything, hate that. Has nothing to do with how cordial and non-confrontational one is in the sharing of some knowledge. Very few people like anyone who knows.

Regarding those NHL playoff games last night from two different rounds: some really interesting stuff. The Avalanche beat the Wild 9-6 in the opener of their second round series, and the Canadiens beat the Lightning 2-1 in the seventh game of their first round series, with the Canadiens having only 9 shots on goal!

So, two fascinating instances of the number 9, with a team scoring as many goals as another team had shots, and they both won.

The sports historian loves things like this.

Nikita Kucherov has 0 points in seven career game sevens. Indictment! Indictment!

I can't take anyone seriously who uses the pronouns "we" and "us" constantly--to be honest, ever, pretty much, but constantly is worse--in talking about the team they root for. You're an adult; act like one. Or be one. You're not a part of what those other people are doing. Have your own things.

Therein is the problem--people don't have their own things. Having your own things isn't the same as happened to be married or happened to have kids. These are things that people do often because they think it's all there is to do. So they do them.

To me, a fan of a team is someone who lives in that same area, or was from there, or has some kind of personal connection. You know about that sport the team plays, and you learn about the team. Not just the current version of the team. But you know the team's history. You read books, articles, look up players, past seasons.

I'm sure, for instance, most Patriots fans have no idea who Andre Tippet is, or even John Hannah. I don't consider that a fan. I think that's an ignorant person without anything else in their life, any interests, any knowledge, probably any purpose, who does the parasocial thing and tries to live vicariously through other people, and wants to have something to make noise about. A thing to do. Because of the absence of other things.

The team and the sport has little to do with any of this. It's just what they use. Have within reach. They didn't have to come up with the thing or find the thing. The thing had a sort of ubiquity. It was there in front of them. They didn't have to go to it. Seek it out. Similarly, if it wasn't this thing, it would have been some other thing that enough people were talking about. That does more of the determining than a real interest or passion.

I see these so-called Celtics fans doing the we and us stuff, going on Reddit and being really upset the Celtics were eliminated like this was their life. It shouldn't mean that much to you. If it does, you have bigger problems of the internal variety. In terms of your purpose, or lack thereof.

Many of the Celtics fans banged the 180, going within days from "The NBA is scared of us" to "We weren't supposed to win, this was a team that overachieved because of hard work, had no business being the two-seed, looking at these players on the roster who are fringe NBA guys," etc.

I'm going to elucidate something. Depth is a conceptual illusion in the NBA. Depth has little to do with who wins championships. Roster spots after spot four, five, have little to do with who wins NBA championships.

Stars win NBA championships. Do you think Bill Wennington made that much of a difference on the Bulls?

It's your core stars. Then, maybe one or two pretty good players. After that, it doesn't really matter.

The Celtics had more than enough in that regard this year, if Tatum and Brown are who people say they are. Which is where things can get thorny.

One of these Celtics fans I'm referencing said that they're two of the ten best players in the league.

First of all, no. They're not. They're not that close. In my view. I don't think Tatum is a great player. I think Brown isn't even a very good player. Too many weaknesses to his game. Doesn't/can't pass, turns it over, needs to go right, plays bullheaded by driving into three guys because he's made up his mind he's going to drive no matter what, isn't a good rebounder, isn't a strong defender.

But if you actually had two of the ten best players in the NBA, and guys like Derrick White and Payton Pritchard, that should be enough.

What I'm saying is that Celtics fans, and many basketball fans--especially when it comes to Jayson Tatum--have misappraised the talent of these two players.

They also don't understand who wins NBA titles and why. Top heavy teams win. That's all an NBA team can be--top heavy. That's how the league and the sport works. Two superstars, a couple pretty good guys, and that's it. Everyone else is basically interchangeable.

What you really want from a player outside of that very small, core group, is a specialist. A three-point specialist, for instance. A guy who can neutralize a big in a short spurt when you need it, even if he can't do anything else. A shot blocker/adjuster. If those players are just "regular" players, but not as good--essentially replacement-level without what can serve as a defining positive characteristic--then it scarcely matters who they are.

The truth is that Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown aren't who Celtics fans think they are as players. If they were, they'd have multiple titles by now. Call it two. I'm not talking three in five years. And the almost certain likelihood is that they won't get a second one in Celtics green.

Does anyone ever go back and look at the rosters of championships teams through the decades? This is how it works. There are exceptions, sure. But what's an exception?

The 1985-86 Celtics? Some of those 1960s Celtics teams? The Lakers in the 1970s and 1980s?

Not the 2000s Lakers. Two stars. Some other guys. The early 1990s Bulls? Two stars, a pretty good guy (Horace Grant), some other guys.

I know Celtics fans want to say the 2008 team, but you had a diminished Pierce (that is, not peak, and maybe not prime), a diminished Garnett, a diminished Allen. It was like having two stars but spread over three guys. And that was enough. Just. And just the once.

These Celtics didn't overachieve. For the regular season, okay. But not that much to me.

As I wrote in this journal before the season began, people had the wrong attitude and expectation. Everyone else said lost year, rebuild, etc., and I said they could do quite well if they were of a mind to.

The approach would matter. Go for it and try and fight it out, or say, hey, we can only be so much this year, so let's hang back and accept that. This was an organizational matter, too. A mindset. To treat the season like it could matter from a competitive standpoint, or to play it out with the understanding that it couldn't and you were waiting instead.

