Thomas Porky McDonald
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In direct contrast to the plethora of “winning is everything” material that has incrementally grown since the 1990’s, Thomas Porky McDonald, poet and writer, offers up At a Loss to Eternity, an admittedly arbitrary look at a number of fine baseball teams that, as the subtitle states, “…Didn’t Win it All.” Spanning from the early days of the modern World Series Era to the present, McDonald attempts to enlighten those who are willing, as well as those seemingly scarred by the burgeoning attitude that everyone is a loser except the one that wins the ultimate Championship. League Champions who lost the World Series, like the legendary 1906 “Tinker to Evers to Chance” Chicago Cubs or Milwaukee’s “Brew Crew ‘82” take their proper place amongst the elites that they ultimately lost the Fall Classic to. Remarkable second place teams, such as the 1942 Brooklyn Dodgers and the 1961 Detroit Tigers, each winners of 100+ regular season games, are also afforded a forum here. Storied franchises currently in the throes of long Championship droughts, from Chicago’s Cubs and White Sox to the Cleveland Indians, are considered, along with their former baseball purgatory roommate, the Boston Red Sox, who finally took it all in 2004.
At a Loss to Eternity asks the reader to simply recall what professional sports, and baseball in particular, are really about. The joy that those who love the Game get from it cannot be dismissed by a growing inane “win or die” attitude fostered by mass media and accepted incoherently in too many places. Winning is wonderful, and all athletes should certainly strive to win every time they enter the playing field. Nonetheless, any player that gives every ounce of effort they can toward the goal of winning could never be a loser, despite what those who’ve probably never accomplished anything themselves would have you believe. Winning isn’t everything, though aspiring to win surely should be. The Red Sox 2004 World Championship exorcized many ghosts for some, but the truth is that many wonderful teams and a number of All-Time stars that did not win a World Title will always shine, even though they never managed to secure a ring. So much so that At a Loss to Eternity is, in fact, ultimately a tale of winners.
Thomas Porky McDonald is a poet and writer whose poems and narratives often cross through the ballpark venue. His recently released Series Endings…a Whimsical Look at the Final Plays of Baseball’s Fall Classic, 1903-2003, was a distinctly different view of baseball’s modern World Series than most informational volumes of that American icon usually are. A previous work, Where the Angels Bow to the Grass, A Boy’s Memoir, taken mainly from the writers’ childhood days of the 1960’s and 70’s, described the bond between McDonald and his father, Bill “The Chief” McDonald. In addition, his three-book anthology Irishman’s Tribute series, which paid homage to many heroes of the past, also honored his father, the de facto Irishman noted in the titles of this collection. An Irishman’s Tribute to the Negro Leagues, Over the Shoulder and Plant on One: An Irishman’s Tribute to Willie Mays and Hit Sign, Win Suit: An Irishman’s Tribute to Ebbets Field each contained short stories and historical material, as well as a small dose of McDonald’s trademark baseball poetry. McDonald has also published a book of short stories, Paradise Oval, and his unique New Yorkers take on 9/11, The Air That September, which tried to equate the effect that baseball could have as a healer and a source of joy, one this lifetime City resident obviously reveres. He also recently released his second of four poetry collections which chronicle the 1990’s, Downtown Revival: Poems 1994-1997, which picked up where the first, Ground Pork: Poems 1989-1994, left off. Two remaining volumes, Closer to Rona: Poems 1997-1999 and Still Chuckin''’ Poems 1999-2002, will arrive in the very near future, to complete the poet’s retrospective look at the final decade of the 20th Century. Born in St. Albans Naval Hospital in Queens, McDonald has lived in nearby Astoria his entire life.
The most overused word in sports is not “star” or “superstar”, as some people would have you believe. No, the most overused term or expression is “fan.” This word is tossed about with reckless abandon, blanketing all types of individuals under one banner that only a relative few rightfully have a claim to. To clear this up, once and for all, a “fan” is someone who has an unconditional love for his or her predetermined favorite team (predetermined at birth, if at all possible). A fan does not, ever, change allegiances, especially to latch onto a winning squad. A true fan does not go to games only when his team is a winner. A fan goes to games always, year in, year out, simply because their team is there.
The terms one might use for many of those who might claim to be “fans” or are similarly portrayed as “fans” by a most amused and collectively snickering media, range from “front-runners” to “spectators” to out and out phonies. I have heard (more and more as the years go by) on too many occasions, someone claiming that “I am the type of fan that……”, before delving into some justifying factor. To begin a sentence this way is comical. There is no “type” of fan. You either are or you aren’t. Those who “boo” their own team are not fans; they’re just people letting off steam at someone else’s expense. What''s more, the curious practice of “booing” your own is self-serving, defeatist and serves no tangible purpose, other than to make the perpetrator feel strangely better about himself/herself. If you are a fan, you are supposed to be rooting for the team, hoping it will win. Booing your own only puts more pressure on the players, which almost always results in continued poor performance, since the players are, in fact, human beings. I know that the absurd sums paid to athletes these days (and thus passed on to the ticket buyers) is some kind of rallying cry for a slew of unenlightened types, and has made booing your own somehow more fashionable and prevalent than ever, but a long, still silence by a crowd of upwards of 50,000 people was always a more powerful form of showing disappointment at a ballgame than the inane practice of booing. A silence in the home yard also had a much better chance of garnering a positive reaction from your team. (“Let’s give ‘em something to cheer about.”) Moreover, booing the home team is probably the most obnoxious act imaginable to those other patrons at the same game, who also paid a lot of money, yet who are there mainly for the love of the game they are watching. Fans (real fans) go to a game to have a good time. Baseball is about joy, not whining. If you go to a park just to create a negative atmosphere, the real fans don’t really need you there.
As a baseball fan, I am irritated by those at the park who do nothing but live game-by-game (in April or May?) and play-to-play, ostensibly to complain about anything and everything, while still claiming they are fans. As a New Yorker, I am insulted when I hear commentators saying how learned New York fans are, before adding “they’ll boo you if you’re bad, and cheer you when you’re good.” Well, from where I’m standing, as a lifetime New Yorker born in 1961, there’s nothing learned about that approach, and certainly nothing universally New York about it. A learned fan understands that baseball, above all other sports, is predominantly a game of failure. The winner is generally the team that fails the least. So to boo a guy every time he makes an out, simply because he has not been very successful for your team, is moronic, since even the best hitters are going to make out 7 times out of 10. I have seen this scenario, wherein a certain player has fallen out of favor to the point that they are booed every time that they make out. This is absolutely idiotic and stunningly clueless.
