Fine-Tuned but Annotated
(Yes, Tuner uses Ed Asner as his avatar, which keeps the image just inside the foul pole.)
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Tuner did the prose. Dr. D's archived "ghost" AI sim does the shtick. As with Rolling Stone's music critics: those who can't do, teach.
Corrected annotation by the artist is, of course, out of the question. But anyone else is welcome to kick the poem around with me.
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Listen my children and hear the call
Of the M’s last unexplainable tragedic fall. (1)
On the 2nd of May in two-thousand-one-five (2)
When every M’s fan had to witness the dive (3)
and remember that infamous game of baseball.
Someone said to the ump, "If the Astros do strike
By glove or by bat in the game played tonight, (4)
quickly so quickly send someone to march
And hang a lantern aloft in the topmost roof arch (5)
Of the Safeco skyline as a signal light,
One if by glove, and two if by bat;
The fans on the side of the sound they had sat,
Prepared to respond and to spread the alarm
Through every Northwestern village and farm,
For the true rounders fans to rise up and to arm." (6)
By the side of the sound seated faithful M’s fans.
Transfixed to the roofline awaiting a glance
The look that would tell them the ending, the score (7)
Re-fearful that their team would lose one game more
Impending destruction was felt in advance
Inning one and now two had just passed into past
As the M’s hitters swung both bewildered and gassed (8)
Our vaunted young pitcher threw poorly and bland
Houstonian batters were soon in command
Crooked numbers on scoreboard were sure to be vast
Gazing up at the rooftop one torch soon would fly
As exhausted M’s fandom were swift to decry (9)
But alongside the first there were shone soon two more
Both in batting and gloving the Texans were more
Our hopes for the season were starting to die.
The Astros are coming! (10)
We take up the call
The Astros are coming!
Proclaiming our fall
The Astros are coming
O where did we go?
The Astros are coming
I’m tired of this show! (11)
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1) There was an ancient Michael Caine movie, ca. 1977 A.D. In it, he taught the audiences of that day that "The critical element of tragedy is inevitability." The audience (in Anaheim) must have seen the deaths coming, while the actors (Tuner and Dr. D) were completely oblivious.
Dustin Ackley was the last man standing from the Mariners' high 1st-round talent, dating back to ... oh ... 1977. Ackley did, of course, hit .512 in spring training that season. He had a WPA (win probability added) of -0.50 games at the time of writing.
It would be unspeakably naive to refer to "Batting Average" so we won't underline the .190 here. But at least he was a left fielder.
Regarding the "inevitability" of the 2015 tragicomedy, hyperlink "Lincoln Era 1995-2041."
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2) Alternate translation, "two one thousand five." Historians are unclear as to whether the reference was to 2015 or 2105.
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3) Dive - Or, "fall." "Dive" in that era had the sense of a pre-arranged loss, as in 1919, or in the 2005, or of a comically frightened opponent, as in the 2013 Super Bowl. But the baseball game(s) referenced did feature the losing team playing well only in non-critical situations, as Shoeless Joe Jackson had done.
The 2015 Mariners had an OPS+ of 101 with the bases empty, but 74 with even a single runner on base. The threat of deliberate losing by the team seemed perfectly serious.
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4) Most often in that era, a team had to strike by glove and by bat. But the 2015 Mariners went down with the lightest of shoves to the shoulder. The transmission of Tuner's conjunction "or" is verified.
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5) As the reader is aware, this is one of the finest specimens of prose extant. The entire quintrain could scarcely be improved by CHOWARD-90000 sims.
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6) In that generation, physical violence was still a present threat, and was a special topic of discussion among that region's NFL audiences.
In other regions, the writer would seem to be referring to a local public social pressure upon the baseball team to perform at higher standards. However, in Seattle this was an unknown phenomenon. The application of the verse has remained a mystery for 1200 years.
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7) If the reference is to May 2, 2015, the score was 11-4 against the Mariners. Nelson Cruz hit a "home run" over the Space Needle (though the game was in Houston) but since the Mariners scored several points that day, their "starting pitcher" had a baseball hit through his chest by Evan Gattis.
If the reference is to May 2, 2105, the Mariners lost 28-24. "Crooked numbers" in the 2010-30 era referred to numbers that were not straight, like the numeral 1, which was normally the number posted in a mechanical scoreboard during a baseball game.
In the May 3rd game, the Mariners out-hit the Astros 10 to 8, yet were behind 3-0 in the first inning and were never a threat to win at any time. At least 12 of the team's first 15 losses smacked of this timing.
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8) The sense is: Seattle batters were confused by twisting pitches, yet unable to respond quickly enough to the "hot gas" of the Astros' 91 MPH "fast balls." But see the Nelson Cruz comment earlier.
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9) Although the Astros were defeating every team in early 2015, and were the cause of the early Mariner troubles, fans deserted the team within the first 25 games. This was due to the tendencies of the ballclub in the previous forty years.
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10) Tuner now finishes with the stanza that brings the house down.
The Astros, who had lost 203 games in the two previous years, at the beginning of the 2015 season posted a team OPS+ of 113 and a team ERA+ of 135 to start the season 17-7.
They had five batters with OPS+ from 151 to 208, including Jake Marisnick, Hank Conger and Jed Lowrie. The Mariners didn't.
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11) For further discussion of this classic verse, see the archives. /terminating