It's late August, and in Boston and among the members of Red Sox Nation, there is a feeling of foreboding. It's late August, and the Red Sox are still in first place. Anyone who has lived through one of the Red Sox collapses knows that bad times are ahead. Those of us of a certain age remember the "Boston Massacre" of 1978, when the Red Sox lost four straight games, and a four-game lead, to the dreaded Yankees, also in late August. Today, August 27, the Red Sox play the Yankees in New York. Here comes trouble.

Even after the ecstatic apocalypse of 2004, in which the Red Sox's famous "Curse of the Bambino" seemed to have been broken, Red Sox fans still groan under the weight of history. They, or "we," also are haunted by elaborate superstitions, such as not watching a close game on TV lest we change the outcome, rather like some popular misinterpretations of quantum physics' "observer phenomenon." When I say "we" referring to Boston fans, it is a special "we." When the Sox win a game, "we" won it. When they lose, "we" lost it. "We" are six and a half games in front. "We" could collapse at any minute.

Throughout my life I have been warned by people close to me not to "identify" with any collective or commercial entity to which I might have connections. It's somehow wrong, or stupid, to franchise your individuality and Self to a team, a college, a store, a religion. You are supposed to face the world like a French existentialist (my beret is in the closet waiting for the chill of fall), a bleakly alone self, constructed of self-made decisions made despite knowledge of their meaninglessness, knowing that anything you do, and everything you are, will be wiped away forever by death. I bet there are a lot of existentialists in the seats at Fenway Park, though they might not know that they are. (Hey, ice cream here!) The non-identification rule goes down the tubes when David Ortiz hits a game-winner over the wall. "We won!"

My friends know that I am wild about baseball. Baseball is about summer, which is the only season I really like. I like not only the action on the field but the architecture of the parks, the colorful uniforms, the smell of popcorn and beer, the raucous noise of the crowd and the P.A. system, and the brilliance of the lights. Even if I don't get to a live game at the ballpark, just the drone of the radio or television recounting the game says "summer" and timeless contemplation of, say, Manny Ramirez' runs-batted-in statistics.

My friends look out for me. So when they saw an item in a shop in San Francisco, they knew I should have it. Behold the "Baseball Condiment Dish Set," a unique table accessory.

Note that the baseball dishes (whose diameter is somewhat larger than a real baseball) are resting on a concave ceramic representation of a bat. All that is missing are the munchies for those watching the game. (Hey, peanuts here!) Let us also consider the mathematical aspects of the baseball dishes. They appear to be baseballs divided in half, but as you can see, the stitching and color appear in the interior as well. They are actually representations of baseballs which have been not only halved but inverted to a dish shape, as if the "ball" were an empty balloon which could be deflated and re-molded, leaving its surface intact. Topologically, the spherical original baseball and the baseball dish are equivalent, because they do not have a hole punched in them anywhere.

And so as summer winds down, "our" pitchers wind up, and "we" hope fervently but meaninglessly that this year might bring us victory yet again, by the time I get my existentialist black fall outfit out of the closet in October.

Posted at 3:24 am | link