Point of View: How Sweet It Is, Bub

    I’m sure our high school baseball team would rather be 13-1 now rather than 1-13, but I wonder, in light of this past week’s wonderful 3-2 win here over Mount Sinai by virtue of a flurry of hits in the bottom of the seventh, if it won’t become all the more memorable for those who played, and treasured all the more because of its singularity.

    It was the last home game of the season, the last game of their careers here for the five seniors, it broke a season-long league losing streak, and to attain it skill and will came together in such alchemic proportions as to produce a golden, transcendent moment when the horsecollars came off and possibility reigned.

    Mount Sinai’s pitcher, who had laid down the law (heh-heh) theretofore, had a no-hitter going into the bottom of the seventh, and the score was 2-0 then. I was getting ready to be disappointed again, as I had been on other occasions this spring.

    But the players had different thoughts. A leadoff hit, a hard shot up the middle, and another one through the hole between third and short on an 0-2 pitch, after which the runners alertly move up to third and second. Then a grounder to the third baseman, who hesitates, wondering whether to go home with the ball, but decides instead to go to first. But the throw is high and pulls the first baseman off the bag as Kyle McKee crosses it.

    It’s 2-1, runners are at the corners, and everyone’s cheering, urging on the sixth man in our batting order, Jack Abrams-Dyer, as he steps to the plate with a determined look.

    Their pitcher slips in a strike. But Abrams-Dyer lines the next one into right-center field. The bench empties as the runners dash over the plate. Everyone’s going crazy, hooting, jumping up and down. Abrams-Dyer, the man who brought Mount Sinai low, is hoisted aloft. What a win! What a way to end the season here, to end the shoulder-shrugging, watchagonnado thinking. What a breakthrough. Life can really be fun!

    I read a story this week about scientists reviving the stem cells in old mice with the blood of young ones. Of course it led to ghoulish thoughts. But as long as the Bonackers give me a win like the one the other day, I’ll not be needing any transfusions.