Remember when the Royals were 21-22?
Tonight we're gifted with the presence of two really fascinating young gentlemen, one from Arkansas, the other from Louisiana, who meet on the diamond in a battle of baseball bluster that will surely have fans across America whistlin' "dixie".
The last time Lee and Meche met, they debated whether or not Milton or Shakespeare was the greatest figure in English literature and if the American Civil War was, or was not, a replay of the English Civil War, with the old rivalry between the Cavaliers and Roundheads playing itself out two hundred years later. That got fairly heated, especially when Meche wondered aloud if Lee wasn't being the slightest bit tautological in some of his reasoning. I can still remember the way Lee looked when he walked over to the radio, turned off NPR, and told Meche that he "was manifestly flawed if he didn't at least consider an analog between the Levellers and the Abolitionists in this question as well". Oh, how his eyes gleamed!
And so, as Lee changed the background music to progressive jazz, a tension filled the room. I dare say it remained throughout the next discussion, when Meche made his familiar point that both sides, left and right, had made rather too much of Orwell's supposed example over this last decade, and that from where he stood the man was now elevated and distorted beyond all recognition. Lee made that very face you see below and replied, "and who should we have in his place, Evelyn Waugh?". Meche blushed a little, and looked across the room at his second edition of The Loom of Youth, a pink bookmark visibly peeking out through the pages. Could Lee be implying... those old familiar passages of boyhood love in the boarding schools... no, that was out of the question. He had too much honor to make a remark like that, certainly at this hour. Just before the lamb was served, the situation began to improve however, first with a quite humorous recounting from Lee on the behavior of Scott Elarton, then with a newfound common ground on how much they'd like to see a female President.
Ah, Cliff Lee! The winner of the 2008 Royals Review Most Mocking Contempt Displayed in MLB Roster Photo Award Winner.