Hoyt and the Goose
The adjustments an American living in France must make to maintain a state of basic contentment can at first seem considerable. For example, getting used to the fact that stores, pharmacies, gas stations, post offices, banks, supermarkets, doctors offices and just about everything else are closed during lunch can seem impossible. Once it is understood, however, that lunch in France is not a meal but a form of universal worship, that the French table is in fact an altar, resigning oneself to the inaccessibility of certain necessities becomes possible.
Sports is another matter. As with most American males, I am at times possessed by uncontrollable thoughts of baseball, football and basketball. Having grown up in New York in the 60s, various sports legends – from the Babe to the Mick, from Y.A. to Earl the Pearl, from A-Rod to Eli — composed a portable pantheon, a subconscious hall of fame transported from childhood to adulthood. The pre-occupation was in the genes. I remember the afternoon my father told me that as a child he had been at Yankee stadium on the day that Babe Ruth, with two strikes on him, stepped out of the batter’s box, pointed to center field, then hit the next pitch into the exact spot in the bleachers. It was like having someone describe his experiences as a witness at Valley Forge or Lexington. I never quite looked at my dad the same way afterward.
It wasn’t until I began residing in France, however, that I came to truly understand how Mickey, Whitey, and Yogi were every bit as critical to my identity as an American as Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.
Living in the rural Dordogne region without access to a satellite service profoundly limited my ability to quench my thirst for watching American sports. Though mania for soccer – better known as “le foot” – has always dominated the hearts of French fans, basketball had grown in popularity, largely as a result of the success of NBA great Tony Parker, whose exploits on the court and French heritage brought French fans out of their seats. I was pleasantly surprised when I realized that I could find games covering both Europe and American “basket” on a few French TV channels at odd hours of the day and night.
The access to baseball was another matter, and its scarcity in France soon began to grate on me. As an expat, I came to appreciate the genius inherent in basketball and football in a way I had never had preciously, but I soon realized that nothing could compare with the genius of America’s pastime. I realized that for sheer mystery and enchantment, baseball was in a league of its own. It was at that moment that I was struck with a profound truth born of my childhood – it was at that moment that I began to think of Hoyt Wilhelm and Goose Gossage.
Hoyt Wilhelm was a phenomenon when I was growing up. The ace knuckleballer with the New York Yankees had been on several teams during his eminent career. He was feared almost in a mythic, primordial sense. His knuckler was so good, it moved so unpredictably that hitters were left in a daze. Hoyt Wilhelm’s talent was so extraordinary it almost made the game of baseball meaningless.
The interesting thing about a great knuckleball pitcher is that he is a self-contained hazard, rather like a sedated lunatic; one never quite knows how he will behave, where the ball will drop, how it will veer away or towards the plate. Making sense of Wilhelm's knuckler was like trying to make sense of a jelly fish. Catchers used to have to wear an extra large mitt to be able to snare Wilhelm’s knuckleball because it was spinning so madly as it reached home plate that it could easily slip away, as though falling through a black hole into some parallel universe. Adding to that, the deceptive motion of the pitcher as he wound up then released the ball clearly meant the calculus of probability was decidedly not in the hitter’s favor.
The only other pitcher I saw who came close to embodying the element of sheer danger that Wilhelm presented was Rich (Goose) Gossage, who was also a relief pitcher with the Yanks. But Gossage was different. He was a wild fastball pitcher, a Neanderthal with an unfulfilled grudge, who could just as easily decapitate a hitter as strike him out. With Gossage one got the feeling that even he never quite knew where the ball was headed and that he couldn’t care less as long as he threw it as hard as he possibly could. There was an implicit lethality to Gossage’s almost out-of-control 97 m.p.h. projectiles that made even the most experienced hitter begin to doubt whether he had any business standing at the plate.
Hoyt Wilhelm was different story. Where Gossage had the air of a raw bar-room brawler, Wilhelm had the sensibility of the Zen archer, the madness of the poet. With The Goose, one had the impression that he was never quite aiming for the plate, but rather for any vulnerable body part of a hitter’s anatomy that may, or may not, have been in the way of the strike zone. For Wilhelm, the plate was a mythical target eventually arrived at via a sophisticated quantum path that the ball was taking, a path that could never be repeated, a path only a Heisenberg would understand. The only chance one had with Wilhelm’s knuckler was to close your eyes and hope you got lucky.
Perhaps being an American in France is a recipe for engaging in awkward philosophical speculation. The more I thought about it, however, both Wilhelm and The Goose seemed to embody the different aspects of unpredictability that were reflected in the circumstances of our lives. One might even say that, depending on the moment, the experience of life itself is either Wilhelm or Gossage. One kind blazes by you, the other simply mystifies.
