The Wave

I hate The Wave.
Life is short, and tickets are hard to get.
But when you go to the game, instead of focusing on the field, you get caught up in The Wave.
You hardly have a choice. You hear the squeals around you – a sound like seagulls over the dump, and then you see it undulating toward you. You could ignore it – turn your nose up into the air, but you’ll still be drenched by the spray as it passes over you.
I try to be philosophical – or at least, to hide my disdain for those who ‘join in’. I tell myself that it’s hard not to be distracted by the noisemakers – hard to keep from joining in, despite our better judgment, even when something special is going on.
But life is what we miss while we are busy waving our arms and making silly noises.
Our children are growing up. Our friends are getting older. The ground is cracking open, belching smoke. The end of the world is close at hand, but we are too busy to notice, playing in The Wave.
At least, at the ballpark, it’s a clear choice.
At the ballpark, there are those who know what is going on – and those who don’t care. Not that it makes much difference. Even the purists can get caught up in the spray and foam – belatedly discovering that they have missed an ‘at bat’ or two.
Fenway Park - and the fans that you find there, are no different.
The new, improved Fenway, for all of its amenities, has little to do with baseball. The new Fenway openly acknowledges that, even in a bastion of alleged baseball purity, the so-called fans care little for the game itself.
Every minute before the actual game begins, is scheduled – with wave after wave of deliberate distractions: promotional events, special appearances, autograph sessions, oompah band oomphing.
There is a tacit understanding that baseball is boring. But isn’t baseball, as the purists used to proclaim on their tee-shirts, “life”?
Is life boring?
Boredom’s simply a loss of attention: there is always something wonderful going on, right in front of us – but rather than focus in on what is right there, we search the horizon for the obvious.
I am reminded of the opening sequence of David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet”: an ordinary, almost clichéd middle American street – firefighters driving by waving from the truck, children jumping rope, stunningly bright white picket fences, sprinklers hypnotically sprinkling and then, almost unnoticed at first, the camera literally begins to dig into the grass and dive down into the dirt, uncovering an unseemly world teeming with frenetic insects.
When we are young, we seem distracted – but in fact we are focused on the world around us, on the moment. We seem distracted because we are overwhelmed by the splendid, complex, unfathomable creation that we have literally just discovered.
As we get older we become selective – perhaps too selective: many of us simply block the world out and interpret everything through the clouded prism of our petty personal concerns and hungers.
You’d think that, when somehow you manage to score those hard-to-get tickets, you’d actually watch the game.
You’d hope that, when the country goes to war, people would pay attention.
You believe that, as the ice caps melt, we’d stop buying disposable plastic water bottles.
But it doesn’t work that way.
My older son and I happened to be at the no-hitter at Fenway, September 1st.
It was a beautiful day, full of natural and man-made distractions. A cloudless sky. 70 degrees. Oompah bands. Sausage and onions. Yawkey Way.
So of course, The Wave started early.
It didn’t matter that the Hose were on the skids – had lost four in a row.
Our seats were great: reached by a special elevator, at the end of a row, in a section with its own concession stands, looking right down onto the third base line and across toward Back Bay where – at game time, the setting sun had already begun to glaze the glass and burnish the golden rooftops of the city’s historic skyline.
There was, in the air, the expectation of pleasure – a feeling as palpable as the smell of sausages venting over the ballpark’s flat green rooftop.
All that could get in the way of a perfect evening, was baseball.
Though Orioles rookie pitcher – Garrett Olson, had previously lost to the Sox, and had an ERA of over 7, Boston’s lineup was stymied early on. Meanwhile, Boston rookie pitcher Clay Buchholz seemed only marginally better.
By the bottom of the second The Wave was disorganized, but gaining strength.
In the fourth Big Papi stroked a wall-scraping double and the drinking light was lit.
When the Orioles couldn’t muster any offense in the top of the fifth, less committed fans began looking at their watches, pondering an early exit. I was admittedly, thinking of another visit to the concession stand but before I could stir myself out of my seat, I was confronted by a strange look on my son’s face. He was hinting – while trying hard not to risk offending the gremlins of baseball, that there was something else going on. He gestured toward the scoreboard above the bleachers. We were halfway through the game and the Orioles had yet to… I don’t want to say it, even now.
But at that moment I laughed him off. The chances were against it. The likelihood slim. There were still twelve outs to go and, anything could happen.
Just then I heard the squeals and saw, on the other side of the park, the un-mistakable signs of an entire bleacher section’s worth of humans about to breach.
A full scale Wave was just a few batters away.
It was touch and go.
We were either headed toward history, or to another day at the beach.
With every pitch that Buchholz threw a thousand more disinterested fans joined The Wave. But with every inning that the Orioles remained hitless, three thousand joined the game.
From that first full-fledged roar of undulating fans just after the fourth inning ended, each successive attempt to start a Wave grew a little smaller, quieter. By the top of the seventh, the sea of fans was amazingly calm: hardly a ripple on the surface.
It‘s normal to lose a few thousand fans by the seventh – whatever the score, but on this cool evening the crowd stayed in their seats, even seemed to grow larger. In some cases, well-to-do fans that had spent the first few innings dining inside one of the private clubs, were lured back out into the open air.
Instead of the squeal of gulls, a sound not unlike the song of whales was heard – and not just from one section of the park, but emanating from deep within the whole. You could feel the excitement growing. As the last batter took a called strike three, it was the actual game that had our full attention.
When it was over – when that perfect moment had passed, the crowed refused to leave.
36,000 people living entirely in the moment.
And then the squealing started up again.