Kirbe-e-e-e-e-e PUCKETT!

Another obituary and another tragically young passing - I found out that Kirby Puckett has died at the age of 45 through the City Pages online (I am a little late reading it, though and it is a week since his passing.) Kirby Puckett brings back memories of the two Twins wins in the World Series, and the first one I experienced, I think it was 1987, I attended the victory parade with my son Carey who was 8 or 9 at the time. I remember being overwhelmed by the size and energy of the crowd (and a passing wistful wish that you could get anything like that kind of crowd for a peace demonstration.) And I remember seeing tough little guy Kirby, in an open-topped limo with his team-mates, his bald pate gleaming above a plush mink coat. There is a certain kind of exuberant classless, tasteless classiness that poor boys (or girls) with hearts of gold exhibit when they hit the big time that I just love, and Kirby had that to the nines. The linked tribute describes his dynamic style of play so I won't try to top that. But he was a true Minnesota hero.

Time magazine discovers blogs

TIME.com: Meet Joe Blog.
"Not that long ago, blogs were one of those annoying buzz words that you could safely get away with ignoring. The word blog — it works as both noun and verb — is short for Web log. It was coined in 1997 to describe a website where you could post daily scribblings, journal-style, about whatever you like — mostly critiquing and linking to other articles online that may have sparked your thinking. Unlike a big media outlet, bloggers focus their efforts on narrow topics, often rising to become de facto watchdogs and self-proclaimed experts. Blogs can be about anything: politics, sex, baseball, haiku, car repair. There are blogs about blogs.
"Big whoop, right? But it turns out some people actually have interesting thoughts on a regular basis, and a few of the better blogs began drawing sizable audiences. Blogs multiplied and evolved, slowly becoming conduits for legitimate news and serious thought. In 1999 a few companies began offering free make-your-own-blog software, which turbocharged the phenomenon. By 2002, Pyra Labs, which makes software for creating blogs, claimed 970,000 users.
"Most of America couldn't have cared less. Until December 2002, that is, when bloggers staged a dramatic show of force. The occasion was Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party, during which Trent Lott made what sounded like a nostalgic reference to Thurmond's past segregationist leanings. The mainstream press largely glossed over the incident, but when regular journalists bury the lead, bloggers dig it right back up. "That story got ignored for three, four, five days by big papers and the TV networks while blogs kept it alive," says Joshua Micah Marshall, creator of talkingpointsmemo.com, one of a handful of blogs that stuck with the Lott story."

Not the End Times yet, then

So the times are not so miraculous after all; the Marlins will be going to the series. In a lingering apocalyptic note, they are now referred to as the anti-Cubs, and are trying to get used to being the most hated team in baseball. Said one clever pundit: "There's a Cub nation out there. But . . . they can wait another 95 years.''
Still can't understand (or maybe have never heard of) the Cubs mystique? This article from Jean Marbella explains it about as well as anyone can.
And the other almost as perennial underdogs the Boston Red Sox? Yep, they lost too.
From Greg Cote of the Miami Herald:
"Thursday night proved it once and for all.
A large banner at Yankee Stadium read: 'Mystique Don't Fail Us Now.'
And it did not.
Another banner read, simply: 'Destiny.'
And it crushed the Red Sox. Again."

The Theological Implications of Recent Near-Miraculous Developments in Baseball

Jim Wallis in Sojourners has an article titled Baseball and the end times. "A World Series with truly eschatological implications is now possible after the surprise play-off victories of two of the most long-standing underdogs in baseball - or maybe in all of sports.. "

It also made me think of one of my sig file quotes: "While conservatives tell you, leave things alone and no one will lose, and liberals tell you, interfere a lot and no one will lose, baseball says: Someone will lose . . . So that baseball achieves the tragic vision that democracy evades."