"Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.
The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body."
- David Foster Wallace, "Roger Federer as Religious Experience" Play Magazine, Aug. 20, 2006
Oh, hi guys. Sorry for the extended break. Its been a long, busy spring. And also, the editors here were experiencing a little bit of blog burnout.
The thing about web logging, you see, is that you feel the need to say something daily. Which is to say, you want to have your own voice, to say something unique. And that's tough to do when you're talking about something held so dearly by such a wide range of people as Ole Miss athletics.
So it makes no sense that we'd return to our little corner of the internets tonight, June 1, 2009, to heap praise upon Drew Pomeranz. Because we're already late to the party.
We're certain we heard at least three people (Bianco, Shep Smith, Kellum) use the term "legend" when talking about Pom's game tonight. High praise from one, hyperbole from the other two. Kellum flirted with the homo-erotic in his description of the 9th inning.
We haven't checked the serious boards yet, but when NAFOOM looks like it did tonight, you can bet they are bowing to the golden calf on Spirit and Rivals. Our friends at RCR opted for the much more subtle approach in describing Pom's performance tonight, choosing to wax cryptic with their piece titled "Drew Pomeranz just pitched the greatest game in Ole Miss history".
Somewhere, BWAYNE and REBMIK are dancing around a boar's head in loin cloths.
So we're not going to reinvent the wheel here tonight. There is but one storyline worth mentioning when you talk about Ole Miss's 4-1 win over Western Kentucky, and that is the performance of Drew Pomeranz. Baseball's a game of numbers, and Pom's say it all. 9IP, 16 Ks, 2 H, 0 ER.
On 72 hours rest. In a win-or-its-all-over game. To secure a Super at home.
David Foster Wallace describes the almost out of body experience of watching Roger Federer play in very eloquent and beautiful but also practical terms. The ultimate beauty of sport is indeed in our reconciliation with the fact that our spirits are tied to these clumsy, awkward, rotten, forever dying bodies. Some of us are able to make them look graceful.
But some of us are able to make them look graceful in the face of adversity. Far be it from us to try and transcend anything DFW said while he was still on this earth, but instances like tonight prove that sometimes it is about more than simply physics and nature and gravity. We've never been big on words like "guts" or "heart" or "grit" or any of that other crap that keeps unoriginal writers in business. But we are at a loss for how else to describe what Pom did tonight.
Understand that it is almost inhuman to throw 108 pitches on Friday and then another 115 (we haven't found an exact pitch count) on Monday night. Much less against an offense as explosive as WKU's. Much less in a near no-hit effort.
So we're more than happy to join in the chorus of praise tonight for Bianco and for the Rebs, but especially for Pom. We hope he and the rest of the Rebs get all the partying out of their systems tonight, and are ready for what will undoubtedly be the frattiest Super Regional in the history of baseball and frats next weekend when Virginia rolls into town. May Minerva guide you, young Rebels.
