by Simon Schama
I had no idea, of course, what I’d got myself into. I was still clueless about recognising pitches, especially from the bleachers or the box seats way out behind third base; couldn’t tell a cut fastball from a slider if they hit me in the face. (It takes time, but believe me, it repays study. Great pitchers can turn the ball in mid-air in ways that spin bowlers have scarcely dreamed of.) Much more ominously, I had no idea of the dreaded history: the feckless sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees by the owner Harry Frazee, reputedly to finance the Broadway musical No, No, Nanette; the ensuing ‘Curse of the Bambino’; the failure to win a World Series since the Kaiser hung up his helmet.
I vaguely knew of the Yankees–Sox rivalry, but – since the Bronx Bombers were themselves regularly bombing in the 1980s – who cared? I had no idea whatsoever of the saga of torment; the moments of deluded euphoria (Carleton Fisk hitting the walk-off homer in Game 6 of the 1976 series against Cincinnati) before the crushing putdown (the loss of the same series in Game 7); an epic of sustained pain that by comparison made the pecking of Prometheus look like a day at the beach.
I would learn in the worst possible way: the notorious 1986 World Series against the New York Mets. In the American League Championship series (semi-finals to you lot) the Sox had come from a strike away from being eliminated by the California Angels, when a pitcher called Donnie Moore served a fat one over the plate to Dave ‘Hendu’ Henderson, who saw it coming with his name on it, grinned one of his gap-toothed grins and sent it away. Stuck with the stigma of being the ‘goat’, poor Moore went into a depressive slide and committed suicide. We went into the World Series against the Mets high on confidence – we had the brilliant pitching duo of Roger Clemens and Bruce Hurst and some of those unbowed veteran hitters from the early ’80s. One strike away from Winning It All in Game 6, a ball notoriously trickled through the open gate of Bill Buckner’s bandy legs and the Mets came back from the grave. In Game 7 it was our hearts into which the stake was driven.
Years – decades – of roller-coaster elation and despair followed. In the meantime I had done something unforgivable, saddled my own two kids with this infatuated allegiance; taken them to Fenway, shoved peanuts and sausages into their faces, made them do the ‘wave’; embarrassed them with my roaring abuse of visiting Yanks; taught them (yes, I could do that now) the difference between the cut fastball and the slider; in short, pretty much ruined their blameless lives.
This came home to me in the worst possible way, almost exactly a year ago when I took my son, eighteen, and grown prematurely wise in Soxian pessimism, to Yankee stadium to see the seventh and deciding game of the American League Championship. Around the seventh inning, well up on the Yanks, our ace Pedro Martinez pitching, we dared a cautious smile of anticipation. The Yankee fans were leaving in depressed droves; those that weren’t were scowling at us or hiding their faces in their hands. Then Martinez, kept in for an inning too long, suddenly folded, surrendering hits. Amidst pandemonium the game tied, and then a homer by the aptly named Aaron Boone won it for the Evil Empire. My son’s face was drained of colour, but he was the grown-up attempting to console his unhinged father. So now you know why I was up at 4 a.m. on Thursday morning watching every last pitch of the game with St Louis online; now you can measure the combination of ecstatic disbelief and narcotic jubilation coursing through my veins as our ace closer, Keith Foulke, made the last out.
A bit OTT? Absolutely not, my world-weary cricketing friends. Anything is possible in 2004: the trains will run on time; balmy breezes will drift over Wales in December; the lion will lie down with the lamb; and, oh yes, a Red Sox fan will, come January, be sworn into office as the forty-fourth President of the United States.
Sources
The author and publishers would like to acknowledge and thank the following publications and institutions. Although the copyright for each piece lies with the author, every effort has been made to trace and contact the relevant primary publishers in each instance. The publishers would be pleased to correct any omissions or errors in any future editions.
