At a crucial juncture of the 1996 World Series Joe Torre, the Yankee manager, sent Wade Boggs to the plate to pinch hit. Boggs, a long-time Red Sox star, found himself in the once-hated Yankee uniform because his former team discarded him four years earlier. They cast him on the free agent junk heap, deeming him not worth the money or the offer of security he felt he deserved. The Yankees gave him both a multi-year contract and a salary worthy of his Hall of Fame credentials, so Boggs signed with the Sox' arch rival and nemesis. Boggs found himself on the bench--in fact, the last man left on the bench that night--because Torre wanted Charlie Hayes' right-handed bat in the lineup against Denny Nagel, Atlanta's left-handed starting pitcher. Boggs sat so that Hayes could play third base. The baseball "Book" of conventional wisdom says that left-handed hitters like Boggs have an especially difficult time batting against left-handed pitchers, so Torre's starting lineup made good common sense, Hall of Fame credentials not withstanding.

New York and Atlanta finished nine innings with the score tied. In the top of the 10th inning the drama reached a critical point. The Yankees threatened to take the lead as they loaded the bases after two were out. That's when Torre sent Boggs to the plate to face Steve Avery another left-handed pitcher. At 38 Boggs no longer had the full skills of his youth, but he remained a dangerous hitter with a keen batting eye and an abundance of experience. He ran the the count to two balls and two strikes then fouled off a few pitches. He took Avery's next delivery, letting the ball pass him by with barely a twitch of his bat from its ready position. To me it looked like the pitch might have been strike three. I will never know the objective truth, but I believe few would have honestly argued against a strike call on the basis of cold facts. It was that close. The umpire called the pitch a ball making the count full at 3-2, and, on the next pitch, Avery missed by a wide margin thus giving Boggs the base on balls and forcing in the go-ahead run. The Yankees went on to win that game and the next two to capture the championship.

Home runs thrill the fans of today, and this game had its dramatic home run, so the battle between Boggs and Avery received relatively little attention in the press, but it stuck in my memory. I don't know what the objective truth is about that 2-2 pitch, but I do know that in such a pivotal situation the Cosmic Rules of baseball strongly forbid a pitcher of Avery's caliber from striking out a hitter of Boggs' caliber with a borderline pitch. For that 2-2 pitch to have been called a strike, it needed to clearly be a strike. Is this unfair to Avery and Atlanta? In that moment, perhaps. But for the whole of us the upholding the Cosmic Rules made an exquisite moment when we could glimpse the triumph of decency. That's another story for another telling. The point I want to make is that that moment contained much more than objective reality, much more that what science can measure or written laws can define.

I think every moment contains much more than objective reality. And I believe the meaning of each moment increases dramatically when we perceive the other details like the one's in Boggs' at bat. Often I forget this. I forget a lot these days due to the rigors of my everyday life and the multitude of data bits of which I need to keep track. I also have lots of encouragement to misperceive or forget the nuances in the moment and the historical pattern formed by stringing the moments together. The mass media encourage me to forget smells, touches and tastes. My logical, technically-trained mind encourages me to forget the importance of flowers, poetry and crusty bread. My socialization as a man encourages me to forget the pleasures of an unguarded moment. But my heart and soul beg me to remember. Tragedies like the ones on September 11th tear me open and release vivid memories like Boggs' at bat. And the memories demand that I remember more and that I speak and act from the fullness of my being rather than from the incompleteness of intellect.

These days I hear many people trying to speak solely from their intellect, from the cold Cartesian rationality that draws sharp distinctions between right and wrong, us and them, winners and losers. Such talk lends itself well to debate and argument...and football. But it serves us poorly if we seek a democratically constituted agreement, or if we wish to describe and appreciate the rich and complex tapestry of our lives, or if we need human conversation to help us through these troubling times.

I hear folks trying to speak entirely from their intellect but faltering. When they speak of techniques to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, when they weigh the military strength of the Taliban against the Northern Alliance, when they dissect airport security and decide whether or not they favor arming airline pilots they often stumble over the Cosmic Rules. The Cosmic Rules generally assert themselves much less strongly than on that 2-2 pitch to Boggs, but they still point out that we can do much better than making hurtful talk and violent responses. May we all stumble onto a path out of the nightmare and into the land where everybody celebrates with a good heart.

Yen Chin does educational work in Seattle and follow the Mariners and the Yankees.

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