Home Run

Where I come from, a home run is a run that starts at home. Baseball, like cricket, is a sport played overseas by men in funny outfits -- if you aren't accustomed from an early age to watch players with tight pants and long socks, you find them amusing. We watched ``Rain Man'' dubbed in French, and Dustin Hoffman's mumbling about ``first base'' and ``second base'' were no more than the ramblings of an autistic genius. We understood his character had an exceptional, detailed memory of games played long ago, which was essential to understanding the film, but that's how far our understanding of baseball went.

Then, I met a Phillies fan, we got engaged and I married him in September, few weeks before the team clinched the National League pennant and made it to the World Series for the first time in 15 years. (Note: I'm not implying there's a connection between the two). I, who learned about the meaning of ``pennant'' about ten days ago, am wearing a red Phillies baseball cap as I write.


My earliest memory of baseball was in the summer of 1990, when I spent a three-week vacation with an American family in New Fairfield, Connecticut. They took me to a game in New York -- it might have been the Yankees or the Mets, I don't remember. My first impression was being shocked that spectators moved around constantly and left their seats to get food or drinks. I thought it was rude to the players. The dad was sitting next to me, trying to explain the rules to me. My English was high-school English and I had never watched a baseball game in my life. He lost me after the first sentence but I nodded to whatever he said and he went on for what was probably hours. When I realized how long the game lasts -- a lifetime -- I changed my mind about leaving my seat.

I played softball in the yard of a family in Vermont a few years later and I wasn't more knowledgeable. I can run, but I was always running at the wrong time, so they established a rule for me: I would run only when they said ``run, run, run.'' Otherwise I'd stay put.
I lived in New York City for more than three years, so I became aware of which baseball team was losing or winning just by walking past newsstands or checking news on the local TV, New York 1. I knew who Joe Torre was because he was news.


Living for several years in the U.S. didn't prepare me for being a Phillies fan, though. A Google search on ``long-suffering Phillies'' yields 18,300 results. The team was the first to lose 10,000 games. If Philadelphia loses the World Series to Tampa Bay, it will mark the 100th season of professional sport in this city without a championship. Being a Phillies fan, I learned early on, requires knowing your statistics. I listened to local radio, I read local newspapers and I heard my husband talking about the Phillies. So, naturally, I expected them to lose every single game they played. To my utter astonishment, they made it to the World Series.


Something did prepare me for being a Phillies fan. I am French. We invented fatalism and cynicism. The last time a French won Roland Garros, the French tennis Open, was in 1983. The winner, Yannick Noah, is now a successful pop singer. His son, Joakim, born in 1985, is a professional NBA player with the Chicago Bulls. The long-suffering French tennis fans, meanwhile, are still waiting for a French to win the French Open. The national French soccer team, ``Les Bleus,'' won the world's soccer Cup, (la Coupe du Monde) in 1998, a seismic event in French sports and culture. At the following Cup, in 2002, the French team was humiliated, losing in the first round without winning a game nor scoring one goal. One of my earliest childhood sports memory is the 1982 soccer Cup's semifinal between France and West Germany. The French were leading 3-1 in the ``prolongations'' (overtime), the game was almost over and my parents were getting ready to get the Champagne out of the fridge, when the Germans scored twice in a row. Germany eventually won during the penalty shots, crushing France. Yes, I think I'm ready to be a Phillies fan.

Allez les Phillies.

A Day for Books and Socks

I'm reading ``What I Talk About When I talk About Running,'' by the novelist Haruki Murakami, a gift from D., my friend and running partner in New York City, and from J., my friend and former boss. Even though Murakami and I are of different age, sex and country, and even though we came to running for different reasons, I find myself nodding every other page at a statement or an anecdote, thinking: ``Yes! Me too!'' There is a common ground to runners that I haven't found in other parts of life. My love for cycling is as great as my love for running, but when I talk with fellow cyclists, it's usually about how a ride went or what the next ride will be like. It's stories about having a flat, changing gears or falling. It's about hills and slope percentages (``I did a 12 percent. It was tough.'') Runners' conversations, in my experience, are more visceral, especially as far as long-distance runners are concerned. Our body is the machine, so it's about muscle, bones, sweat, blood, blisters and bladders. We share a visceral common ground.

Today is a beautiful day on Cape Cod, sunny and about 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17 degrees Celsius), and I'm inside, reading, wearing warm socks.

I'm not outside because I did something I think most runners will understand, because they've done it too. I ignored the signals and thought I could get away with a sore throat. As a runner, I'm trained to push my body to its limits even if it tells me it's in pain. That mental discipline is the only way to finish a race or a run. Yesterday, when I woke up with a throat on fire (due to my running in the rain two days earlier), I decided to have a ``make or break'' run. I believe, or perhaps make myself believe, that sometimes a good sweat is the best cure to the beginning of an illness. It has worked for me in the past. Not yesterday. I took my camera and went to the Priscilla Lane town landing, on the other side Nauset Harbor's Mill Pond, which I visited earlier this week. I was glad I did because it was beautiful. I felt a bit cold at the beginning of the run, but the sun broke through from time to time to warm me, and even though my throat felt dry and painful, the rest of my body enjoyed the run. I ran 10.3 miles (16.6 km) and I felt like I could have continued for much longer if my throat hadn't been so painful.

This morning, I woke up with a full-blown cold. Ignoring a sore throat isn't too dangerous. I'm staying home today, reading about running and hoping to be back in shape tomorrow for a bike ride. Sometimes, runners ignore much larger problems and avoid consulting until the pain is unbearable, because there's nothing worse than hearing from a doctor: ``You have to stop running immediately.'' During a marathon, I need to force myself through pain and discouragement: giving up isn't an option. To finish a marathon, a runner must ignore her body when it says, ``You have to stop running immediately.'' After training my brain not to give up, I have a hard time being reasonable and stopping before it's too late. It seems it's an inherent part of me, as a runner.