Pynchon and baseball

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

Glenn Scheper reasoned:
> > a sport also well-spidered with white suggestions of the sinister.
> 
> A 98-pound weakling, PE, Physical Education was the only class I hated.

hehe, me too, though loved the calisthenics and rope climbing...

>...
> If football makes warriors, baseball makes officers. Here, grown men
> were diligently mentoring pliant youth into a cohesive team-viewpoint,
> imbuing obediance to non-intuitive structured forms: "Always throw to
> first", "Step into the ball", "Always run over the base", "Always...",
> while patiently nurturing the least boy, the weakest link, and while
> ignoring, thus extinguishing youth-on-youth ad-hominem deprecations.
> Creating the impenetrable elite cadre. Doublethink comes to my mind.
> 
>

but Pynchon is said (somewhere?) to like baseball.

All I know is, one day years and years ago,
from up in the bleachers, with an herbal high going,
and the field so green, the sky so blue, the clouds so white,
the uniforms and players so vivid,
the crowd so big and friendly-seeming, the organ music,
the cheering, the announcer's voice, the occasional crack of
ball on bat, all echoing and dopplering in my ears,
one of the few baseball games I've seen live was gorgeous...