Word: infielder
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...scene at Olympic stadium was like a pointillist tableau. Huge white parasols rested on the green infield, ready to shield athletes from the autumn sun. White doves left over from the opening ceremony strutted on the grass while athletes stretched languidly. Then a Korean in white blazer and gloves climbed up a ladder and fired a pistol. The points began to blur: legs pumped, iron heaved skyward, bodies shot forward...
Then there was that muggy Sunday afternoon in late July when Giamatti and other dignitaries sat on folding chairs on the infield grass at Shea Stadium. The occasion was a love fest, the official retiring of the number (41) of the Mets' former pitcher Tom Seaver, a.k.a. Tom Terrific. In the packed stands, goodwill and nostalgia outweighed even the humidity -- until the public- address announcer, introducing the honored guests, reached Giamatti. "Boo!" the crowd responded. "Booooooooooo...
...finally lighted, there were still a few birds in it, the laziest of the doves just released. A couple may have been fricasseed. The risk that attends glory, especially the danger to peace, was already a backdrop of the Games and a theme of the entertainment. Alternately across the infield, children spun pinwheels or broke boards with their feet. Devil masks were brandished in a pantomime of chaos. Like East and West, or North and South, yin slammed yang in a breathtaking display of ropework and philosophy. But the exquisite counterpoint to all the violent charades was the sight...
Later, an inning short of the official seal, poetry struck a final time, along with lightning. Funnels of dust that some took to be divine displeasure rose up and blew across the infield, and two hours of rain flooded the tarpaulin and washed out the game. The sellout crowd of 39,008 drew back under cover and took the time to really look at the old place in the new light. The outfield wall, with its singular vines and morning glories and spider webs, was humanely spared any hardware. The stanchions peek fairly unobtrusively over the shoulders of the stadium...
...erudition behind a blunt style that shook comfortable perceptions with irony and contradictions. When Fussell goes to the races at the Indianapolis Speedway, for example, he begins with the standard derisive sociology about the "middles" in the reserved seats and the black-leather set that gathers in the muddy infield known as the Snake Pit. But by the time he leaves, Fussell is a fan of what he sees as a dangerous ritual that provides an outlet for an unruly national spirit...