For Whom the Bellhorn Tolls?

A blue state cell phone comes to terms.

by Patrick Rapa

I realized my cell phone was a romantic the morning after the presidential election. With half the country voting against my version of common sense, and the entire city stinking of asparagus piss and disappointment, my a.m. trudge was particularly loathsome. Then, halfway to work, I felt a soothing vibration in the pocket above my right knee. I pulled out the phone and looked at the screen. It read, "Bellhorn HR off the foul pole, 9-3 sox."

Which is peculiar. That was a text message I'd received weeks earlier — Oct. 20 to be exact. A friend was sending me updates on Game 7 of the American League Championship Series while I was inexplicably at the First Union Center watching Metallica accentuate important drumbeats with pyrotechnic flashes. At the time, it meant that this guy, Mark Bellhorn, had homered (barely) and thus widened the Red Sox's lead over the despised Yankees.

But on Nov. 3, the message was curiously out of context. For one thing, the Sox had, a few days ago, already won an anticlimactic World Series. A quick call to my friend confirmed that he had not, in some fit of belated overemphasis, resent the message. The text had come from nowhere. Was my phone trying to tell me something?

I walked to work a little happier, a skip in my step as I dodged a homeless man sprawled out in Franklin Square. A technological glitch had rekindled memories of brighter days. Thanks, phone!

A few nights later, as BBC World delivered its morning Baghdad traffic report, I found myself unable to sleep. I had been reading all day about how the red states were turned off by the apparent smugness of the blue states. So they had, what, voted for George W. Bush out of spite? Just then my radio sputtered with static like a Geiger counter and my phone flashed up at my ceiling. I looked at the screen and blinked.

"Bellhorn HR off the foul pole, 9-3 sox."

A soothing peace overcame me. I recalled the serene October just past. The Sox were completing the greatest comeback in professional sports history. John Kerry, also from Boston, seemed poised for victory. Little engines started thinking they could. I was suddenly, thankfully, sleepy. I placed my cell phone in its cradle for a recharge. Off to never-never land.

After that, the messages started to pick up. At lunch. During meetings. In the rest room. Wherever I roamed, I was met with one of these unexpected moments of nostalgia and comfort from my travel-sized time machine. The CNN ticker unfurled a lot of ugly numbers from Iraq, but it all seemed so far away. Didn't anyone care that Mark Bellhorn was bombing them off the foul pole almost daily? It was the offseason of a lifetime.

But the phone kept pulling my thoughts back to the political. And delusion was setting in, right next to moments of revelation. I never liked John Kerry — I just hated the Yankees. I never even watched the Red Sox until Pedro Martinez had to debate George Bush on television. In the ultimate act of spite, the South defended slavery only because the North opposed it. They called it the War of Yankee aggression. Does anybody like the Yankees? Are we all on the same side? Tell me, phone!

"Bellhorn HR off the foul pole, 9-3 sox," it deadpanned.

That was its answer to everything. I was already starting to lose faith when I got my final message from the barely beyond. It was 4 a.m. for crying out loud. You already know what it said, but it was something in the tone that made me snap. "Bellhorn HR off the foul pole," it taunted. "9-3 sox." It was at that point that I did something I never do, something only old people and overly polite people do. I shut off my phone.

After that, life in postelection Philadelphia returned to normal. The streets and sidewalks turned winter white with salt and desolation. They found that homeless guy frozen to a bench in Franklin Square; had to chisel him off it. And my disillusioned little phone only does what it's supposed to, ringing and texting and dialing, as per the manual. And nothing else matters.

Patrick Rapa is City Paper's music editor. This story is loosely based on actual events. If you would like to respond to this Slant or have one of your own (800 words), contact Duane Swierczynski, editor in chief, City Paper, 123 Chestnut St., third floor, Phila., Pa. 19106 or e-mail Duane Swierczynski.