Travelling
‘Sail Away: Six Days to New York on the Queen Mary 2’, New Yorker, 31 May 2004
‘The Unloved American: Two Centuries of Alienating Europe’, New Yorker, 10 March 2003
‘Amsterdam’, an uncut version of the essay in John Julius Norwich, (ed.), The Great Cities in History, 2009
‘Washington DC’, an uncut version of the essay in John Julius Norwich, (ed.), The Great Cities in History, 2009
‘Brazil’, Financial Times Diary, 22 November 2008
‘Comedy Meets Catastrophe’, Financial Times, 26 September 2009
Testing Democracy
‘9/11’, Guardian, 14 September 2001
‘The Dead and The Guilty: 9/11 A Year On’, Guardian, 11 September 2002
‘The Civil War in the USA’, Guardian, 5 November 2004
‘Katrina and George Bush’, Guardian, 12 September 2005
‘In its severity and fury, this was Obama at his most powerful and moving’, Guardian, 30 August 2008
‘Bye-Bye Dubya’, Guardian 3 November 2008
‘The British Election’, Guardian, 5 May 2005
‘Virtual Annihilation’, originally published in Ron Rosenbaum (ed.), Those Who Forget the Past: A Question of Anti-Semitism, 2004
Talking And Listening
‘TBM and John’, originally in After the Victorians: Private Conscience and Public Duty in Modern Britain, Peter Mandler and Susan Pedersen (eds.), 1994
‘Isaiah Berlin’, The New Republic 31 January 2005
‘J. H. Plumb’, introduction to the new edition of The Death of the Past, Niall Ferguson (ed.), 2003, reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan
‘Rescuing Churchill’, The New York Review of Books, 28 February 2002
‘The Lost Art of Great Speechmaking’, Guardian, 20 April 2007
‘The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of the Osbournes’, Phi Beta Kappa Oration, Harvard University, 3 June 2002
‘Barack Obama’, The Independent, 23 January 2009
Performing
Richard II, note from the Almeida Theatre Production of Richard II, Almedia at Gainsbrough studios, 2002
Henry IV, note for Royal Shakespeare Company production, 2008
‘Martin Scorsese: Good Fella’, Financial Times, 31 October 2009
‘Charlotte Rampling: “A Documentary of Me”’, Harper’s Bazaar, January 2010
‘Clio at the Multiplex’, the New Yorker, 19 January 1998
‘True Confessions of a History Boy’, National Theatre programme essay for Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, May 2004
Picturing
‘The Matter of the Unripe Nectarine: High ground/low ground and Ruskin’s Prejudices’, Christ Church Symposium, on the centenar of Ruskin’s death, Oxford, 1 April 2000
‘Dutch Courage’, Guardian, 23 June 2007
‘Rubens’, Guardian, 22 October 2005
‘The Patriot: Turner And The Drama Of History’, the New Yorker, 24 September 2007
‘Carnival and Cacophony’, Financial Times, 4 July 2009
‘Rembrandt’s Ghost: Picasso Looks Back’, the New Yorker, 26 March 2007
Anselm Kiefer (1), Guardian, 20 January 2007
‘In Mesopotamia: Anselm Kiefer (2)’, Catalogue essay for the Anselm Kiefer exhibition Karfunkelfee and the Fertile Crescent, White Cube, Hoxton Square and Mason’s Yard, October-November 2009
‘John Virtue: The Epic Of Paint’, National Gallery catalogue essay, 2007
‘Avedon: Power’, Guardian, 27 September 2008
Cooking And Eating
‘Cool as Ice’, Vogue © The Condé Nast Publications Ltd, August 2007
‘Sauce of Controversy’, Guardian, 26 November 2008
‘The Great G2 Recipe Swap: Cheese Soufflé’, Guardian, 2 March 2009
‘Simmer of Love’, Vogue © The Condé Nast Publications Ltd, winter 2008
‘My Mother’s Kitchen’, Observer Food
Magazine, 11 October 2009
‘Mouthing Off’, Oxford Food Symposium, September 2009
Remembering
‘Omaha Beach’, Financial Times Diary, 13 June 2009
‘Gothic Language: Carlyle, Ruskin and the Morality of Exuberance’, London Library Lecture, 12 July 2008
‘The History Of Britain: A Response’, American Historical Review, June 2009
‘The Monte Lupo Story’, London Review of Books, 18 September –
1 October 1980
‘No Walnuts, No Enlightenment’, London Review of Books, 20 December 1979
‘Abolishing the Slave Trade in Britain and America – Sound and Fury or Deafening Silence?’, Stanford University Presidential Lecture, 2007
In A League of Its Own
‘Red October’, Guardian, 29 October 2004
List of Illustrations
1. Frans Hals, c.1580–1666, The Marriage Portrait of Isaac Massa and Beatrix van der Laen, c. 1622. (Isaac Massa, merchant in Haarlem, 1586–1643; Oil on canvas; 140 x 166.5cm; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; © photo: akg-images)
2. Peter Paul Rubens, 1577–1640, The Four Philosophers, c.1608. (From left: self-portrait of the artist, his brother Philip Rubens, Justus Lipsius, Jan van der Wouwere; Oil on wood; 164 x 139cm; Inv.no. 86; Palazzo Pitti, Palatine Gallery, Florence; © photo: akg-images/Rabatti–Domingie)
