The finest meditation on baseball I know is Bart Giamatti's "The Green Fields of the Mind," and, as soon as you hear the title, you know it's about baseball, which means it's about tragedy for all but Yankee fans.

What is the suffering of the cornfed Cubs fan, crying behind his collegiate, ivy-covered brick wall at Wrigley, compared to the classical truths of Fenway, with its Green Monster rising ominously out of left like the Minotaur patiently awaiting this year's sacrificial offering, knowing it will come no matter how long the wait?

This year's showdown at Yankee Stadium was no mere playoff, it was another round in our own Peloponnesian Wars, another chapter in the rivalry between our city-states, the Athens and Sparta of the American League.

Imagine what Sophocles could have done if he'd had some real material to work with - like the Red Sox instead of a faded Theban legend about a blind king.

Then he might have written like A. Bartlett Giamatti, president of Yale, commissioner of major league baseball, Red Sox fan and therefore a man well acquainted with tragedy. Professor Giamatti needed no chorus to set the scene; he got right to the point that dreary Sunday after the big game:

"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 … a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped and summer was gone."

As every baseball fan knows, there is life and there is the off-season. There is hope and there is baseball in Boston. And always, as in the Gwen Verdon musical and real heartbreaking life, there are the Damn Yankees, waiting to bring the curtain down and cackle gleefully, the demons.

Once again the tragedy has been faithfully performed, the rites of fall duly observed, and the bright season closed and put away, the soul cleansed of foolish hope. It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. Again everything is as it must be, as it should be, as it always is. And the curtain falls, like a fan's hopes.

You don't have to be Presbyterian to appreciate predestination; you only have to follow the Red Sox. It's not sad, really, it's kind of uplifting, the sheer certainty of the outcome every year. "Hardship to those resigned," pronounces Oedipus in exile, "is no dismay." He must have been a Red Sox fan.

Once again our heroes managed to avert victory at almost the last minute, defying the odds to preserve their integrity and - more important - the story's. It hasn't been easy, season after heartbreaking season. In 1986, it looked near impossible. But the incredible Sox did it, though it took seven games that year and some of the most improbable sequences this side of a Dickens novel.

This year it looked as though victory might be closing in, and hope sprang foolishly eternal in Beantown. But at the end of the day, and a long, long night, and eleven jagged innings, the now 85-year-old tradition remains intact, unbroken since 1918.

A secret: Thursday night's defeat came as a quiet relief, as another profound assurance that some things don't change even in an always changing world. The stars still move in their courses, and the Red Sox have lost another pennant.

Defeat has its consolations that victory can never bestow. Would the Southern character be the same without the forever Lost Cause? (Who speaks of won causes?) Would King Lear be a more satisfying play with a happy ending? Who would remember Oedipus sighted and successful, giving speeches at Rotary? If Dante had wed his Beatrice, how long would you have given it?

Let's face it: Victory is undignified. It does not offer the solitude that the development of character requires. Once again Boston has narrowly escaped it.

Why would a grown man let himself in for all this, bright summer after bright summer, tragic fall after tragic fall as the light fades and the shadows grow longer? Because it's not who wins or loses. It's not even how the game is played. It's the game itself, the beautiful, pastoral, perennial American game itself. As another tragedian put it, the play's the thing.

Marlins send a message -- We’re here to play, Yanks!

Dave Hyde

October 19, 2003

NEW YORK -- The October sun lingered as long as possible before bowing out of the Bronx sky, as if just a warmup act for Yankee Stadium. Fans draped over the railings. Music blasted over the loudspeakers. It was all New York, all the way Saturday night, the sights, the sounds, the zippered jackets, the hot coffee, the traditional chants and the announcer, with the voice of God, saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2003 World Series …

And then came the first batter.

And, with it, the first Marlins hello.

It was just a bunt, just a single, just the kind of moment Juan Pierre has provided in what seems like every game this season. But in the opening scene of this closing series, it was a message, too. It was a mission statement of how this team plays, and what it will do, how it can win.

"Bring our style to the big stadium," as Pierre later said.

They kept bringing it, too, their speed, their defense, even their pitching on this night, pitch after pitch, inning after inning. And just as that first hit said something, so did the final pitch from reliever Ugueth Urbina, the way so many have this October.

This was in the Yankees' final threat, runners on first and second in a 3-2 game, with the New York crowd making a New York noise. Nick Johnson swung. Urbina looked up. Pierre settled under the ball in center-field and that was that.

One game down.

One message sent, too.

"We're here to play," Pierre said.

"I'm telling you, I keep being surprised by the mental toughness, the lack of nervousness this team keeps showing," Jeff Conine said.

And so, just like that, this surprise season had the perfect introduction in a game right out of central casting. What a beautiful night this was. What a wonderful sports scene. What a delicious setting for the World Series, in a place Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria calls "a temple."

You could say they've got this World Series thing down by now at Yankee Stadium, from the atmosphere to the eardrum-splitting cheers for Aaron Boone, their hero of the postseason, to the silence for opera singer Ronan Tynan belting God Bless America. The place oozes with baseball beauty and sports history. Even the Yankee organist has been at the keyboard for 37 years.

What a trip these Marlins playoffs have been. It's not just the games. It's the venues. Pac Bell Park in San Francisco is as great as a new stadium gets. Wrigley Field is as great as any stadium in any sport gets. Now it's Yankee Stadium with everything that means.

Can any run have better scenery? Or more atmospheric electricity?

The Marlins went through Barry Bonds in what seems like a season ago, and then went through Mark Prior and Kerry Wood to reach the World Series.

Now they come through all the Yankees, all of New York, for all the marbles.

You could feel the Marlins fire, too. There were the first pumps, the high-fives, you've seen all October. Once, after grounding out, Luis Castillo went back to the dugout and whipped his batting gloves to the ground, angry, slumping over the water cooler.

Pierre took a deep breath in his first at-bat.

"There you are, the first hitter in the World Series, seeing the Yankee pinstripes for the first time, seeing that scoreboard in the background," he said. "And then to get a hit, what a great feeling."

All the Marlins signatures were on display, right from that bunt.

The speed? There was Pierre running and Luis Castillo hitting a soft single to right field. Pierre ended at third. Pudge Rodriguez, Senor October, then hit a sacrifice fly to score Pierre.

The defense? There was catcher Rodriguez catching Johnson too far off third base and picking him off. There, too, was shortstop Alex Gonzalez, stabbing a blooper off the bat of Jason Giambi, barehanded, to throw him out and save a run.

The clutch hitting? Pierre got the hit the Yankees couldn't, a single to left in the fifth inning to score two runs.

Finally, there was the pitching. It hasn't been consistent this playoffs. It was there Saturday. Brad Penny put two bad playoff starts behind him and left with a lead. Dontrelle Willis, whose left arm will be important against these left-handed Yankee bats, shut down the Yankees for 21/3 innings. Then Urbina closed it out.

"Should we have been awed?" Marlins manager Jack McKeon said.

"I mean, I don't know. We played them one night at a time whether we're playing in Woodbridge, N.J., or , you know, New York City or Chicago."

Maybe the Marlins had some advantage in Game 1. Maybe the Yankees still had a lovely Red Sox hangover. Maybe that series so sapped them of energy, so drained them of emotion, that coming back to play 44 hours later was asking a bit much.

Maybe the Yankees, who have been here so much, were just happy to be here again. But Game 2 will bring the champion fire out of them, the battle now joined.

One game down.

One night won.

And what a night it was. What a setting. What a New York scene and perfect introduction for the Marlins, right from the first batter

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.