The Measure of a Man, and a Fan (2024)

At my uncle’s memorial service this past weekend, the family gathered around before heading into the chapel. At one point, my aunt leaned forward and asked my cousins: “What would your dad say if he were here?”

This was a tough question in some ways, given the occasion, but also, Mac was a man of many passionate interests. What would he say? Among the many statements that wouldn’t have gone amiss here: something on gun violence, social justice, perhaps some words in Italian (Mac, while an ultimate Irish-American guy, was fluent), an opinion on current events, opera, family, religion, his love for his students, the state of higher education.

And yet my cousin Sean, with absolutely no hesitation, declared: “What’s the score of the Cubs game.”

It wasn’t a question, and it wasn’t exactly the answer Anne (also a huge Cubs fan) was looking for, but it struck me: this is not a bad way to be remembered! And it was certainly true.

We have certain preconceived ideas of what it means to be a fan of a particular team: the Cubs, the Red Sox, the Yankees (perish the thought). The number of World Series trophies and the length of time between them, players’ personalities, historically good (or bad) seasons can dictate the “story” of a team. Mac was a Cubs fan through and through, with all that it has entailed over the years. We went many times to Wrigley Field, but Mac also took us to Comiskey. He adored the Cubs, but he loved the game itself too.

Every summer, my parents and my growing bunch of brothers and sisters, that feral lot, loaded up the car and drove from New England to Chicago because my mom and my aunt were twins and that’s what we did. Some of my earliest and most deeply held memories involve Chicago rather than Boston.

I loved going up to the roof of my aunt and uncle’s apartment building because you could see into Wrigley Field from there (sort of—never mind that it was a mile-and-a-half away).

And I remember Mac working in his home office—grading papers, composing syllabi, whatever. He was a professor, and a good one. In my memory, his office TV was always on as I lingered quietly at the threshold and it was only ever tuned to one thing: the Cubs game with the sound turned off. When I asked what was happening, he could tell me in an instant, practically without looking up. I marveled at his uncanny ability to monitor all these things at once: there was no doubt that he was deeply involved in his work, that he wanted to talk to me, and that he could easily tabulate everything happening on the field too. I don’t mean to be reductive here, but baseball fans, generally speaking, are smart, and they pay attention.

There was hardly a better way to impress me (though Mac found many others. If it’s not clear already, I adored this man).

Mac, like many baseball fans, was passionate about the game while also being thoughtful. In what other game can you find fans who, in one moment, can study the game calmly enough to record nearly every detail of it, and in the next, might leap to their feet to bellow at a player or ump, summon a beer, or whatever? Always astutely done, of course.

Baseball fans tend to love strategy and smart plays. One of my former coworkers in New York, a diehard Yankees fan a generation older than me, agreed that we had far less interest in the “back-and-forth games” (as he dismissively called them) because we liked to do a little more thinking. How was the lineup constructed today? Why did the pitcher throw a fastball when that’s obviously what the hitter was looking for? Why did the manager leave the pitcher in? Why did he take him out so soon?

These kinds of exquisite questions are bread and butter to a baseball fan. We are also ready to be delighted at any moment in time. Racing across the outfield to make a play, a magical slide into home, a sweet swing (or a terrible one), Torii Hunter’s headstand in the Red Sox bullpen, Wilyer Abreu’s recent backwards somersault on Patriots Day.

One of those guys came up with the ball, and one didn’t, and hey, that’s baseball.

Photo by Stan Grossfeld/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Baseball fans love history, but I don’t need to explain that any further to you Red Sox fans, or Cubs fans either.

Patience. Mac had that. Some might call it grind or grit or perseverance, which are forms of patience, exercised over nine, or 18, or however many innings it takes, and 162 games. How many times have fans of other sports asked us something like: “You’re still playing?” That could mean for the evening, or for the season. The ones that live by a timer don’t quite get it.

Baseball can be random. Unpredictable. Matt Gross recently wrote about the inherent weirdness of our sport and we embrace that. In an industry where succeeding (at the plate) only 30% of the time puts you in rarified air, this is only to be expected. A recent example is the 2023 World Series, with two Wild Card teams battling to win it all. Although the Diamondbacks weren’t ultimately victorious, they came a hell of a long way for a club with a winning percentage that was not much over .500.

Dan Secatore has written about baseball fans wanting to see something new and beautiful and unprecedented. He once used one of my favorite descriptors—sublime—which elevates all of this into meaning-of-life territory…a thesis instead of a mere rant or stream-of-consciousness.

This was true of Mac. He loved Javy Baez (back when he was still with the Cubs) and his ability to conjure up something amazing out of thin air. They didn’t call him El Mago for nothing. We thoroughly enjoyed discussing and reliving this play:

This season, Mac would be delighted with Steven Kwan (regrettably, neither a Cub nor a Red Sox), who has shown a similar knack for eluding the tag and coming up improbably victorious.

So, back to the question we began with: what’s the score? Every baseball fan knows that you have to frequently check it in order to stay on top of things, maybe to the point of obsession. Guilty. I remember (get in the way-back machine because this was in the days before mobile phones) going to a wedding as the Sox met the Yankees in the ALCS. Multiple guests were tortured at the idea of going into the church and losing touch with what was happening on the ballfield. I mean, god bless that happy couple, but how could they have scheduled their big day like this! Clearly not baseball fans. Large groups lingered in the parking lot, car doors open, radios on, discussing how we were going to get through the next hour. At the last second, we headed in. We fidgeted through the wedding to some extent, and when it ended, it was with tears of happiness as well as some relief. The congregation turned as one to get the hell out of there…and some thoughtful fan, with the collective good in mind, was standing high up in the choir at the back of the church, displaying a huge handwritten sign with the score. Bless his heart. We cheered and ran to the reception. That was how we did things back then. (By the way, that was the only game the Sox won in that series; as I recall, it was the 13-1 blowout on October 16, 1999.)

Where was I? Oh yeah, obsessively checking scores. With the time difference for me on the west coast now, this can happen at odd times. But if I don’t already know the score by the end of the day, my dog and I have to check it last thing before we go to bed. Yes, he really is interested! Or at least, he cares about things that make me happy.

In our defense, things can change on a dime in baseball, and that’s one of the things we love about it. You simply don’t get that when you routinely advance down the field or court, scoring two or three, or six or seven, at a time. With one pitch and the bases loaded, you could end up with nothing (although heartbreak isn’t nothing; it counts for a lot, but they throw that in for free). Or you could end up with four runs and possibly even immortality. Or something tantalizingly in between. That’s baseball.

Mac was a philosopher, in love with a philosopher’s game that’s full of big questions. He helped shape me into the fan I am today.

So, what’s the score?