(Photo by Jim Rogash/Getty Images)
All outcomes are arbitrary.
David Ortiz is an established star. He was also, briefly, a flickering light. After a moribund start to the season, the Red Sox first baseman is finally showing signs of life—which would be better news if vitality weren’t such a fragile and fleeting thing.
Success means understanding how you won.
Salvation, on the other hand, means seeing that you could have just as easily lost.
I won’t pretend to know what the future holds for Ortiz. He’s still within slumping distance of the Mendoza Line, and anything can happen between now and October. But a collapse wouldn’t be any more revealing than a resurrection. In a league where the best hitters fail 70 percent of the time, it’s silly to infer too much insight from a handful of marginal outs.
A liar deceives with words.
A box score distorts with numbers.
If you want the real scoop on Big Papi, you’ve got to look past the data they print in the papers.
Baseball fans tend to equate performance with essence. Studs and Has-Beens, Heroes and Goats—we assign labels on the basis of productivity, as if statistics were more than mere guesswork. The problem, of course, is that even Bill James can’t quantify the whims of fortune. Crash Davis would argue that the difference between .250 and .300 is one extra flare a week. Cal Ripken would add that a few missed signs can jeopardize a whole career of hard work.
It’s bad to dwell on the past.
It’s worse to bet on the present.
Ortiz may not regain his old form, but his struggles don’t prove anything beyond the fallacy of all proofs.
Fate never needs a reason. Virtue doesn’t guarantee victory; defeat doesn’t indicate desert. The truth about David Ortiz is the same as it ever was, plus or minus a few hundred points in the batting average column. Every mortal takes his cuts against the boundless caprice of the universe. The brave one keeps swinging until destiny pries the bat from his cold dead hands.
Whoever wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes probably never went 149 at-bats without a home run, but he did know a thing or two about the fickleness of umpires:
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Which suggests that one oughtn't judge a slugger by the content of his stat line.
Because the Divine Papi giveth and the Divine Papi taketh away, and anyone who claims to find permanent meaning on the receiving end is either riding a hot streak or only just saying, is all...
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