16 September 2003

East Coast Braces

I got up this morning to see what is up with Isabel, the giant storm that is bearing down on Cape Hatteras. I was gratified that it has weakened to Force Three, but it is nearing. They say she is more disorganized and top winds are down to 115 miles an hour. But that is still more than enough to ruin your day and the Fleet is being sortied from Norfolk and the Air Force is flying all the airplanes out of North Carolina and Virginia. She will come ashore on Thursday. I am not ready, not fully, and have to stop by the grocery store for some consumables and cash a check. I expect everyone else will be doing the same thing, and there will be some bare shelves. Ten miles an hour is the progress it is making and it is so big that it really doesn't matter where it comes ashore, we are going to get wet. There is some talk about evacuating Virginia Beach. I'm going nowhere. I'll confront the fury from my balcony, or watch the rain fgrom my easy chair.

I do need to clear off some stuff I have outside. Well, I have 48 hours. I like disasters that come in slow motion. If there is a problem we have nobody to blame but ourselves. I'm bracing already, very happy I don't have to make the decision to evacuate. Whatever gets here will be wet but probably not deadly.

I listened to the BBC from the privacy of my bed this morning, going through the lists of Things To Do before the storm hits. No one was killed in Iraq today, though we lost one yesterday, and I did not hear of anything of particular moment that happened on this day in history. Except maybe the premier of the Bob Newhart Show in 1972, and President Ford offered an Amnesty to Vietnam-era draft dodgers in 1974. I remember both of those events, glad I was able to watch the former and pleased I was not one of the latter. My son tells me he would go to Canada if the draft comes back to support a long-term presence in the Middle East and I shrug.

"We'll do what we need to do, Son. I think we paid at the office for military service." I don't know if he is serious or not. The younger boy seems to think that Black Hawk Down is his cup of tea, though somehow he thinks he might arrive with a weapon, fully trained, with a minimum of fuss.

I took a look at the Times and tried to fry the perfect strips of bacon as I drank coffee and weighed my options. I could get on the road early and hit the store before the crowds of house-spouses swept down. I really didn't need much to complete my preparations. Tonic, of course. Eggs. I have plenty of batteries now, power for the radio and candles to light when the power goes out. I scrolled through the Times and was gratified that Lynn Zinzer stayed up last night and watched the end of Monday Night Football so that I didn't have to. I folded my tent before the half, not even waiting to see the highlights. The Skins won, that was sufficient, and I was unwilling to start the week in sleep deficit. I'm counting on a light Thursday at the office. I'm braced for it, in fact.

I'm glad I didn't stay up. The rain stopped at halftime, when I was entering dreamland, just when the Giants started a rally. It would have been interesting to watch them gobble up the 16-point third-quarter deficit and cascade into a wild exchange of field goals in the final 11 seconds. Then they went to overtime, which the Cowboys won, 35-32, on a 25-yard field goal by Billy Cundiff. Lynn tells me he kicked seven of them, tying an N.F.L. record. 21 points, all on his toe. A big game for him and I mildly wished I could have seen it. I don't know what ABC is thinking about their East Coast audience. I wonder who has the time to stay up well after midnight to watch some stupid game. Anyone who is charged full rates for advertising on the second half should have their heads examined.

But football fever is coming upon me, a bit late this year, and the fever will not subside until the end of January. I still wsh I could have seen it. Football is one of the last video products with a short shelf-life. It reminded me a little of the Ohio State- North Carolina State Game last Saturday.

It was the first game in a NCAA double bill. Michigan and Notre Dame kicking off at 3:30 in Ann Arbor. What happened was so astonishing that ABC stayed with the Bucs as they were tortured by NC State into a triple overtime nail-biter at the Horseshoe in Columbus. It all came down to a couple inches as they planted the North Carolina runner just short of another touchdown. He squirmed and thrust the ball over the goal line but he was down, clearly, and that was it, the National Champions surviving a big scare at home. The Network broke in periodically with the initial scoring from Ann Arbor. It was good news.

It was all Wolverines. I did not mind the delay in watching. I was intrigued with the possibility that Ohio State could lose at home, and the game spirit of the North Carolinians was inspirational. It is nice to watch a quality game in which you have absolutely no emotion invested. I was futzing around with some office stuff on the computer, thinking how much I didn't want to be doing it. I was preoccupied. My stomach had the familiar butterflies that I always get before we play the Irish.

When we got to it, stunned that the last North Carolina drive ended inches short, the game was unbelievable. Dreamlike. We shut out Notre Dame for the first time in 101 years and handed them the most lopsided defeat they have suffered since 1956. I didn't mind missing some of the early heroics by running back Chris Perry. If there is any more exciting player in college football I would like to see him. He ran 133 yards, scored three touchdowns on the ground and caught a pass for a fourth. Quarterback John Navarre may now have a runner to keep him straight and level. I don't know- but with a weak rest of the season and only the heart attack Bucks do get through, we might have the horses to do something special. Like Another National Championship. Jeeze, I hate it when the Wolverines do this to me, plotting some way to break my heart. They are only twenty-year olds, after all.

It is an interesting year for hundred-year coincidences like our shut-out of the Irish. Take the Cubs. A pal and I were sitting in a bar in suburban Chicago last week. We were waiting to go to a ceremony and there was baseball on the television. It was a novelty and reminded me of my youth and listening to the Tigers on the transistor radio. We don't have a team in Washington. They keep trying to get us to care about the Baltimore Orioles, but it is a fraud and despite their wonderful new stadium at Camden Yards I can't get myself to care. The Charm City is not where I live. Chicago is different. It is the Second City, and they have not one but two baseball teams, both flavors. The bartender was phlegmatic about it but I could see that he was excited. He was a Cubs fan. It happens.

For a franchise dating from 1876, the Cubbies have fewer World Series titles (two) than they have retired numbers from their famous alumni. They have a record of failure that is almost unprecedented. The Cubs have not been to a World Series since 1945 and have not won one since 1908. They have had their moments, but have had almost a century of disappointment. Down on the South Side, the White Sox are just about as awful, for being a pretty good team, and haven't won the big prize since 1917. Most of that team was still around two years later when eight of them were cleared in a court of law of any wrongdoing, but banned from baseball for life 1921 for throwing the 1919 world series. The White Sox became forever known as the "Black Sox."

The current edition of the White Sox are only one game back from Minnesota and are eligible for a wild card berth in the playoffs at a minimum. The Cubbies are only one game back of the Astros, so who knows. There could be a Windy City version of the Subway Series the Dodgers and the Yankees used to have in New York. The city deserves it after all these years.

But we don't have a baseball team here, not since the Senators disappeared to Texas one midnight in 1971, the year before the Bob Newhart show premiered. I wish the Chicago teams well, but I probably won't follow the playoffs very closely. But who knows, when the World Series comes around there might be some history to watch. In the meantime, there is plenty of football and thankfully, the hurricane is supposed to be history and it shouldn't interfere with kickoff on Saturday.

But there is the matter of Thursday to get through first.