Mickey Mantle’s Birthday

The panhandlers were pushy on 11th Street, doing that passive-aggressive thing with a little more urgency. It took me a buck to get past the old African-American woman on the bench in front of the building. The hood of her sweatshirt was drawn tight around her face and her jaw jutted like Popeye’s.

Down the block, away from the Convention Center there was a manic guy, burly, down the street and I got caught near him waiting for the light to change. I observed him shouting at nothing as I approached and resigned myself to unpleasantness, but he calmly demanded a cigarette from me and I complied. He thanked me politely. He was wearing his blanket over his sweats. It is that sort of gray day in Washington, cold and moist and penetrating.

The deranged woman with the calluses on the back of her hands- “What’s up with that?” I asked myself- wanted not only a smoke but a light for it as well. I produced my plastic Bic and flicked it for her, but with the wind it would not stay lit.

Old-fashioned Zippo lighters are windproof and work in any situation, even awkward social ones with panhandlers. But they slip out of pockets and require fuel and flints and are too valuable to throw away. So plastic wins, as it usually does.

I have always strode quickly through the urban world, eyes ahead, arms moving briskly. I prided myself on being too fast for the street to bog me down in thought this is exactly why I never stopped before, this vulnerable period when you are literally attached to madness at the wrist. At length, looking around to see I was not being set up to lose my wallet, or worse, she got it lit and looked up with dull eyes. She also remembered to say thank you.

The cold seems to bring out an insistence in the homeless. This is real for them in a way it is not for those of us who have insides to go to, and they are getting more desperate as the days grow shorter and the temperature dips.

Maybe they were worried about where they were going to watch the last game of the Red Sox-Yankees playoff for the American League Pennant, I thought, and instantly felt like a heel. I felt bad just thinking something like that. I have a home and a television and thinking about what little cranny they have to find to wrap themselves in the darkness makes me feel my heart is shriveled. So I handed out cigarettes and lights and eventually found myself back at the office, writing a memo on corporate policy.

I signed up on-line for a breakfast lecture from a former Director of Central Intelligence. He was going to explain what was going on, as if anyone really knew. The Conferees on the Hill met for the first time yesterday to see if they could produce an acceptable compromise. I don’t think they will. I think this will drag right over the election and molder until there is some certainty about where we are going to go as a nation. Maybe I’m wrong. I’ll see what the former DCI says in the morning.

I read the 9/11 Commission report as I traveled on the Metro to the car dealership. It has been sitting on my desk since the week it was published. I have been avoiding it, except for the recommendations, which I have been tracking in the legislation.

But I would have time to read on the train, since I had to pick up my car from routine maintenance. I had time to read the accounts of the hijackings and found the gray day and light sprinkle incongruous as I emerged on the platform and descended to the street to wait for the van from the garage to pick me up.

It was so beautiful, that day in September.

The traffic and hissing mist helped me put it aside as I rushed past the Pentagon and at length I was home. Baseball was on the television instead of The Simpsons. I was irritated. I am not ready to care about the Astros and Cardinals. I want the victor delivered to whoever will win the Boston-New York game. It is world-history in the making. No team has ever come back from being three games down as the Red Sox were. Never.

The image of blood seeping from Curt Schilling’s sock, his ankle tendon stitched tightly, his visage grim and professional, had transfixed me. Maybe this was the year. Maybe the Curse would be broken.

Everyone seemed agitated. There were eighty-one unread e-mail in the queue when I opened up the program. That is nearly twice the normal amount, and the Spam filter seems to be working. All of these had some sort of emotion. One of them grabbed me. It was from a pal who had relocated to the Upper South a decade ago, leaving the Imperial City behind.

He seems to enjoy life out there. It is cheaper, and he works at a golf course as his better half completes her career. He has time to think about things, and this is what he said:

‘Tennessee is one of those states that does ”Early Voting” for all elections, ”thereby avoiding those pesky Election Day lines.” He said he had early voted in every election since 1998, and was accustomed to driving up to the polling station nearest his house and completing the democratic process swiftly and painlessly. ”In and out in ten minutes,” he said. But not this time.

He said the lines were over an hour long, nearly two weeks before the election. Having plenty of time to kill, he asked the poll wardens what they thought and they replied they had never seen a turnout like this. The same phenomenon is apparently happening in Florida.

I checked the calendar. My training to be a poll official is tomorrow night at the Arlington Main Library. I made a note in my day-timer to ensure I did not forget. The Culpepper Gardens Polling Station needs my services and it is almost the least I can do, now that I do not defend democracy full-time.

The Yankees pulled out all the stops. They had the great stars of all the generations at the House That Ruth Built. Bucky Dent threw out the first pitch to Yogi Berra. The game was played on Mickey Mantle’s birthday, October 20, 1931. The long shadow of all the Yankees would put the Sox in the shade. Maybe.

By the time I got done with the e-mail the Red Sox were up a bunch of runs, and by the time I was seated in my comfy brown chair with a drink at my side and a pork-chop in front of me, the Sox were up by seven.

By the time Martínez took over the mound for the top of the seventh inning, my eyes were starting to close. And by the time they put it into the history books at 10-3, I was fast asleep.

They are saying that the Sox have broken a cruse that began with Babe Ruth was traded to the Yankees, and that this means the Republicans will be defeated. I know better. The real indicator is whether the Redskins win or lose the last home game before the election. If they lose, the incumbent President is out.

It is absolutely reliable. Never failed since the team came here from Boston in time for Herbert Hoover’s defeat. The game to watch is on Sunday, the 31 st . Green Bay versus Redskins. I am not planning on sleeping through the end of that one.

Copyright 2004 Vic Socotra

Go Back