In this week’s issue of The New Yorker, Roger Angell offers his customary valediction to the baseball season–the year’s not over until Angell sings. Although he rightly singles out Johnny Damon‘s at-bat in the top of the ninth of Game Four as the pivotal moment of the series, the great Angell punts the description a bit–he’s neither succinct nor poetic (and Angell can be wonderfully poetic; I still remember his description of the perfect play of my beloved 1970 Orioles, calling them The Baltimore Vermeeers.) Still, I’m glad he acknowledged Damon’s moment. Fortunately, he’s better in his salute of Hideki Matsui, and his six RBIs in Game Six, and his MVP award. “I can’t remember a closing performance anything like this, or the feeling, while it was happening, that I quickly needed to thank Hideki Matsui–with a bow or something–not just for tonight but for every game of his seven years of super-pro service with the
Yankees. His straight-back, left-handed stance, with that almond-colored bat held still; his borad-shouldered, slashing cuts at anything up in the zone; his slightly tilted vertical style of running; the trim black hair just touching the uniform at the nape; the cracked smile–we knew all this, certainly, but in some oddly formal and removed fashion, because he was Japanese, and because he didn’t speak English easily. His silence kept him old-fashioned: a ballplayer from the black-and-white newspaper-photograph days, before our heroes talked. ” Nice.
