October's heart tug

 October rolled in this week with its usual warm days and cool nights, and baseball greeted it in its usual way, too. Combed its hair. Put on a tie. Stood up straight, and reminded us once more why it can sometimes be the best of our games, even if these days its audience is mostly in its dotage.

But we're four days deep in playoff baseball now, and look what the game is up to. The Brewers, Astros and Orioles are gone; the Mets, Tigers and Royals still breathe. That's two division champs and a 91-win wild-card team erased before the first week of October was out.

And the survivors?

Well, the Mets had to play a doubleheader on Monday just to get into the show. The Tigers were deader than Ty Cobb as late as August 10, when they began a remarkable surge that has carried over into October. And the Royals are just a summer removed from losing 106 games and finishing dead last in the 2023 AL Central race.

In one short summer, though -- in one short series -- stuff can happen. And does. And it's why the National Pastime can devolve into the National Afterthought, and still reel us in when time and circumstance are right.

I was reminded of this last week, when my wife and I were north of the border. We spent a few days in Montreal and a few days in Quebec City, where everywhere you looked the foliage was already ablaze with the reds and oranges and rust-browns of autumn. And where something else was everywhere you looked.

Montreal Expos gear, to be precise. Racks and racks of shirts and hats and sweatshirts, as if the 'Spos were still a going concern and not a memory that's now ...

How long since they left for D.C. again? Twenty years, right?

Twenty years. Twenty years since the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals, betrayed first by carpetbagging owner Jeffrey Loria and then by Major League Baseball itself. 

And yet Expos gear is still everywhere in the shops of Montreal and Quebec City. It still moves. The citizenry still wears it. It's as conspicuous by its presence as Washington Nationals gear is conspicuous by its relative absence.

You can take that to mean Canadians are still torqued at getting rogered by the damn Americans again, or you can simply take it to mean nostalgia is a big seller north of the border. Alongside the Expos gear, after all, there's a fair stash of Quebec Nordiques gear. And the Nordiques have been the Colorado Avalanche since 1995.

So, yeah. They hold fast to their memories in the True North.

For me, though, in this first week of playoff baseball, it's just one more reminder of the strange hold the game has on those who have fallen under its spell. Even in obvious eclipse, it tugs at the heart.

Especially in October. Especially when the days turn warm and golden, and the nights turn cool.

The greater loss

 The passing of icons tend to elbow one another aside when they come as fast they have the last few days. We barely handed Dame Maggie Smith her flowers before Kris Kristofferson died, and then the remembrance train chugged on down to the next stop when word came down that Pete Rose was gone.

So Tuesday was all about Charlie Hustle the player and Charlie Hustle the hustler, all about a deeply flawed human whose brilliance on the field was matched by his utter lack of moral rectitude off it. He blithely ignored the cardinal rule of his game and paid the price for it, and in the end he alone was to blame.

But who was to blame for the passing that his death crowded so swiftly off the stage, other than unjust timing?

Because the day before Rose was found dead, the world of games was mourning the death of another icon. His name was Dikembe Mutombo, and in every way that matters it is the greater loss. As much as Rose's legacy was darkened by his own impulses, after all, Mutombo's was illuminated by his.

Today, then, let's acknowledge a 7-foot-3 NBA center from the Congo who turned the air and space around the rim into private fiefdom, not to violated by anyone foolish enough to try. You drove the basketball into Mutombo's house, the basketball more often than not went back the other way, with postage due. The resoundingly blocked shot was his signature, and he scribbled it often.

But that was only basketball. Outside of it, Mutombo was a man who spoke nine languages, including five African tongues, and whose work to better life for the people of both his native land and the continent as a whole came to define him more than anything he did on a basketball floor.

If the measure of any man or woman's life is how fervently he or she tried to make the world a better place, then Mutombo's life was rich indeed. And he was rewarded for it by the almost universal respect the world returned to him.

It's a world thick with irony these days, and not just because so many public figures are deaf to it. In Mutombo's case, his passing came during a presidential election in which one ticket is trafficking on the most loathsome sort of racist fear-mongering, scaring the rubes with wild tales of brown-and-black-skinned savages coming to America to eat their pets and rape their daughters and take over wholesome American suburbs with their drug cartels.

