Media Softball: <I>Casey at the Bat</I> With Liberal Arts Degrees

We are huge fans of overblown recreational sports rhetoric, especially when recaps are involved. Seriously, just look at the mediabistro.com sports page. So it gives us great pleasure to know that others in the media world share our love. We always knew we'd fit in. We're talking specifically of media softball. You people love softball. mediabistro.com's too poor to afford not organized enough to field a team, so we live vicariously through you. We are fine with this. After the jump, Harper's senior editor Christian Lorentzen recounts the power, the pain, the passion that was his magazine's 6-5 victory over The New Yorker. And we couldn't be happier. WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF NO-OUTS WONDER Wonder was the grace of softball. Any game between two magazine staffs could be justified by that: the wonder it was rooted in. Pitch followed pitch, and annually the Harper's Magazine and The New Yorker played a game in Central Park. SOFTBALL That movement, from pitchers hand to the batters bat, that a ball could fly so far, to the wonder that a batter, like New Yorker factchecker, occasional Balk of the Town writer, and team captain Josh Hersh, could hit so many high fly balls to deep left, to the last, small wonder, that Harold Rosss comic book for adults could defeat Harpers for four straight years that was the movement of history. HISTORY For the Harper's softball team, for the last four years, history had been the record of error, shortcoming, and self-destruction. THE NEW HISTORY Then there was a change. The direction of the movement paused, sat silent for a moment, and reversed. That moment, the first inning of last nights game, was the start, not the finish. The movement now began with the fact of copy editor Rafil Kroll-Zaidi adopting a cricket-type swing perfected in India and using it to drive in runs. History became the history of former intern Alex Provan launching a triple over the heads of cowering cartoonists. The New History was the record of the expression of five summer interns displaying impeccable fielding: the lunge of Aman Gill in left-center snaring Hershs bombs as opposed to watching them fly over his head. THE DECLINE OF POWER HITTING In the New History, few Harper's runners were left on baseâ€”most of them scored. Yet the power of Matt Power was subtracted from that of the rest of the lineup: The contributing editor, listed along with opponent Ben McGrath on Wikipedias entry on famous former fact checkers, went 0 for 3. Otherwise the power of Power was effected in other ways. What was Powerful grew less powerful in ways that could be easily measured (i.e. Power hitting), growing more powerful in every way that could not be measured (i.e., fielding, team spirit, the use of his name in punning cheers, Power Surge, Power Outage). POWERFUL MEN The most powerful men were those like Readings editor Sam Stark who most effectively used the power of hitting short line balls over the infielders heads to reach base. SOFTBALL Softball is the force of no-outs, and the final score holds the archives of the outs of no-outs. Softball is a mystery. Certain of its properties are known, though. It has a score. The score does vary. The victor is raised up to the place where this score lends him fame; the powerful is lowered there. In the place where this score has its home, childish games can be arrived at and enforced effectivelyâ€”childish games, and games wearing the mask of childhood. FINAL SCORE: Harper's 6, New Yorker 5.

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Media Softball: Casey at the Bat With Liberal Arts Degrees

Noah Davis

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Noah Davis