Baseball '09, Volume IX: Remote From Hawaii Edition

The last live game I attended, back in June, I accidentally noted that Barry Zito was throwing a no-hitter through six innings, which of course ruined the whole thing. Tim Lincecum has come close in a couple of starts this year, including a no-hit-through-seven-innings effort on Thursday, July 9th.

There is something magical about no-hitters. That notion of mastery, defense over offense, one pitcher with help from the defense doing exactly what they are supposed to do for nine innings and 27 batters, which is a lot harder than it sounds like it should be, because the offense is always trying to do what they are supposed to do, i.e., preventing the pitcher from succeeding at what he is trying to do. Usually when two opposing forces meet, there is a little bit of give and take, a little bit of destructive interference going both directions.

I've never considered the possibility of a Giants no-hitter. It has never happened while I have been alive. It seems like one of those magical realms that I'm too pessimistic to believe the Giants can reach.

Then Saturday night, we turned on the TV in our hotel in Waikoloa, and Jonathan Sanchez, relegated from the starting rotation three weeks ago because of pitching struggles, only starting due to an injury to Randy Johnson, pitching in front of his father, had thrown a no-hitter.

I love this game. This season, irrationally perhaps, is really getting me excited. The Giants are now being mentioned as wild-card contenders, against all expectations. This no-hitter, the first of the year, in which Sanchez walked no one and overcame a Juan Uribe error that was the only blemish in an otherwise-perfect game, seems to bring a little bit of charm and fantasy into the air.

The season is now half over. Where do we go from here?

Of course, after that bit of perfection, the pessimist in me doesn't want to think of there being nowhere to go but down.

Hawaii Blue, Part One: Arrival And Orange Juice

The last ten days, Marina and I were circumnavigating the Big Island of Hawaii, conquering my fear of the dark ocean, snorkeling with yellow tangs, eels, and barracudas; overlooking a strange and alien plane, the caldera at the peak of Kilauea, with steam hissing from myriad vents around the vast crater, the source of sulfuric vapors or 'vog', volcanic smog; crossing a lava field on a dark and rainy night to view the vents at Kalapana--site of a town destroyed by lava as recently as 1990.

I could write about any of those things to kick off my description of the trip, but instead, I'm going to write about orange juice.

The pace of my life leading up to vacation was a frenzy of wrapping up work, preparing for the trip, wondering what big changes would happen when. So to find a moment on the plane of pure, speculative peace and contentment was wonderful. It was a bit surprising that it came with a Minute Maid label, but such is life. There we were, 300 of us packed into a metal tube being propelled tens of thousands of feet above the vast blue and wind-capped surface of the Pacific Ocean, empty and rippled and unending, heading to Hawaii, the land where Captain Cook died and King Kamehameha invited his chief rival to a sacrificial ceremony dedicating a new holy site, not specifying for just what role his rival was RSVPing, the land where American sugar growers decided that Hawaiian sovereignty was bad for business, and I was savoring the cold sweetness of the orange juice, sloshing it around in my mouth, holding onto each sip for a few seconds longer than necessary.

It tasted like the best fruit juice I had ever had.

Approaching Honolulu Airport on Oahu, I saw an island of low-lying land suddenly interrupted by tall green mountains jutting abruptly as if from nowhere. The picture at the top is looking through a terminal window there. I saw the water transition from royal blue through cerulean to aquamarine before breaking on rocks in white intensity.

Flying on from Honolulu to Kona on the Big Island on a small inter-island plane reached by walking across a tarmac like a K-Mart parking lot, I was surprised to see on the other intervening islands a lot of brown and red, dryer than my notion of the islands. Each notion, each image, seemed to stick in my memory like that taste of juice. Which makes sense, because on such long flights--five hours for the first leg--you can only read for so long, and then you have no choice but to focus on the details to stave off boredom-induced insanity, although the latter would be a better option than watching some film starring Zac Efron.

On the descent into Kona, I saw the surf breaking on white sand beaches with rustic shacks, a genuine hint of blue paradise in all the travel-agent-brochure glory, and I could see the shadows that hinted of coral reefs and coral heads, and I wondered what was under the water. And then just like that, we were surrounded by fossilized lava, like another planet, chunks and spidery threads of dead lava bordering the runway in Kona, an airport made up of several small, connected huts with faux-thatched roofs.

Marina had arrived the day before, and picked me up in a rental car. We drove south along Ali'i Road (The Road of Kings, or something like that), admiring the profusion of tropical flowers, bougainvilleas, hibiscus, and their ilk, and I had a sincere, non-cliche, jaw dropping moment as we passed a small cove of white sand, black rock, palm trees and crashing, ethereal surf. The first four nights of my stay in Hawaii would be at Ka'awa Loa Plantation, the coastal view from which can be seen here:



Greg and Michael, the friendly couple who own and run this guest house, offered refreshments on the lanai, or deck.

And this is where my prior ranking of fruit juices was totally turned upside down by a mango juice to convert atheists, served with a pineapple upside-down cake to corrupt popes. You can see just how relaxed I was already by the purple of the prose I came up with.

This marked the closing hours of the first day in Hawaii, and we sat on the deck and looked out over the water. Given how appreciative I had been that the various aircrafts had stayed out of all that water, it might be kind of ironic that the next morning, we would be hurling ourselves into the teeth of that same ocean. But that's what we call a cliffhanger, or a tease.