It's an old playbook based on the usual tissue of ancient urban legends and blatant lies, and it's relevant to Mutombo because among the urban legends and lies being shamelessly advanced is that some of the savages coming to destroy America are from the Congo.

The irony, of course, is that while this is happening, we pause to remember a Congolese who was in every way a better man than those slurring his people. And whose example makes any thinking person wonder who, in fact, are the real savages here.

As if there's any question.

A few brief thoughts on NFL Week 4

 And now this week's edition of The NFL In So Many Words, the Blob feature that every week defies expectation, and of which critics have said "I'll say. Every week it gets even worse than I thought was possible," and also "Wait, I thought this thing had a bottom":

1. "Wait, I thought we were supposed to be good!" (The Saints)

2. "Wait, I thought we were supposed to be bad!" (The Falcons, who beat the Saints 26-24 and now both teams are 2-2)

3. Meanwhile, Sam Darnold!

4. Wins again for the Vikings, who are now 4-0.

5. "Wait, I thought the Vikings were supposed to be the Vikings!" (The Packers, the Vikes' latest victim)

6. "Hey, look! We won a game!" (The Cowboys)

7. (Also the Bengals)

8. "Hey, look! It was just us you beat!" (The Giants and Panthers)

9. In other news, the Ravens crushed the Bills a week after the Bills crushed the Jaguars; the Buccaneers crushed the Eagles a week after getting crushed by the Broncos; the Dolphins were crushed by the previously winless Titans; and the Patriots, Browns and Jets all lost.

10. "Well, at least SOME of us meet expectations." (The Patriots, Browns and Jets)

Twin legacies

 So Pete Rose is dead now, and the tributes pour in, and again you see that Prince Valiant hair flying as No. 14 dives headfirst toward a base. At the plate, he coils his body once more into that blatantly eff-you crouch; in the field, he is at first base now ... no, wait, second or third ... no, wait, out in right or left.

Portrait of a baseball player, or perhaps of baseball itself. Gone now at 83, an impossible age to think of Pete Rose ever being.

 Charlie Hustle, a nickname both rich in truth and irony, was found in his Nevada home by a family member, according to the news story. He passed right after appearing at an autograph signing with his old Big Red Machine compadres, Tony Perez and George Foster and  Dave Concepcion.

He leaves behind twin legacies, both fueled by Rose's insatiably competitive nature. There's his legacy as a player, which could hardly be more sterling; then there's his legacy as a sketchy grifter forever chasing the main chance. One was the natural extension of the other, because that aforementioned competitive nature didn't have an off switch.

Thus, Charlie Hustle on the field. And thus, Charlie Hustle, in a different context, off it. 

The Greek tragedy in this, of course, is that the second Charlie killed the first Charlie's chances at the Hall of Fame. Which is the essence of the Great Debate he also leaves behind, and which will live on because it's baseball, and in baseball debate has always transcended the mortal coil.

The Great Debate: Should Pete Rose be admitted to the place his playing career overwhelmingly says he should be, or should he forever be punished for violating one of baseball's most sacred edicts?

Reasonable minds can disagree, but here in 2024 the weight of the argument leans increasingly toward Rose. It has, after all, been 35 years since the late Bart Giamatti cast Pete into outer darkness for betting on baseball, and on his own team. Now there are online betting kiosks outside MLB ballparks, and one of the game's most venerable franchises is angling to call Las Vegas home, with baseball's full approval. 

Rose's banishment just seems silly and anachronistic now, in light of that. And baseball looks more and more ugly and vindictive and plain mule-stubborn.

The Blob's argument has always been that as long as Rose kept lying about the betting thing, he shouldn't be rewarded for it. And, Pete being Pete, he lied about it for years. Only when Charlie Hustle saw money in it did he come clean in order to sell books.

But at least he finally did. So, yeah, put Rose in the Hall, if only because it's not worth a bucket of warm spit without a player who was a 17-time All-Star, holds the major-league record for career hits, games played and plate appearances, and holds the National League record of the longest hitting streak at 44 games.

Shoulda done it before he died, as so many bitterly pointed out yesterday. But better late than never.