Absolutely Nothing Beats a Triple

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Carlos Gonzalez

Sports Saturday

Last Sunday was a very good day for Colorado Rockies player Carlos Gonzalez. He hit for the cycle (a single, a double, a triple and a home run), a feat that has occurred only 291 times in the history of baseball. Furthermore, the home run was of the walk-off variety, occurring in the bottom of the ninth inning and allowing his team to “walk off” the field with the victory when he touched home plate.  Suddenly a player who wasn’t even invited to the all-star game now is in the running for Most Valuable Player!

Hitting for the cycle may not be as rare as some other hitting feats, such as a player hitting four home runs in a game (which has occurred only 15 times in baseball history). But I have a particular fondness for it, maybe because it is so symmetrical. Also, I enjoy it because it requires a triple, which is more rare than a home run and generally means that the hitter must have speed as well as power. When a player comes up one short of hitting for the cycle, the triple is usually the hit missing.

I learned to appreciate triples when I read Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel the summer after I graduated from college. The situation is as follows:

Angela Whittling Trust, the owner of a baseball team in the 1940’s, has had five baseball lovers over the years, two of them being Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. But the one she loves the most is one Luke “the Loner” Gofannon, who is better than either Ruth or Cobb (or so we are told by the extremely unreliable narrator). Luke, in return, loves her better than anything in the world—with one exception.

When Angela asks Luke about his greatest love, it takes him all night to come up with an answer (he’s a bit slow) but he finally tells her:


“Triples.”
“Triples?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t understand, darling.
What about home runs?”
“Nope.
Triples. Hittin’ triples. Don’t get me wrong, Angela, I ain’t bad-mouthin’ the home run and them what hits ’em, me included. But smack a home run and that’s it, it’s all over.”
“And a triple?” she asked.
“Luke, you must tell me. I have to know. What is it about the triple that makes you love it so much? Tell me, Luke, tell me!” There were tears in her eyes, the tears of jealous rage.
“You sure you up to it?” asked Luke, as astonished as it was in his nature to be.
“Looks like you might be getting’ a little cold.”
“You love the triple more than Horace Whittling’s daughter, more than Spenser Trust’s wife—tell me why!”
“Well,” he said in his slow way, “smackin’ it, first off.
Off the wall, up the alley, down the line, however it goes, it goes with that there crack. Then runnin’ like blazes. ’Round first and into second, and the coach down there cryin’ out to ya’, ‘Keep comin’.’ So ya’ make the turn at second, and ya’ know it is right on your tail. So ya’ slide. Two hunerd and seventy feel of runnin’ behind ya’, and with all that there momentum, ya’ hit it—whack, into the bag. Over he goes. Legs. Arms. Dust. Hell, ya’ might be in a tornado, Angela. Then ya’ hear the ump—‘Safe!’ And y’re in there . . . Only that ain’t all.”
“What then?
Tell me everything, Luke! What then?”
“Well, the best part, in a way.
Standin’ up. Dustin’ off y’r breeches and standin’ up, there on that bag. See, Angela, a home run, it’s great and all, they’re screamin’ and all, but then you come around those bases and you disappear down into the dugout and that’s it. But not with a triple . . . Ya’ get it, at all?”
“Yes, yes, I get it.”
“Yep,” he said, running the whole wonderful adventure through in his mind, his eyes closed, and his arms crossed behind him on the pillow beneath his head, “big crowd . . . sock a triple . . . nothin’ like it.”
“We’ll see about that, Mr. Loner,” whispered Angela Trust.

Poor little rich girl! How she tried! Did an inning go by during the two seasons of their affair, that she did not know his batting average to the fourth digit? You’re batting this much, you’re fielding that much, nobody goes back for them like you, my darling. Nobody swings like you, nobody runs like you, nobody is so beautiful just fielding an easy fly ball!
Was ever a man so admired and adored?
Was ever a man so worshipped? Did ever an aging woman struggle so to capture and keep her lover’s heart?
But each time she asked, no matter how circuitously (and prayerfully) she went about it, the disappointment was the same.
“Lukey,” she whispered in his ear, as he lay with his fingers interlaced beneath his head, “which do you love more now, my darling, a stolen base, or me?”
“You.”
“Oh, darkling,” and she kissed him feverishly, “Which do you love more, a shoestring catch, or me?”
“Oh, you.”
“Oh, my all-star Adonis!
Which do you love more, dearest Luke, a fastball letter-high and a little tight, or me?”
“Well . . .”
“Well what?”
“Well, if I’m battin’ left-handed, and we’re at home—“
“Luke!”
“But then a’ course, if I’m battin’ rightie, you, Angel.”
“Oh, my precious, Luke, what about—what about a home run!”
“You or a home run, you mean?”
“Yes!”
“Well, now I really got to think . . . Why . . . why . . . why, I’ll be damned, I got to be honest.
Geez. I guess—you. Well, isn’t that somethin’.”
He who had topped Ruth’s record, loved her more than all his home runs put together!
“My darling,” and in her joy, the fading beauty offered to Gofannon what she had withheld even from Cobb [anal sex].
“And Luke,” she asked, when the act had left the two of them weak and dazed with pleasure, “Luke,” she asked, when she had him just where she wanted him, “what about . . .
your triples? Whom do you love more now, your triples, or your Angela Whittling Trust!”
While he thought that one through, she prayed.
It has to be me. I am flesh. I am blood. I need. I want. I age. Someday I will even die. Oh Luke, a triple isn’t even a person—it’s a thing!
But the thing it was.
“I can’t tell a lie, Angela,” said the Loner. “There just ain’t nothin’ like it.”

So there you have it.  Nothing beats a triple.  Absolutely nothing.

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