Sky is Falling Down
Zeus would cotton no nonsense from any gods - this game - as he had the first few thousand after they discovered this thing playing itself out on the Titian Gaea's earth. Promising each and everyone of them that he would do a Prometheus on the miscreant who dared break his concentration but instead of one vulture eating his or her replenished liver once a day he - The Supreme Ruler who had beaned his father the mighty Cronus when he wasn't looking - would have Edgar Allan Poe's twenty-four hook-nosed birds eating a new liver every long tortuous hour. Just as the great writer had wrestled with his inner demons when he walked the cobblestones in old Fordham Village, Zeus would make sure any gods who disobeyed him would do their suffering too; only multiplied by thousands of pounds of pain.
He was so intent watching this contest between a young lefty, who had a father like he did, who declared war on all sixteen year old males approaching manhood, against a pitcher named Walter Johnson who was also destined to be ranked among the gods of the game.
Even though Zeus agreed with Poseidon that the nickname Red Sox had no real meaning, wishing instead they had taken the name Clippers, he nevertheless was going for the Beantowners for the sole reason their cocky
youngster called "Babe" had captured his liking with all the prodigious moxie he displayed on and off the field.
"No bull! I don't want anyone playing with the pentagon guy's brain making him forget what's a strike and what's a ball And Hermes I don't want you tripping runners because you bet against their team nor Athena, my aegis carrier, giving managers the idea to run and hit with the bases loaded like you did to poor Popeye!"
With no fooling around the game was indeed a classic. Zeus watched the contest going on between
pitcher and batter, closely. He jumped excitedly whenever a high and tight fast ball was thrown knowing the next pitch, almost for sure, was going to be a curve that often had a batter falling backward out of his little box and sometimes out of his spikes!
He could see much of himself in this Babe; in the boy that would father the man he would become. Babe’s feats would follow him all the way to the house he would build in The Bronx where he would eat thirty hot-dogs while washing them down with ten golden beers speckled with partially chewed materials and then go out onto the field to hit monstrous home runs, helped a bit by the live ball that was instituted to make more runs explode all over way over where his monument would stand one day.
The game ended with only one run being scored, due to the "dead ball" The Babe hit a sac-fly for the win. Zeus hoped strongly that the earthlings would not make their planet a dead ball; as they had mauled the great Greek idea that said humanity had dignity. This was perpetuated by the Romans who believed in positivism instead of negativisim, thus allowing the Dark Ages to occur making darkness win over the light. When Zeus found out the Beantowners had sent his Babe to New York - he became an anti-Boston fanatic vowing the Red Sox would never again win another World Series. It was Zeus who encouraged a bald man, for the Cardinals, to scamper home from first after lulling the defense into thinking such a thing could not be done. It was he who fashioned the great stretch drives between the Yankees and Red Sox and delighted when the Yankees beat them out. It was he who struck in the last half of the ninth inning when the Red Sox had all but defeated the Mets. He convinced the Boston manager not to put in an uninjured reserve first baseman in, for defensive purposes and who just happened to have good use of both legs It was he who had the two outs made and the third batter have two strikes on him before allowing him to hit a pop up, with eyes, to fall unmolested just beyond two outstretched mis-shapened hands It was he who made a base on balls happen by having the pitcher lose his control and an umpire forget what constituted a "steek" It was he who made a wild pitch slip out of a pitcher’s sweaty fingers to advance the runners into scoring position. It was he who then allowed the polluted sky to fall by having a little snaky grounder - that looked so harmless - slither its way through the legs of the protector of first sack, who found it difficult to bend, and make its way to shallow right field just far enough to score the tying and winning runs!
Zeus didn't even have to show up the next day for the seventh game, for the hex to remain. He was “The Zeus” and would never forget what "they" had done to The Babe. Sometimes in moments of weakness - always looking behind him in case someone was gaining on him like the great Satchel Paige was wont to say, he felt a little sadness for those mortals who continued to root and drink in great heaps of pain for that team, that once abandoned the great Bambino who had helped them win the big prize in a time called long long ago. END 4- 30-09
