7/1

i'm thankful, though i have to the best of my knowledge never watched an entire baseball game and don't have much of a desire to do so, to have found myself mesmerized watching this clip of the end of a famous one in 1988. i'm thankful that there is something to the aura of the video—the grain and stonewashed color of old tape, the players who with their 80s mustaches and shaggy hair look like what the platonic ideal of baseball players look like in my head—but am most thankful for the action—even though so little of it is actually action, so much is waiting but waiting that is packed to capacity not with boredom but with excitement—for the intertwined dramas of the player on base trying to steal second and always managing to slip back in place at the last second when caught, a series of miniature heist movies, grinning like a child who's caught with his hand in the cookie jar but knows he's going to get away with it, and the player at bat, his face wearing the weight of the entire crowd, injured and constantly shaking out his legs to try to stabilize himself, all the little shakespearean asides of him stepping back from the plate to loosen up and ready himself, mentally and physically, choking the bat, locking eyes with the pitcher he is in the dance with, and i'm thankful that the video is longer than i had imagined when i was linked to it but that the length just adds to the glory of what happens at the end, which "spoiler alert" you can probably guess, this clip would not be saved for someone like me to watch if something glorious didn't happen, but which doesn't make the watching any less powerful. i'm thankful that though i don't know much about sports, i can still enjoy a home run.