Epidemic

The fever is spreading, temperatures are rising.  This virus is transmitted easily through sharing the air, touching an infected person and may even be carried in the saliva from overly friendly pets.  There is no known cure and the symptoms are difficult to ameliorate but some of the hysteria can be diminished through sedatives or a judicious sip of medicinal spirits.

Babies seem to be immune as their appetites and temperatures remain steady even when their parents’ systems are in escalating distress.  Many senior citizens were infected years before but there is little evidence that antibodies were created to vaccinate them from the current infection.  The cycle for the recurrence of such a potent virus remains maddeningly unpredictable and defies all efforts to be ready to aggressively treat each new wave. 

Manufacturers have stretched the capacity of factories to produce the gear to be worn by all infected people.  Thousands of suits of personal protective equipment are needed in all sizes to provide fair warning to everyone that the wearer is fully infected and highly symptomatic.

The index case was traced to an individual who launched the first epidemic about thirty years ago.  Largely dormant for all of the time since, the virus was never eradicated.  Stories of isolated cases can be found in individuals who never lived nor traveled near the epicenter but contracted the infection in places as far away as Seoul, South Korea.  While authorities were very close to claiming that the virus had been eradicated about twenty years ago, this is a persistent virus that can be carried forward in a single soul.  It survived years of forced isolation only to explode again, right now.

Eight hours before first pitch.  Nervous energy bubbles out of every conversation and foreheads seem to glisten with anxious sweatiness.  Once the pitch is made such symptoms will begin to roil and spread, grow and fester.  As each swing of the bat rustles the air, and gasps will be heard from those at the epicenter of the contagion.  Those who chose self-imposed isolation with only a flat screen TV to connect them to the physical world will feel their symptoms rise with opposing hits and ebb as Cain makes another miraculous catch or the umpire yells “STRIKE” on a Shields cutter or curve.

Yes, I’ve been infected – no one I know has remained immune.  We all have it. 

This virus, this post-season world series fever, has wakened memories.  Adults, mature in most ways, can’t seem to complete a sentence without inserting a baseball brag or describing a memory of simpler days when the pedestrian pace of the game was a metaphor for the simpler life.  Boyhoods remembered are wispy reeds of stored images woven with wishes about times as they should have been.  Those were the days when baseball meant summer and summer was the time when a boy was set free. 

Now these Royals, these boys of summer donned in blue, these young men who haven’t forgotten how to play the game like boys will play the games that were their fantasies.   Eric, Omar, Alex, Alcides, Nori, Lorenzo and Moose will fill the field watched out upon by Salvy.  Perhaps the best parade of hurlers ever assembled on a single team will take to the mound with their only goal to “sit ‘em down.”  With Billy as DH and reserves at the ready, Ned and his coaches have set the roster and laid the board on which statistical strategy and gut intuition will joust between the dugouts.

The clock ticks down to the time for Shields to stand tall on the mound.  He’ll grimace and grin and grind on the ground.  He’ll stare at the fingers of Salvy’s right hand and shake or nod or just begin the wind.  Amid all of the stats, the odds and the hype, when the first pitch snaps the catcher’s mitt leather, every guy on the field, every fan in the stands, and every infected person around will be a kid again.

The virus, the fever seems to dissipate when the joy of childhood slips away.  For this incredible run of post-season play, our Royals have released the fury of fun of boys playing ball at the K.  The epidemic that has consumed our city will become childhood joy as the opening night jumps up as the umpire shouts,

“PLAY BALL.”