I saw this season as their best chance to win a championship before it started. They had a better chance this year than they will next year. Because they don't play the right way, and Tatum has much to do with that. I thought if they played a better brand of basketball in his absence, then he could come back and be absorbed into what they were doing. And the East was wide open, as we're seeing.

Detroit won yesterday, completing their comeback from down 3-1. The Magic had them in Game 6, and when they let that slip away, the series went with it. I don't know that the Sixers won't come out of the East, despite seemingly many other people being certain of this. None of the four remaining teams would be a surprise. They'd each be equally unsurprising to me.

The Celtics should have been in that mix. But, ultimately, they underachieved. Or, if one prefers, they didn't, because their two superstars aren't actually superstars.

I know this will sound counterintuitive because he has the two postseason MVP awards, but Jaylen Brown doesn't have the skill set to be a good playoff performer. The game changes. He's not that good at that particular game. In the playoffs, one of your star Celtics becomes one of those other guys, but you're still counting on him to be elite.

He plays priggishly. Like he's rebelling against his own shortcomings by doubling down on them. He puts his head down and charges into the wall with greater force. But it's still the wall, and it doesn't matter how far back he takes his run from.

That's playoff Jaylen Brown. He'll grind you down. He gets the ball at the top of the key, and he's going to do what he's going to do, regardless of what the game or situation calls for.

That's why his turnovers feel as frustrating as they do--because you see them coming before they happen. Before the play goes into motion. I'm simply putting words to what the more clear-eyed Celtics fans often feel when they watch him.

All this being said, the Celtics' cause wasn't abetted by Tatum sitting out when he could have gone. He idolized Kobe Bryant. No way on earth that Bryant wouldn't have played were he in Tatum's sneakers.

Nor was it advanced by Joe Mazzulla running out the starting five that he did. You could argue that it was a fireable offense. Dereliction of duty. Because that was...what was that? Was he making a point? What point? You start three non-starters, one of them plays less than five minutes on the game, and they combine for zero points.

The person pursuing things of importance understands that losses and season-ending losses are unwelcome, of course, but no more. They're "Ugh, oh well." They aren't crushing or anything of that nature. The wins shouldn't add that much to your life either, if anything. They aren't your wins and they have nothing to do with your purpose, if you have any.

A fan is just as interested in the most ho-hum of seasons standings-wise, as a glory year. It's in the following of your team.

This Red Sox team is abysmal. I don't expect them to get much better. But this season will be the same to me as any past season was, by and large, in the following sense.

I'm interested in the shape of that season. The day in, day out paragraphs and pages that add up to a kind of self-contained story, whatever the tenor of that story may be. They are the Red Sox, I am a fan. It is baseball, I know the game. This is the team I follow and always have. It's a team I have a connection to.

But if they win 100 games or lose 100 games, how I feel as I live my life--and this would be the same if my life wasn't as awful as it is--is the same.

I like postseasons because they're extra chapters. I'm sadder when the Red Sox season ends than I am when any other Boston sports season ends, but that's a life thing.

Baseball is the life sport. It's like the end of the Christmas season. Or autumn, I suppose. Which goes right into Christmas anyway. Or the end of the school year. No, graduation. The going of separate ways. Or when a bunch of people who worked on something together--like a play--come to the end of the run.

Baseball comes back to you, though. I am sad when the Red Sox season ends but when I think about that I realize it's not for baseball matters. Wistfulness. Like a Nick Drake song. Or a John Clare poem. I could have seen Clare being a big baseball guy. Just taking it in, as one takes in the seasons. Reading the box scores as though they were poems. Narrative poems in compact form.

There's more to it than that, though. The ending of those seasons is measured against--no; juxtaposed with--what I don't have and what I yearn for and the passage of time.

The longer I go without those things and my fear that I'm running out of time to ever have them. Even as, simultaneously, I may have to endure what I've thus far endured--and worse--for longer--and much longer--than I already have.

The ending of a baseball season would feel different, in all probability, were I where I wished to be. If my work had a chance and was also doing in the world what I wanted it to do and what I made it for. If I was in Rockport. If I had friends. People who cared about me who were good people and we were active in each others lives.

And a particular person I was with and who was with me. I don't like the term "partner" at all. "Partner" suggests something temporary. And how, besides, could anyone be my "partner" in what I'm doing, what I'm here for, what I am? Who can give what I give? And that's how partnership works in theory, no? Equal giving. It's suggestive of similarities.

The season would end and, yes, there'd be that wistfulness as I stepped outside and noticed some leaves now falling from the trees, trying to catch one, perhaps, which you're only successful in doing once, twice, thrice an autumn, even if you're someone who makes a regular go at it, as I am.

But I wouldn't feel the crush of time like I do now. I wouldn't think about what wasn't. Hasn't been yet, if it's ever to be. Tick tock, tick tock. I'd be excited about going to, I don't know, an apple orchard on Cape Ann on that same day the season ended, excited to listen to the Grateful Dead that night, excited to get up and early in the morning and work on the book that would have a chance in the world, and that people were waiting for. To share with, and have things shared with me, with someone with whom I had a connection. I don't believe a person for me exists, though. Neither intellectually nor in terms of character, never mind both.

But it is just a game. And it's not your game. Yours is different. And if someone else's game is affecting you that much, I'd say, contrary to what everyone else would say--and it would be just about everyone, right?--that you're not much of a fan of that team. Or that sport.

For the Boston sports fan, it's now just between them and the Red Sox for the next four months. I'm reminded of Reg Presley screaming, "Oh no!" at the start of the Troggs' "I Can't Control Myself."