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Barlow did not get into any of the first three hotly contested games of the best-of-five American League Championship series, watching from the bullpen as the Baltimore Orioles took Game One on a John Lowenstein home run in extra innings and watching the teams trade one-run victories in Games Two and Three. In the top of the ninth inning of Game Four, with the Orioles ahead 8-0 and just a few moments from wrapping up the pennant, Mike Barlow got the call. He pitched a scoreless frame as seats emptied and exits filled. Had the Angels been able to stage what would surely have been the greatest comeback in post-season history in the bottom of the inning, he would have been the winning pitcher, perhaps the answer to a trivia question, but the Angels went down meekly. Significant things tended not to happen when Mike Barlow was involved. He's not the answer to anything.
* * *
I watch a lot of sports. When you watch sports you end up watching a lot of advertisements. These advertisements often call my inner strength into question. I am asked if "it" is in me. I am urged to kill the coward within. I can’t remember at the moment any of the other current slogans. But I know that I need a more muscular body than the one I have, and a more competitive nature, and a faster car, and less self-doubt, actually no self-doubt. But fuck all that. If there’s a coward within I’m not killing it. I’m not killing anything. The whole idea seems kind of fascistic, actually. If there’s a coward within me I’m inviting it out to join me on the couch and watch sitcom reruns. I caught part of one yesterday, a Seinfeld where George initially recoils from the opportunity to have an affair with a married woman.
"An affair?" he says, wincing. "That’s so . . . grown-up."
Who wants to grow up?
* * *
Later, I called my dad to ask him about Moshiach. I’d just finished reading The Yiddish Policeman’s Union and I wanted to know more about this figure that most of the people on my dad’s side of my family tree spent the last few thousand years waiting for.
"Yes, my mother and father spoke about Moshiach when I was growing up," my dad said. "The idea is he’ll come and there will be peace on earth, a return to Eden."
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union features a figure being looked to with unendurable need as Moshiach. This man can’t bear the pressure of everyone’s hopes for redemption. He desires more than anything to disappear, to be insignificant.
* * *
Who wants to be in the middle of the action? Not me. I want to be a mop-up man. If I’m ever officially involved, I want the announcers to be telling stories that have no connection to the action on the field. I want to hear the sound of foul balls clattering around vacant sections of seats. I don’t want to hear the roar of the crowd. Most of the time I’d rather just watch, leaning on a fence, daydreaming, drowsy, a towel around my neck like the towel draped around a fighter as he’s being led away from a fight, the trainer reassuring the fighter that it’s over, that there’s no more need to punch and get punched.
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
That card shows Barlow doing very little other than on a cellular level. If you were to create a sculpture oof that pic out of cheap plastic, it would be the Platonic ideal of an inaction figure. What is he thinking at that moment?
Perhaps a trivia question could be concocted based on that, and maybe Mike Barlow would be the answer. At the very least, his countenance in the above picture is fully explained.
When I worked in radio, I often ran the SU broadcasts on our affiliate. I never realized it was the same Barlow--Barlow the pitcher--who announced the basketball games on radio until someone filled me in on that.
8 : Thanks for pointing that out; I'd noticed on the card that he's a big guy.
"I guess he was a pretty good hoops player for SU."
That would make sense, but his college roundball stats have a distinctly Barlowian flavor, highlighted by the fact that even though he didn't play enough to commit many fouls, he still compiled more career fouls than points:
http://www.orangehoops.org/mbarlow.htm
A check of Retrosheet does confirm Barlow's poor showing against the Orioles, but Montague's ERA in September (and for the season) was worse than Barlow's. Perhaps whoever initiated the deal for Montague, whether it was Buzzie Bavasi or Jim Fregosi, just wanted to see Montague in there.
Either way, Montague was unimpressive, and indeed he was the man who gave up the walk-off home run to Lowenstein in the tenth inning of Game 1. A check of the records reveals that Montague was more prone to the gopher ball (14 allowed in 116 innings) than Barlow was (8 in 86 innings).
Would Barlow have fared better? Judging by the picture on his card, it seems Mike is portraying a wistful sadness, and maybe he knew all along that he wouldn't get the call.
Chabon pulled off a real feat with 'Yiddish Policeman's Union', an engaging novel with a plot derived from a "what if" version of political history. Usually, when an author fantasizes about history, there are so many irreconcilable fake facts that they undermine any attempt at creating plot. But in that book, Chabon not only sets it against a fantastic backdrop but makes it, primarily, a detective novel. I enjoyed some of his books set in Pittsburgh more than I did this one but its almost as if he set an impossibly difficult task for himself (okay, I'll write a 1) fake history, 2) detective novel and 3) make it funny) and he actually pulled it off. Kinda like a pitcher walking the bases loaded just to see if he can strike out the side.
"If I'm ever officially involved" ... stop, yer killin' me ovah heah.
Finally: Maybe not quite separated at birth, but tell me there's not a resemblance between Mike Barlow annnddd.... http://is.gd/DDZ
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