As far as we know, Charles Shulz’s Charlie Brown, always seen on the mound but never throwing the ball, was a very poor baseball player. Which didn’t stop him from secretly dreaming that his friends had nicknamed him “Flash Brown”, as he imprudently revealed to the perfidious Lucy. I have my own onomastic fantasy, in which those around me call me “Mister October”. Too bad the nickname was already given, somewhere in the 1970s, to the great Reggie Jackson, who was the type to hit three home runs in a single World Series game, of which he was a five-time champion. Mr. October is one of only two baseball players to have been voted Most Valuable Player of the Finals with two different teams.
Not being able to count on such a track record, I can only argue, for my part, with the following conviction: October is my month. My October to me, tralalère, in the crystal of the early morning, the crunchy moss of frost under your steps in the forest; an oblique sun blazes in the maples, in the undergrowth grouse and turkeys trample and I write these lines under the last lights of Indian summer. “A season that only exists in northern America,” as good old Joe Dassin knew.
And that no longer exists, apparently, even though I broke ice two mornings in a row on the surface of the birdbath. Indian summer is over for good, and it’s less the fault of climate change than that of our federal government. Already, in 2022, Environment and Climate Change Canada was thinking about the future of “this dated term which offends the sensibilities of many,” says department spokesperson Sonia Noreau-Pérodeau.
More snoreau than Sonia, I propose to follow the path taken by the Cleveland baseball club and replace the hated expression with “the summer of the Guardians”. Don’t the Aboriginal people proclaim themselves the guardians of the territory? So here it is: each day its problem solved, don’t thank me and let’s move on.
Like, for example, baseball, a sport which, for a good six months each year, does not ignite the slightest spark of passion in me. The rankings of the different sections, the leaders in batting average and the number of home runs, the total victories and saves and the earned run average of the gunners, all this deeply indifferent to me. October arrives and, like a curve that catches the corner of the marble, here comes the quiver of interest on my sports heart.
Last Sunday night, while watching the Jets’ powerful aerial offense crash into the Steelers’ wall in the second half, I glanced on my phone at the score of the deciding ball game between the Dodgers to the Mets for the National championship. At 10-4 to the Dodgers in the eighth inning, I started to relax. I wanted a Yankees-Dodgers World Series, because nostalgia is an essential ingredient of those golden days when the light turns orange and saffron and because my love-boredom relationship with baseball is inseparable from history of this sport.
A Yankees-Dodgers series is the comfort of an old classic, the equivalent of a Stanley playoff between Montreal and Boston. I knew full well that baseball news was going to take us back to 1981, the year of the last summit clash between the Bronx Bombers and the representatives of the City of Angels. And who did the Dodgers dismiss that year in the National League final to advance to the final round? O bitter memory… Their coach, the rotund Tommy Lasorda, a former Royals pitcher with a weakness for pasta from Montreal restaurants, had nothing but good things to say about our Expos.
These Dodgers then beat the Yankees in six games who, forty-three years later, with Aaron “The Judge” Judge to fill Mr. October’s cleats, will want to take their revenge.
The two richest teams, the most victorious in their respective leagues in 2024 and the most emblematic of major baseball will now face each other in the final for the twelfth time in their history. Against the Dodgers in the World Series, the indestructible Yankees posted a record of 8-3. If this championship series was the card of a boxing evening, we would be talking about the Fight of the Century.
In the right corner, the Yankees with their 40 participations and their 27 championships, an absolute record, all sports combined. In the left corner, the Dodgers have only 7 triumphs in 21 appearances, these 14 defeats on the final stage constituting another baseball record. The Yankees with their Judge Aaron who, seven years ago, became the first rookie to hit 52 home runs in a season, and who hit 58 this year. The Dodgers with their Swiss army knife, this Shohei Ohtani who, like a less paunchy Babe Ruth, not content with being able to throw AND hit, allows himself to dominate in these two positions.
Ohtani who just became the first ballplayer to have 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases. Ohtani who, before the regular season, already wrote his name in the big book of records by becoming the first terrestrial creature to sign a 700 million dollar contract to throw and hit a 145 gram ball made of cork, rubber, synthetic leather and wool and cotton threads.
In short, it’s time for the battle of the real ones, those who, in addition to being the best in their profession, play in stadiums called Yankee Stadium and Dodger Stadium, rather than Pepsi Cola Center or Ex-Lax Garden.
So I’m going to focus on this World Series, this other reason to get out of bed, with my earworm signed Joe Dassin: “All life will be the same as this morning / In the colors of Indian summer”.
