I got a late start on watching the Yankees and Mariners yesterday afternoon because of family business that involved enjoying our daughter, Michelle, and the New London Community Orchestra performing in the US Coast Guard Academy's Leamy Hall.
The orchestra is an assemblage of neighbors from across the region who enjoy making music and enjoying making music together and who work to make a difference in the town in which they are based, one child at a time. They have a show this afternoon at two, outdoors at New London's City Pier.
Early June can be a roll of the dice weather wise in these parts. We just were visited by some part of Tropical Storm Andrea (weird how we never abbreviate tropical storm as "TS;" have you noticed that?) but yesterday turned out to be a fine day-a bit humid but the farmers and ducks need the humidity (I hope).
The orchestra I'm told has a canopy to protect them from possible rain showers if it comes to that today. I guess they are assuming we in the audience aren't witches. I've attended more than a few of their performances and in all honesty that's a leap of faith I'm not willing to make. I'm hoping for cloudless skies.
When we got home yesterday my fake knee was barking so I used some most excellent prescription medication to make the pain and the world go away for awhile. Both returned, neither improved for the chemistry and while surfing the dial I came across the Yankees on YES from Seattle.
David Robertson had just gotten the third out in the bottom of the eighth, stranding two Mariners, and before YES went to commercials a cameraman grabbed a shot a greying and unshaven Andy Pettite who had a fine outing for himself on his way to his 250th career victory.
I was surprised to see how old he looked, even while admitting the hypocrisy of that observation. When I was his age two decades ago, I considered myself part of the All the Young Dudes and here I am now, just over the highway speed limit and looking at an athlete twenty years my junior, thinking 'how he's aged!'
In the bottom of the ninth, as he's been doing since forever, but not for much longer, Mariano Rivera came in and put out the big light on the Mariners in what for the regular season could well be his last visit in his career before his retirement.
Professional sports, not just in the USA, but around the world, is a young man's game. That's not a negative pejorative intended as a slight to the talented women who have many professional leagues as well but, nearly all those lack the large finances, media exposure and mass adulation the men enjoy. It must be hard for successful female collegians who pursue sports careers professionally to NOT wonder if they're in a witness protection program when they suit up sometimes.
In everything other than their chosen profession, we would consider Messrs. Pettite and Rivera 'young' but in a cruel trick of the calendar, when they take the field, they're aging veterans. If Yeats were a Yankee farmhand, his tale might take a different turn but he isn't and thus, this doesn't.
-bill kenny
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