Colin Sheridan: From MacHale Park to Dodger Stadium the 'vast shaking of the soul' goes on

As the LA Dodgers and New York Yankees meet in a glamour World Series, Don DeLillo's Underworld provides a fitting reading guide to sport's power

TALE AS OLD AS TIME: Los Angeles Dodgers starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto (18) throws against the New York Yankees during the seventh inning in Game 2 of the baseball World Series, Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024, in Los Angeles. Pic: AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez

There have been, I’m sure, a million books written about sport. Millions more articles and columns and interviews and match reports. I’ve hardly read them all, but I’ve read a few. 

The writing, to me, was always just as important as the action. It gave it a second life, one beyond the moment. If the words were good enough, the magic lingered. I was lucky, I guess, to have been brought up at a time when sporting history was happening around me, and I was part of it, only in the sense I was able to bear witness. Stephen Roche. Italia ‘90. Mayo losing All Irelands. Sonia. Keano. Harrington. Each one a “remember-where-you-were-when” memory, etched in the bark of my tree of life. The winning and the losing happened in real time. The writing that followed embalmed it, preserving it for eternity. That’s what great sports writing has always done – grant magical moments the gift of an afterlife.