Читать книгу Purity of Absence - Dave Margoshes - Страница 20

Game 6, World Series, Bottom of the 10th, 2 Outs

Those hands

have been very important

for 24 victories this season

and very important for seven innings of this game but now all Roger Clemens can do is fold them and watch.

Thanks for the poetry, Joe,

but the sentiment stinks.

Carter doubles

and Knight singles,

sending him to third

and redeeming himself

for that error in the seventh—

redemption, Joe, that’s the angle—

and Carter scores when a wild pitch

sends Gedman scrambling

and Mookie hits this sputtering grounder

down the first-base line,

an easy out, except something—

God, maybe, that’s what Knight says—

makes Buckner daydream it out

of his glove, spins around to watch it go

with the helplessness of a bartender

feeling the Scotch splash out

of the glass and onto his best shirt—

all this because we don’t quit,

Mookie says in the postgame interview,

we never say die,

and some things are certain

despite the combined wisdom

of the colourmen,

even you, Vin:

as the ball is thrown

so shall it be caught,

and something—maybe it was God

but maybe it was just Carter—

says no, damn it, and no force

on earth can stop

the ball’s spin when it hits

a fault in ground no one

could have known was there.