ALUMNI/AE ANNEX: Duende on the Diamond

By Evan Tingey

The sporting and art worlds often lie in opposition with each other, with the disciples of each wishing little to do with the other. They’re built on separate constructs, one valuing strength, precision, and dedication, while the other rates interpretation, thought, and the process more highly than the other. This isn’t to say that the two worlds do not consider each others talents, nor is it to suggest they’re limited to each particular field, but more to generally outline the separate premises.

I can recall my visits to pieces of art that have moved me. Picasso’s Guernica for instance resides in Madrid, Spain—a city I’ve never been to. However, in the northern Spanish town of Guernica, the site of aerial bombing that brought the world’s attention to the Spanish Civil War, there’s a mosaic depicting Picasso’s masterpiece. Picasso renders the tumult of explosion without the explicit violence of fire—instead, discombobulation, grief, and agony translate the horror. The small city-town of Guernica was destroyed, with up to three-quarters of the buildings being re

duced to rubble.

Now Guernica is home to El Museo de Paz, The Museum of Peace. The bones of the city have healed and been reconst

ructed through years of surgery, but scars are still visible. The local street artists have taken Picasso’s painting and made it their own. Graffiti-ed versions adorn many walls of the city, sometimes a complete rendition, in others, just borrowed figures. The city has been made whole, but it has not healed. The residents wish not to speak of the tragedies when asked. Maybe this is because the horrors are the main reason people come to visit this place that can be traversed in its entirety on foot in fifteen minutes.

Maybe it’s because the pain is too severe.

I cried in the peace museum when considering Picasso’s Guernica and the city itself, there was movement inside me. A ball forming in each sole of my foot, rising through my legs to finally combine and settle uncomfortably in my stomach. But I had felt this before. It is the feeling of triumph, for triumph is what Guernica sings so loudly. A city that has survived and sustained. This is what its residents represent now after so much loss.

On October 16, 2004 the New York Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 19 to 8. This was the American League Championship Series, with the winner moving on to the World Series. The Yankees had also won the previous two games to take a commanding 3-0 lead. Boston fans were familiar with this sensation of defeat; the list is tiresome and endless: the Curse of the Bambino, Bucky Dent, Bill Buckner, and Aaron Boone to name a few. These phrases and names mean little to the average sports fan and nothing to the average human, but in Boston, these words had the ability to sink hearts faster than torpedoes sink ships. The year 2003 had been no different than 1986, 1975, 1967, 1946, except that perhaps it saved Red Sox Nation further disappointment for the losses came before the hopes of finally winning a World Series for the first time in 85 years could, reach their zenith as they had each time in the twentieth century.

But 2004 would be different. 2004 would finally be the year that the Red Sox overcome the curse, the losses, the disappointments, and the tears. When the Red Sox won game 4 of the ALCS, few began to hold their breath. I, a starry eyed fourteen year old, only having experienced the most recent 2003 disappointment of the Red Sox had not yet become so jaded as to expect defeat. I can not capture in so few words the furious rise over the next four days until October 20 in which the Red Sox would defeat their arch rivals. Five hour games, walk-off home runs, grand slams, phenomenal pitching, and the Bloody Sock for which the series would be remembered, all constituted a sensation of triumph for New Englanders. Beating the Yankees was almost better than winning the World Series; hell, it was better. Only a handful had been alive the last time the Red Sox won in 1918, few knew what it felt like.

It’s only fitting that a week later, Boston would hoist their first World Series Trophy in 86 years. And in the final moment of the final game, I leapt from my seat on the couch to my feet as Pitcher Keith Foulke underhand tossed a softly hit ground ball to first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz. I jumped higher than ever before. It wasn’t the weight of 86 years of losing falling of my shoulders that allowed me to reach such heights, it was the triumph welling from my feet and shooting into my heart and translating to tears in my eyes.

These two examples of triumph are connected through the soul of the bodies they represent. The corporeal reality of a city’s restoration in isolation, the collectively held breath of New England for 86 years, and the heady rush of oxygen that now flourishes through these locales tell similar tales. One story of death and destruction, another with the proportions of dramatic tragedy, both reconciled by the unification of a people behind a common goal.

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Image Copyright © By Evan Tingey