Chris Erskine

The point came where we hadn’t seen the moon in a week, and wondered if it were still back there somewhere, behind the thick metal curtain of rain and clouds.

I mean, what would happen if the moon went away?

I suppose the tides would stop, and the slimy things that breed in wet sand – the grunion, the surfers – would soon become extinct.

Poets would miss the moon. The Pismo clams —  a gorgeous clam, the Courtney Cox of clams – would certainly miss the moon. Tourists would miss the surfers, not realizing what an ornery bunch they often are.

So we’d see this trickle down effect: first the moon, then the grunion, then the clams and the surfers and the poets. And so on.

Obviously, the impact would be incremental.

Might be a good science fiction piece though. Where did the moon go? Did it leave a note?

Did aliens steal it? Did those idiot North Koreans miss with another missile?

Of course, the stars would appreciate it. A full moon steals their wink.

Farmers would really miss it though. They work under harvest moons. In the gritty, muddy world of agriculture, it’s the one moment someone might look out wistfully across a wheatfield and think: “I think I’ll write a song tonight.”

“It’s a marvelous night for a moondance, with the stars up above in your eyes…”

Or, as when that famous homesteader Henry Mancini spotted the rising moon:

“Moon River, wider than a mile, I’m crossing you in style some day…”

If the moon went away, I would tell my granddaughter long and elaborate stories about what it was like. The way it once lit the breast of the new-fallen snow. Or, how I held hands with her grandma along the Intracoastal Waterway in Ft. Lauderdale, under a December moon, as the holiday boat parade glided by in 1979.

“Long story short: It’s the reason you’re here today,” I’d say.

I’d tell my granddaughter that a full moon is usually a good time to fish. Snook, in particular, seem smitten with the lacy phosphorus in the water beneath a full moon. So, yeah, the snook would miss the moon as well.

I’d tell Cakes how a moon would sometimes show up in baseball’s beloved box scores, especially in October. I’d tell Cakes how the World Series always seemed to feature a full moon rising over left field in about the fourth inning, and how sportscasters – not normally an observant lot, not super-bright to begin with – would gush over the sight of it.

“But there was this one,” I’d tell her. “Scully. He could handle a full moon. He could put it in perspective. He would sing about the moon, recite some Wallace Stevens, caption the moment.”

“‘The moon is the mother of pathos and pity,’ a poet once wrote…

“Bottom of the 5th and the Dodgers are still looking for that first hit. And, I suppose, probably feeling a trace of pathos and pity themselves.”

Cakes would yawn. Guess you had to be there.

And, yes, were we ever there.

Scully on the big stage, a baseball voice for the ages … a Pavarotti. (photo courtesy of the Los Angeles Dodgers)

I miss Vin Scully. I get bad butterflies at spring training, and the sense of grief grows as opening day arrives. Baseball without Scully is like Christmas without church.

There will never be another one, and the heirs apparent … wait, there are none, no one even comes close. There’s only one Scully, just as there’s only one Santa, or one Mozart, or one Pavarotti.

So now baseball — our most-musical game, a nightly prom — has become a more-austere experience, almost homework. The sportscasters seem to have taken a step back toward the Stone Age, with their incessant chatter about stats and Wins Above Replacement and split-fingered goober balls that cut this way, then that.

Honestly, today’s telecasts are mostly engineering studies.

News flash: Nobody cares about spin rates. Know what fans care about? What did Max Muncy’s daddy do? Did the kid once make an airplane out of old bicycle parts and fly it into the neighbor’s porch? Did he meet the love of his life at a county fair when his truck wouldn’t start and she just happened to be hanging around, cleaning the cotton candy machine?

Without Scully, there is no moonglow to baseball. But there still is luster, and glory, and hardship, and joy.

That’s plenty, I suppose.

So go ahead if you must. Play ball.

The columnist covered sports for 10 years for the Los Angeles Times. For past columns, or books, please go to ChrisErskineLA.com.