It's that Second Christmas for America - Our national Pastime Kicks off today and I'm watching the motor city kitties taking on Herman Melville's favorite team - the NYYankees. The yankees perhaps are the leviathan of the diamond deep, looming beneath the azure waves of the American League perhaps (to borrow from Verne) 20,000 Leagues under the sea swimming from seashore to seashore and town to town. LO, the feared Pinstripes breach, Harken the chase, Rig, a dig, dig, dig, Huzza!
Now, Moby-Dick and Melville fans may take umbrage to Melville being placed alongside the yankees, what with all those Cape Cod allusions and Nantucket nuances not to mention Melville writing peacefully, nurturing his bro-mance with Nathaniel Hawthorne up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts so I can understand the revisionist historians attempting to place his allegiance alongside those other Sea-Worthy Sailors, the Boston Red Sox.
No, Melville is New York through and through from South street seaport to Albany he is a soul of Manhatto, descendant of the New Amsterdam Gansevoorts but there is merit to this line of thought that poses many time-honored persistent ambiguities that loom for all of us straddling that eastern seaboard -
I remember a few years back when Rudy Giuliani, that sage of Cleaned up NYC, got himself in hot water whence attempting a run for the presidency told New Englanders he "liked the red sox as much as the yankees" Ooops.... not a wise choice of words that perhaps foreshadowed his retreat back into obscurity (or into the lucre-filled offices of lobbying-cum-consulting.)
It's a treacherous whaling ground to paddle, but I see what Rudy kinda meant despite his obvious pandering. It's a fence that his Kingmaker of a successor Michael Bloomberg sits atop daily - Bloomberg, from Boston, rules over NYC with cool-head, clear-mind, and smart avoidance of too much huffery concerning allegiance to any team - O, what a brilliant politician he is!
I, too, lived in that world for many years, beginning my earthly sail in downtown manhattan, my first home a few blocks from that brooklyn shore but eventually Harboring into Camden, Maine communing with the Yankee past of my forefathers. Ay, there's the Rub! My Yankee past?
What say you of the Yankees? There is an ambiguity! How could all my neighbors in New England call themselves "Yankees" and follow the red sox? O what a wicked web we weave! What's the magazine of New England you ask? It's Yankee Magazine! What is the soon to be decommissioned Nuclear power plant energizing that state of Maine for many many years? Why it is Maine Yankee! Atomic!
Dizzying! And another Melvillian Duality rears it's head! For what are the red sox without the yankees? or the yankees without the red sox? Who is Ahab without his Whale? Life without death? Sun without darkness?
So as I return to my game and follow my pinstripe pals I recognize and give a shout out to my Boston brethren which , like the post - Moby-Dick world of America's Civil War pitted brother against brother, this game literally pits me against my own older brother, yes he of red sox fan-hood , let us begin the season's battle and let the 'great shroud' of the Baseball sea roll on 'as it rolled five thousand years ago.'
JTM
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