The Spectator is often enlightening, sometimes exasperating, and always entertaining – in other words, the ideal magazine. In a recent issue, Rory Sutherland wrote of self-driving cars, and of how, ideally, they should learn the customs of the countries in which they operate. In Japan, he wrote, employees who arrive early for work often park far from the entrance, leaving closer spaces for those who come later and are in more of a hurry. He noted the poor driving habits of people in Boston, which I knew about (having lived in Rhode Island), but, oddly, I had never heard the name by which, he said, they are sometimes called: Massholes.
There have been many tributes to Annie Dillard, the brilliant essayist who died on Tuesday. My favorite recalled that, when young people told her they wanted to be writers, she asked them, “Do you like sentences?” To me it was an obvious question, but apparently many people were taken aback by it.
At the ballpark Sunday I noticed that the back of every other seat carried a strip with a QR code, from Hard Rock Casino, inviting fans to place their bets. I found it discouraging that the Marlins management was encouraging gambling, but worse than that – as a group that fields a below 500 team – it was tempting fans to bet against their own team.
Arrived early to loanDepot Park yesterday – my first Marlins game of the season – and received a bobblehead of Dontrelle Willis. Taking my seat in section 26, I watched as the former All-Star stood at second base and was inducted into the Marlins Legends Hall of Fame.
The Dodgers went ahead 3-0. The Marlins scored two in the bottom of the eighth, on a single by Lopez, but the Dodgers scored one in the top of the ninth.
There didn’t seem much hope for the Fish. But they started the bottom of the ninth with two infield hits, one a beautiful bunt laid down by Marsee. A double by Sanoja – just inside the third-base line, not far from my seat – brought both runners home. Now the score was tied, with a man on second and no outs. But everyone knows how hard it can be to bring a man home from second, especially for a team whose record is under 500. The next batter, pinch hitter Agustin Ramirez, sent a ball into the left field stands and thousands of Marlins fans into a frenzy. All game they had been outnumbered, and drowned out, by Dodger fans, and now there was joyous pandemonium for the home team - the overlooked, unappreciated, feisty underdogs.
When I was a travel editor in the ’90s I would write an article every December titled “The Year in Travel.” That was the last decade of carefree travel, and my look back at the previous twelve months was always rich in the amusing and the bizarre. My last “Year in Travel” ran in 2001.
“The Bamiyan Buddha. The World Trade Center. The Mississippi Queen.
“The story of the year – prelude, climax, aftermath – is written in the names of lost tourist landmarks.”
The account of my formative visit to a (then) uncelebrated city appears in the Autumn issue of The American Scholar. https://theamericanscholar.org/lisbon-1989/