maisie at the bat
Let's talk baseball.
On second thought, it might be less frightening for any fans out there to find a big stick and poke at a cauldron of dormant, winged bats. My disinterest in sports runs so deep, a few days ago Dennie said to me, "L.A. won", and my uninformed response was not at all in jest.
"Won what?" I replied as I considered any number of titles having to do with smog or filmmaking, earthquakes or quantity of yoga-pants acquisitions per capita. An athletic competition had never crossed my mind.
"You know, the Dodgers."
At that point, a team of some sort seemed obvious. "And what sport is that?" I said. I had to presume she wasn't speaking of the Artful Dodger. Los Angeles, after all, had never featured prominently in a Dickensian yarn.
When Dennie mentioned the World Series, at least I knew she was discussing hockey.
Kidding.
I understand baseball better than any other sport, which isn't saying much, but it's something. I was also familiar with the Yankees--you can take the girl out of the east coast, but you can't take the east coast out of the girl--though I honestly had no idea it was the World Series time of year or that baseball and football seasons ever overlapped. After decades of indifference, sports headlines fly right past me now without ever registering in my conscious mind. To me, a base is a foundation, a relief pitcher is a cold jug of water on a hot and humid day, and an umpire is an indecisive creature of the night. ("I vant to suck your blood. Maybe. I think. Ummm...I dunno. If you don't mind, I could use a little private coffin time to mull it over.") But, as I did broach the subject of baseball, allow me to infuse the start of today's tale with an allusion to America's favorite pastime through the modified words of Ernest Lawrence Thayer:
“There was ease in Maisie’s manner as she stepped into her place;
There was pride in Maisie’s bearing and a smile lit Maisie’s face.
And when, responding to the cheers, she shook her fall cravat,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt ‘twas Maisie at the bat.”
Of course, we are referring once more to the mammalian kind of bat. Sorry, Ernest.
Actual Halloween came and went on a quiet, uneventful Thursday evening. Our Halloween, however, arrived on an early Saturday afternoon. Maisie dazzled us with a few tricks and savored her two treats--an interactive haunted house full of squeaking, grinning bats and a late-day ice cream. I snapped photos of her playing, naturally, but it was the camera-free moments that really counted, moments filled with the kind of athletic prowess I can really get behind. Bats fluttered, their wings crinkling with every shake. Maisie pounced and tugged, reclaiming her new toys. Bats soared high into the air. Maisie leapt straight up, defying gravity for a second or two as her teeth snatched at the nocturnal, yet nonthreatening, bloodsuckers. She caught most of them as well. We cheered. We laughed. And we smiled with love and satisfaction as our little Halloween hound snoozed away the exhaustion of a holiday homerun--a belatedly boisterous and batty, spookily sweet soirée.
Thanks to volzi for the baseball photograph used in this post.