Poetic pragmatism, neo-transcendentalism, bikes, burritos, basketball.

Yesterday afternoon I watched Roy Halladay’s no-no on the Hot Corner, which is Major League Baseball’s concession to the Internet. The Hot Corner allows you to choose a single camera angle from which to watch the game, which has the advantage of showing you stuff you might not see in the multi-camera, frequent-cut-away televised experience. The downside is that you miss everything that happens outside of that single camera frame, which, as it turns out, is a lot. When Halladay was pitching, I chose the angle that kept the camera on his face the entire time, and this time I didn’t miss much because every single important moment happened right there. You could sense (not “see” exactly) the flow that Halladay was in; the announcers kept remarking on how “calm” he looked, but it wasn’t calmness as much as it was quiet, focused intensity.

The final out.

The New Yorker’s Roger Angell even mentions the flow in a blog entry about the game:

Pitching his no-hit, 4 – 0 masterpiece against the Cincinnati Reds last night, the Phillies’ ace Roy Halladay restored the smoothing, almost symphonic sense of pleasure that lies within the spare numbers and waiting possibilities of every ballgame. Even from a distance, at home again in your squalid living-room loge, you felt something special this time about the flow of pitches, balls and (mostly) strikes, the inexorably approaching twenty-seventh man retired ...

And of course the Philly fans were deeply engaged throughout the game. In the later innings, each strike was cheered, and Reds batters received hearty, cascading boos each time they asked for time to try to disrupt Halladay’s rhythm.

This guy brought the right sign to the game.

The remainder of the post-season will have to be pretty remarkable to out-shine this unique achievement. (And I personally hope that the Giants are up for it).

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