Night Game

There are many songs about baseball (although many more movies that come to mind), but this is likely the saddest.

I don't know what the official rule is for the death of a player during the game. It seems inappropriate to continue the game with a replacement player, yet unfair to call a winner. I do know that ties are not permitted, and that innings are simply added until one team wins. Perhaps the game is "scrubbed" and a new one scheduled in its stead.

But that is not what happens here. The pitcher and his team have handed two outs to their opponents, with one more to finish the 8th inning and start the 9th and final one. Then "the pitcher died."

It seems like a sudden incident. We do not see the pitcher fainting, clutching his head or chest, or giving any indication of injury or illness. It's just "when."

The pitcher's shoes are laid, it seems ceremoniously, on the pitcher's mound. But the rest of the uniform is handled differently. The jersey, with it's "number," is simply "left" on the turf...

After being "torn." Why was this item of clothing treated so roughly? Were they ripping it to be able to do a medical procedure on his chest, perhaps his heart?

The tearing of a garment often signifies evil tidings. In the Bible, Joesph's brothers tear his multi-colored coat to fabricate (no pun intended) evidence for their father that Joseph was mauled to death by a beast. King Saul tears his garment, and the prophet Samuel sees it as an omen. Many ancient people, hearing of a death, tore their clothes... and Jewish mourners still wear a torn shirt, jacket, or lapel-ribbon while grieving to this day.

That the jersey was "left on the ground" seems unlikely today. It would probably be kept as a memento, either by the team or the player's family. It must have been left in a rush, perhaps, to hurry the pitcher to the hospital.

It seems odd that the reaction of everyone else is absent from mention. What did the fans, the teammates, the opponents, the management and staff, the sportscasters do or say? Was there pandemonium? Did the medical professionals on hand leap in and prevent chaos? We are not told.

But we are told what happens to nature-- it grows "cold," as if in reaction. The stars, often described as yellow or golden, are now "white," and not just white, but "white as bones," which of course are only seen after death. It's as if nature's elements were reflecting the sudden chill and severity of the situation. Or signaling the humans as to the proper sentiment to be taken.

Why mention the age of the stadium? It has seen teams and fans come and go. It can no longer get excised about one death, more or less. But the "night," the "stars" are millennia older than the stadium, no? They are made by nature, or God, or something eternal, while the stadium was made by people... fickle people, who are gentle with shoes but harsh with shirts. Nature, at least, grows respectfully somber as it notes one more lost life.

Then comes a cruel pun. The song started with "two men down," in the sense that they had be standing "up" at the plate and now, having been gotten out, had to sit back "down" on their dugout bench. Now there are three men "down," except one is "down" in the ultimate sense: he has fallen down dead. Perhaps this comes to put the sport in perspective-- as sad as we might be that a player has been taken out of the game, how much sadder when one has been removed from all of life's activity altogether.

Much of the imagery, in fact, has to do with lowness. Consider these words: "down," "bottom," "laid," "on the ground," "cold," "down" (again). And now comes the tarpaulin, rolled-- like a shroud-- over the ground, over the frost on the ground. The song itself is set at "night," as well, when the Sun and light are down.

The music echoes this lowness. Aside from the guitar, which is played low-- and Simon's hushed voice, which is in a low register-- the only other instrument that plays the whole song is Tony Levin's bass.

The pitcher is gone, the game is done. And for some reason, the whole season is lost. I do not think this is meant in the sense of the sport. As discussed above, an individual game can be replayed (as happens when a game is called off due to bad weather). A team continues even if one of its members dies mid-season. Even if that team suffers a psychological blow that does, in fact, end its own season, the season as a whole continues for the other dozen-plus teams in the sport.

Yes, the song might mean that this team's season is effectively over. But it might also mean that the sport as a whole suffers and mourns so much from the loss of one player that, whatever the season might have meant before, and whatever comes after, it's now "the season when that pitcher died during the game." Its former momentum and meaning have been eclipsed by the shadow of this one profound incident.

With the humans still not responding appropriately, nature cues them again by spreading a white funeral shroud on the field, in the form of "frost." Finally, the humans take the hint, and add a synthetic shroud, the tarpaulin, over the field.

Much could be made of the repeated "and" throughout the piece. The story is related in a series of staccato statements, like someone trying to piece together a sequential narrative out of a memory of impressions. There is very little 'poetry' in the work. This is reserved for the statements that follow "then," which breaks the sequence of "ands," which pick back up in the final verse. The main effect is someone recounting something he experienced but can't quite believe.

Simon is a baseball fan. He plays it in the video to "Schoolyard," and more famously, name-checked DiMaggio in one of his biggest hit songs. Yet this is his only piece entirely set in the world of that sport.

I am unaware of an incident like the one described happening in baseball in 1975. So perhaps some sudden loss in Simon's life could only be likened to a pitcher dying while trying to break a tie in the bottom of the 8th. It is certainly one of the saddest songs in Simon's entire repertoire.


Musical Note: The mournful harmonica bridge is played by Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans of Belgium, better known as "Toots." He is one of the greatest harmonica players alive [Note: he has since passed, in 2016], and has been for decades. His work has largely been in the jazz arena. While he doesn't play long here, you can hear a lot more of him on the Billy Joel hit "Leave a Tender Moment Alone."

Next Song: Gone at Last