c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

(UNDATED) When the only open plane seats to Boston leave at 7:55 a.m, I see an opportunity: catch a Sunday afternoon game at Fenway Park, one of major-league baseball’s few remaining antique venues and still one of its finest.

Our tickets, purchased via the Red Sox’s Web site, put us behind a column in the dreaded Section 2, a distant corner beyond the right fielder’s acre, from which the only balls that I see clearly are home runs springing off the Detroit Tigers’ bats, plus one spectacular catch by a Red Sox outfielder who heretofore seemed unengaged.

In other words, beware the Internet.

But baseball at Fenway isn’t entirely about baseball. It’s also a metaphor for life as it is _ not a philosophical epic of stalwarts dueling and the hero’s odyssey and return, but a tale of accepting what cannot quite be, a strangely middle-aged serenity prayer in a city that worships upwardly mobile youth.

The Red Sox are notorious for dashing hopes. Rallies fall just short of success. Players manage to save their best play for a day when you yourself aren’t present. Runners are shipwrecked on bases and, to judge by the small zeal displayed in their base-running, never did expect to be rescued.

Thus it has always been at Fenway, where the storied contests of yore tend to be near-misses.

Fenway is a place for musing about life. I watch a mother take off her sweatshirt and place it over her son, on whom 50-degree chill is taking its toll. Since a boy will rarely see a decent sacrifice fly executed at Fenway, today’s lesson in self-sacrifice comes from Mom.

I watch an exuberant boy take a nasty spill while trying to vault over a row of seats. His father returns from a beer run and sees his son crying. What to do? He decides it is time for a compassionate hand, not a paternal lecture on vaulting. Maybe he’s the decency consultant for the Bosox, who have a long history of boozing, snarling and blaming but this year are behaving, as a Boston Globe sportswriter puts it, like “25 John Boy Waltons.”

I watch several other apparent victims of the Red Sox’s Web site take one look at their seats and decide it’s a day for food, not baseball. Up and down, back and forth, they never stop. In America, activities like Sunday morning church that depend on people sitting still for long periods are doomed to failure.

I watch a young Japanese couple deal with frigid air. The woman reaches into her shopping bag and pulls out a bright red robe with long, floppy sleeves. Church choir robe? Graduation gown? Who knows? Creativity found a solution.

I watch a group of interchangeable 20-something dot-com types on one side of the aisle and a row of young men wearing earrings on the other. The dot-com girls _ every one of them a blonde _ talk animatedly for nine innings. The dot-com boys seem perplexed by a slow-moving contest of subtle accomplishments. The rowdier set across the aisle follows every play and cheers the hard slide that breaks up a double play. The dot-coms will earn a bundle. The rowdies will love baseball.

The truest metaphor for life is out on the diamond, of course, where the local squad plays classic Red Sox baseball _ which is to say, they stay close enough not to lose badly.

Am I disappointed? Absolutely not. This is great. I’d have been amazed if the Sox won. The point isn’t winning. The point is watching baseball at Fenway Park.

The Boston Red Sox, you see, are what we know we really are _ sometimes good, sometimes not so good, occasionally rotten, never quite living up to what is expected of us, confused by the tensions between self and team, between blaming and accepting, and yet interesting, worth caring about, wishing we didn’t require quite so much sympathy, but welcoming support as it comes.

It’s a good thing to cheer a team that won’t take visible motivation from our fervor. We’re like that ourselves sometimes, and we hope that the God who cheers us on keeps coming to our ballgames.

DEA END EHRICH