Losing Streak
Al Wiggins knew a lot about baseball
And jazz
I’ve been told there’s a symbiosis between baseball and jazz
But I don’t know what it is
Or how to find it
One Tuesday afternoon at Vesuvio
With a Giants game on the TV above the bar
A 13-inning showdown with the New York Yankees
The Giants were about to snap an eight-game losing streak
With a 6-5 win over the Yankees
Al looked into his martini glass and said to me and the bartender
The bartender’s name was Andy
Nice kid, 28 or 29, I don’t remember
Shaved head
Loved baseball with a passion and his other passion was playing drums
Professionally
A jazz drummer
I’m sure he understood the intersection of jazz and baseball but he never shared it with me
So Al looks into his martini glass and says to me and Andy
Baseball is not about winning
It is about losing
It is about teaching young men the importance and inevitability, he said
Of losing
February 26, 2008 at 12:15 pm
I was once at a Dodgers-Padres game and Wiggins stole home off of Jerry Reuss.
It was the first inning, and I had never seen home stolen in person before, and it was utterly shocking and thrilling. It instantly made me an Al Wiggins fan, for one. But it might have even ended whatever I had going for the Dodgers. It’s like a religious conversion, to see it in person.
When you’re watching TV, you expect to see a spectacle. But when you’re at the park, nonchalantly settling into an early inning in God’s sunlight at about 1:13 p.m. on a Saturday, and there’s incidentally a runner on third so Reuss feels free to go into a windup, and suddenly you see a crazy motherfucker breaking down the line as though he’s just been launched from the blocks of a 100-yard dash, with the starting gun coming the split-second Reuss goes into a windup rather than a stretch, you can say nothing at all except, “Jesus Fucking Christ—he’s stealing home!” Which is what about thirty of us on the first base side said in unison, like a chorus, as though there were no other text possible.
He made it. It was just jaw-dropping. Reuss, a southpaw, never even saw him break. Still, the pitch made it close, and you could see Yeager almost wet his pants gesturing for the ball as soon as the breaking Wiggings caught the corner of his eye.
Real men only steal home. Al Wiggins is a real man.
February 26, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Was.
February 26, 2008 at 12:23 pm
I can always count on you to tell us an interesting story, Joseph. You know, until I was reminded by a friend last night in e-mail, I had completely forgotten about Al Wiggins the ball player. The gentleman referenced in this verse is actually named Al Wiggins but he’s not the Al Wiggins.
In any event, your tale is far better’n mine.
February 26, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Well, your story made it interesting for me too, because I had completely forgotten about both the guy stealing home that day and the fact that he had died tragically young, likely of AIDS.
If you want to get even more eponymically duplicitous, you might consider John Heard. Which one? I think there are about four of them, and one was a baseball player and one was a jazz bassist.
February 26, 2008 at 2:00 pm
I was fond of John Heard the actor. Whatever happened to him?
March 15, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Rodger
I like this–it is much more than it is..
hell that sounded like Yogi Berra–
good poem/good story
March 15, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Thanks, Scot. I’m particularly fond of this piece.