So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance

Happy August. This is the twentieth issue of Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit — it’s just like all those other email newsletters, except a little sweatier.

A break in the doom and gloom hovering over the fate of the republic means we can turn our concerns toward the home baseball club again.

The Bear

“The Bear” (2024), James Jean: “[C]elestial bear returns to the earth to feast upon the abundance below. As the bear indulges, the sky is stained red, and the rabbit sages rush to reason with the bear and urge restraint. ‘The hunters will soon return,’ they plead. ‘You must ascend to the sky and conceal yourself below the horizon. Their arrows and spears will otherwise find you.’ Belly full, the bear turns its gaze skyward. As the last rays of sunlight disappear, the bear rests among the stars.”

In keeping with my attempt to fully appreciate the preciousness of every Trump-free day, I’ll turn my gaze skyward and choose to look on only the positive side of last month’s developments: the Democrats were actually able to pull themselves out of a doom spiral; the Trumpists are confused and being extra weird; and, the Red Sox are ending the month two games out from a wild card spot in the playoffs. Is this feeling hope? Nah. More just the absence of debilitating dread. I’ll take it!

The Sox

View from the center field bleachers (Fenway Park, July 11)

In baseball terms, I went from feeling like this year’s White Sox (utterly hopeless) to feeling like this year’s Red Sox (“So you’re telling me there’s a chance”). The tiniest morsel of hope goes a long way.

View from the field boxes behind home plate (Fenway Park, July 11)

And about these Red Sox: For most of the first part of the season, the 2024 club was the definition of a .500 baseball team — reaching win/loss records of 33–33, 32–32, 31–31, 30–30, 29–29, 28–28, 27–27, and 26–26.

One week into the second half, they are 57–50, a .533 winning percentage. They continue to be an equally fun and frustrating team, flip-flopping between exciting and exasperating, outperforming preseason projections while underperforming in basic fielding. From night to night, you go from yay to ack, and back again.

Raffy was not pleased with his at-bat (Fenway Park, July 11)

The team looks a little tired, so this could be the month they finally flame out… Or maybe not! The Red Sox’s new Chief Baseball Executive, Craig Breslow, made trade-deadline moves that weren’t splashy but seemed to be the right kind of upgrades, practical and prudent. The roster is filled with unremarkable/unfamiliar names, but on any given night any one of them can step and deliver.

And there are still plenty of reasons to watch, just for the fun of it: speedster Jarren Duran (aka, the Angry Lizard, I assume, on account of his intensely wiggly gait), the youngster and center fielder/shortstop Ceddanne Rafaela, and twitchy hit man (and yesterday’s walk-off hero) Raffy Devers.

We’re 59 days until the end of the regular season (and 96 days until the election). Here’s to hoping this (semi-)hopeful feeling that anything can happen stays with us the rest of the way.

Other rabbit holes

• Fluttering first pitch. Top-rated Seattle Mariners pitcher George Kirby is not a knuckleballer, but he tossed a butterfly ball to start yesterday’s game at Fenway, anyway.

• Enchanting warbler. Shelley Duvall, RIP. A one of a kind: “He needs me, he needs me, he needs me…”

• Wobbly film franchises. Ben Lindbergh reflects on the state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Disney Star Wars era. Along the way, he notes our cultural preoccupation with nostalgia (“Billy Joel just sold out his 150th show at the Garden, even though he didn’t play a single song less than 30 years old…”) and reminds me why I feel so dang old (“[T]he MCU is as old as Return of the Jedi was when The Phantom Menace came out.”).

And that’s it for this month’s edition. Have a good one.

jf