3. J.M.W. Turner, 1775–1851, A Disaster at Sea, c. 1835. (This canvas was never exhibited and is probably not quite finished, but it seems to be well on the way to becoming one of Turner’s most powerful statements on the Romantic theme of maritime disaster; Oil on canvas; 171.4 x 220.3 cm; Tate Gallery, London; © photo: akg-images / Erich Lessing)
4. J.M.W. Turner, 1775–1851, The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 1835. (Oil on canvas; 92 x 123cm; John Howard Mc Fadden Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; © photo: akg-images)
5. James Ensor, 1860–1949, Scandalized Masks, 1883. (Oil on canvas; 135 x 112cm; Inv. 4190; Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels; © DACS 2010; © photo: J. Geleyns/www.roscan.be)
6. Pablo Picasso, 1881–1973, ‘Ecce Homo’, After Rembrandt from Suite 156, 1970. (Etching and aquatint; plate: 49.5 x 41 cm, sheet: 68.1 x 56.7 cm; Tate Gallery, London; © Succession Picasso/DACS 2010)
7. Picasso At Work, c. 1970. (Hulton Archive; © photo by Keystone/Getty Images)
8. John Virtue, Landscape No. 711, 2003-4. (Acrylic, black ink and shellac on canvas; 350 x 732 cm; © John Virtue)
9. Anselm Kiefer, b.1945, Karfunkelfee, 2009. (Gold paint, cloak, brambles, acrylic, oil, emulsion, ash and shellac on canvas in steel and glass frame; 382 x 576 x 35 cm; © Anselm Kiefer; © photo: Charles Duprat; Courtesy White Cube)
10. Anselm Kiefer, b.1945, Shevirath Ha Kelim, 2009. (Terracotta, acrylic, oil and shellac on canvas; 330 x 760 x 1300 cm; © Anselm Kiefer; © photo: Charles Duprat; Courtesy White Cube)
Acknowledgements
No writer can survive, much less prosper, without the kindly and infinitely patient help of good editors. I have been exceptionally lucky to have had a whole phalanx of these cunning saints who have often been lumbered with pieces that are excessive (in almost every way) and cry out for sharp but sympathetic intervention. They have all managed somehow to trim and nick and cut without the object of their attention feeling much pain. My gratitude to them is one of the few things that is truly beyond words. In particular I want to thank, at The New Yorker, Ann Goldstein, David Remnick and Dorothy Wickenden; at the Guardian, Lisa Allardyce, Ian Katz and Merope Mills; at British Vogue, Charlotte Sinclair; at Harper’s Bazaar, Lucy Yeomans; at the Financial Times, Lionel Barber, Jan Dalley, Caroline Daniel and James Mackintosh; at the New Republic, Leon Wieseltier; at the New York Review of Books, Robert Silvers; and at the London Review of Books, Mary-Kay Wilmers.
I should also like to thank my publishers – Dan Halpern at Ecco Books and Will Sulkin at Random House UK for their generous enthusiasm in seeing scribbles turned to print. Kay Peddle at Random House UK has been the soul of vigilant kindness.
But the book would never have seen the light of day without the care, patience and commitment of Jennifer Sonntag to whom I owe more than I can say for keeping the overladen ship that is SS Schama more or less afloat.
About the Author
SIMON SCHAMA is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University in New York. His award-winning books include The American Future: A History; Rough Crossings; The Power of Art; The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age; Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution; Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations); Landscape and Memory; Rembrandt’s Eyes; and the History of Britain trilogy. He has written and presented forty television documentary films for the BBC, PBS, and The History Channel—including the Emmy-winning Power of Art—on subjects that range from John Donne to Tolstoy.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
By the Same Author
Fiction
Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations
Nonfiction
Patriots and Liberators: Revolution
in the Netherlands, 1780–1813
Two Rothschilds and the Land of Israel
The Embarrassment of Riches: on Interpretation of Dutch
Culture in the Golden Age
Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution
Landscape and Memory
Rembrandt’s Eyes
A History of Britain: Volume I
A History of Britain: Volume II
A History of Britain: Volume III
Hang-Ups: Essays on Painting (Mostly)
Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution
Simon Schama’s Power of Art
The American Future: A History
Copyright
Originally published in Great Britain in 2010 by The Bodley Head, London.
SCRIBBLE, SCRIBBLE, SCRIBBLE. Copyright © 2010 by Simon Schama.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST U.S. EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN 978-0-06-200986-9
EPub Edition © April 2011 ISBN: 9780062079107
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (P.O. Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollins.com
books on Archive.