Almost There

Yes. The Cubs won, 3–2, avoiding extinction, and there will be more baseball. Thank you, everybody. Thanks for letting it happen, all you Cubs down there—Kris Bryant, David Ross, Jon Lester, Aroldis Chapman, etc. And back there—Ernie Banks, Hank Sauer, Charlie Grimm. And thanks to all you Indians present and past—Rajai Davis, Andrew Miller, CoCo Crisp, Sandy Alomar, Jr., Earl Averill, Nap Lajoie. The Cubs, trailing three games to one in this Series, were facing winter, but now will have a day off and a sixth game, and maybe even a glorious seventh. Baseball does this for us again and again, extending its pleasures fractionally before it glimmers and goes, but, let’s face it, this time a happy prolonging has less to do with baseball than ever before. This particular October handful has served to take our minds off a squalid and nearly endless and embarrassing election—three hours of floodlit opium or fentanyl that can almost erase all thoughts of Donald Trump’s angry slurs or Hillary Clinton’s long travails. If I could do it, I would make this World Series a best eight out of fifteen.