The adjustments an American living in France must make to maintain a state of basic contentment can at first seem considerable. For example, getting used to the fact that stores, pharmacies, gas stations, post offices, banks, supermarkets, doctors offices and just about everything else are closed during lunch can seem impossible. Once it is understood, however, that lunch in France is not a meal but a form of universal worship, that the French table is in fact an altar, resigning oneself to the inaccessibility of certain necessities becomes possible.
Sports is another matter. As with most American males, I am at times possessed by uncontrollable thoughts of baseball, football and basketball. Having grown up in New York in the 60s, various sports legends – from the Babe to the Mick, from Y.A. to Earl the Pearl, from A-Rod to Eli — composed a portable pantheon, a subconscious hall of fame transported from childhood to adulthood. The pre-occupation was in the genes. I remember the afternoon my father told me that as a child he had been at Yankee stadium on the day that Babe Ruth, with two strikes on him, stepped out of the batter’s box, pointed to center field, then hit the next pitch into the exact spot in the bleachers. It was like having someone describe his experiences as a witness at Valley Forge or Lexington. I never quite looked at my dad the same way afterward.
It wasn’t until I began residing in France, however, that I came to truly understand how Mickey, Whitey, and Yogi were every bit as critical to my identity as an American as Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.
Living in the rural Dordogne region without access to a satellite service profoundly limited my ability to quench my thirst for watching American sports. Though mania for soccer – better known as “le foot” – has always dominated the hearts of French fans, basketball had grown in popularity, largely as a result of the success of NBA great Tony Parker, whose exploits on the court and French heritage brought French fans out of their seats. I was pleasantly surprised when I realized that I could find games covering both Europe and American “basket” on a few French TV channels at odd hours of the day and night.
The access to baseball was another matter, and its scarcity in France soon began to grate on me. As an expat, I came to appreciate the genius inherent in basketball and football in a way I had never had preciously, but I soon realized that nothing could compare with the genius of America’s pastime. I realized that for sheer mystery and enchantment, baseball was in a league of its own. It was at that moment that I was struck with a profound truth born of my childhood – it was at that moment that I began to think of Hoyt Wilhelm and Goose Gossage.
Hoyt Wilhelm was a phenomenon when I was growing up. The ace knuckleballer with the New York Yankees had been on several teams during his eminent career. He was feared almost in a mythic, primordial sense. His knuckler was so good, it moved so unpredictably that hitters were left in a daze. Hoyt Wilhelm’s talent was so extraordinary it almost made the game of baseball meaningless.
The interesting thing about a great knuckleball pitcher is that he is a self-contained hazard, rather like a sedated lunatic; one never quite knows how he will behave, where the ball will drop, how it will veer away or towards the plate. Making sense of Wilhelm's knuckler was like trying to make sense of a jelly fish. Catchers used to have to wear an extra large mitt to be able to snare Wilhelm’s knuckleball because it was spinning so madly as it reached home plate that it could easily slip away, as though falling through a black hole into some parallel universe. Adding to that, the deceptive motion of the pitcher as he wound up then released the ball clearly meant the calculus of probability was decidedly not in the hitter’s favor.
The only other pitcher I saw who came close to embodying the element of sheer danger that Wilhelm presented was Rich (Goose) Gossage, who was also a relief pitcher with the Yanks. But Gossage was different. He was a wild fastball pitcher, a Neanderthal with an unfulfilled grudge, who could just as easily decapitate a hitter as strike him out. With Gossage one got the feeling that even he never quite knew where the ball was headed and that he couldn’t care less as long as he threw it as hard as he possibly could. There was an implicit lethality to Gossage’s almost out-of-control 97 m.p.h. projectiles that made even the most experienced hitter begin to doubt whether he had any business standing at the plate.
Hoyt Wilhelm was different story. Where Gossage had the air of a raw bar-room brawler, Wilhelm had the sensibility of the Zen archer, the madness of the poet. With The Goose, one had the impression that he was never quite aiming for the plate, but rather for any vulnerable body part of a hitter’s anatomy that may, or may not, have been in the way of the strike zone. For Wilhelm, the plate was a mythical target eventually arrived at via a sophisticated quantum path that the ball was taking, a path that could never be repeated, a path only a Heisenberg would understand. The only chance one had with Wilhelm’s knuckler was to close your eyes and hope you got lucky.
Perhaps being an American in France is a recipe for engaging in awkward philosophical speculation. The more I thought about it, however, both Wilhelm and The Goose seemed to embody the different aspects of unpredictability that were reflected in the circumstances of our lives. One might even say that, depending on the moment, the experience of life itself is either Wilhelm or Gossage. One kind blazes by you, the other simply mystifies.
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