Poor Canada, losing the Series the way they did, two straight losses in front of 40,000 rabid fans — and who knew Canadians could be rabid? Canadians, for heaven’s sake, but there they were, putting their Canadianness aside and screaming, praying, demanding justice be done, the Blue Jays ahead three games to two, all they needed was One Win, but no.

Before our eyes, one rally after another was snuffed out and then that tremendous triple in Game 7 and the impossible leap of the Dodger center fielder, his glove stabbing high in the air even while colliding with a teammate to snatch the ball and then the DP in the 12th and thirty Dodgers jumped up and down hugging each other while the 40,000 sat stunned in silence at the cruelty of it — the crappiest Prez in U.S. history had slapped a tariff on Canada out of pure spite at a TV commercial, God in Heaven owed the Series to the North, but no. And I sat stunned at midnight in New York, realizing that baseball is not about justice. That’s why it’s called a Game. And I guess life is a game too.

I had a restless sleep and woke Sunday and went to church. Sunny skies with a chill in the air, perfect weather for clear thinking, and the church was full for All Saints’ Day, and there in the pew ahead of me, a family dressed in white, with a tiny girl, Xaviera, in her white bonnet, to be baptized.

She was in her grandma’s arms, her head on her grandma’s shoulder, looking at me with clear eyes that said, You know what the right thing is, so go and do it. A toddler put here on Earth to change the world, and suddenly the Series was gone. The family gathered around the font and a crowd of children came to watch, a festive moment, Mother Julie holding the little girl led us in the recitation of the faith and the prayers for the child, that she be filled with the Spirit.

And when we promised to renounce the evil powers of the world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God, I believe that we all knew to whom this referred. A gaggle of powerful men and pretty women is seeking to impose an alien culture on America, a cruel humorless and arrogant blowhard culture that is a perversion of our history. And we sang “I Am the Bread of Life” and were blessed and the postlude poured down on us like spring rain, Bach’s magnificent D minor Toccata and Fugue, and out into the world we went.

I hiked down to 84th Street to cast my ballot early and stood in line for forty minutes, New Yorkers turning out in droves to vote for a young man for mayor they know little about except that the Current Occupant detests him and in this city, that’s a great endorsement. I marked my ballot, slipped it in the slot of the reading machine. What is a Democratic Socialist? Who knows? But let’s find out. What Mr. Mamdani talked about was doing right by the young, the new arrivals, people living on the edge, of whom there seem to be more than ever. More people on food stamps, more living week to week, fearful of AI wiping out entry-level jobs.

It was bachelor week for me, my love was back in St. Paul playing Mozart, and I keenly felt her absence. She is the heart and soul of this marriage. I’m an old plowhorse leaning into the harness pulling the mower, cutting and baling the hay. It’s what I know how to do. I’ve been doing it steadily my entire adult life. I don’t know what else to be, so I whinny and eat my oats and keep mowing whereas she is curious and delights in hiking, looking at great art, attending the theater, opera, music hall.

And now the weekend of wonders makes me wonder if I should loosen the traces and venture out of the hayfield. Fate, like the Dodger outfielder, is prepared to leap and snag our long shot and turn it into a big zero. The evil powers of this world are at work and the eyes of Xaviera are upon me. I walked out of church with Bach reverberant in my head and stood in the long long line of hopeful voters and I believed, as God said after creating Adam, “We can do better than this.”

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