The Final Past Time

Anthony Esolen on What Baseball Could Have Taught the Greeks About Death

On a sunny afternoon in October, many years ago, there came to me the first intimations of the bittersweetness of this passing life. I was sitting on the floor of our small living room, stationed in front of a black-and-white television, my father watching over my shoulder from the sofa. It was the seventh game of the World Series, with the Detroit Tigers playing the defending champions, my beloved St. Louis Cardinals.

It was inconceivable to me that they could lose. They had, it is true, blown a three-games-to-one lead, and had been routed 13–1 the day before. My mother, God bless her, had picked me up from school that day so that I’d miss as little of the action as possible. I remember feeling queasy, listening on the car radio as Jim Northrup hit a grand slam. I could well have missed that.