MOLINE CLAIMS THIRD STRAIGHT TITLE
Autumn: October 10
In the spring, the South was more open. Who knew what seeds would germinate, what crops would grow, what perennials return? Still, even then, Kansas City looked like the favorite, capable of martialing a strong offense behind a thinned but still sufficient pitching staff. The games were played. The season advanced. Trends emerged, and fears were confirmed. The Whirlwind lost pitcher after pitcher to injury but still clung to its Southern division lead. G.M. Nils Samuels used his resources well, filling in here, patching a gap there, but flying perilously close to sub-.600 ball until a perfect final week. It was a good KC squad, good enough to secure the division. It was not the team with which manager Shoals Alabama began the season. "It was the hand that Allah dealt. So I comply."
October came. The season ended. Two teams won their respective pennants, two teams faced off on two different fields. And in the end, it was the same two teams, the ones who'd been there before, the boys who'd wrestled in youth over womb space, who'd fought for the Shoe each fall since 1997. In the end, the two tyrants. And if the Greens won six fewer games than Pythagoras said they should have won, and if the Whirlwind won two more games than that dead sabermatician would have predicted, well, then those differences evened out in the championship series. There the Combine rolled steadily through the dust storms of Kansas, sweeping the Whirls in workmanlike fashion, winning with strong hitting and solid pitching, swatting eight homers to the dustmen's three, taking the lone one-run contest. There were no blowouts; the games were close. Staked to sufficient leads, Moline's shaky pen bent but never broke. Despite the dire predictions of Greens' atheist Liane Luckman, the shoe stayed east of the big river.
"Eh, I've been wrong before," said Luckman. "Now what?" "What's left but the hand shake?" asked KC publicist Mike Veeck. "Jehovah loves you," answered Moline ethicist Suzann Moertl, hugging the loveable iconclast. So hands shook, backs were slapped, and tushes were fondled. There were enough shared laughs to make spectators wonder at the competition. "Hey, we's supposed to hate those guys," said Tom Simmons of Rock Island. "What're they doin' being nice to 'em?"
If there was less emotion this year, less speculation beforehand, less analysis afterwards, it might be because these brothers in arms had been there before. "They were a better team," said Samuels. "They deserved to win." His brother only smiled. "These things happen." And what do they mean? That one team wins and another loses, and ostensibly it's why we play the game. But there are other reasons. To track the course of young men across elysian fields. To imagine, plan, and realize. To have one damn thing work out in measured ways. To know something well. This is the game that the Lord has made. Rejoice and be glad in it.