I was watching ESPN on Friday night, trying to absorb all the trades that were filtering through. A commercial came on, and I started channel surfing. I came across a PBS station that was showing Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. It was the scene where Max Von Sydow challenges Death, who had been following Von Sydow around, to a game of chess.

They speak an old, formal style of Swedish in Bergman’s films. It has a somewhat Shakespearean sound to me, but it feels out of place. It throws me; I don’t expect modern people to use old language. Imagine asking Rickey Henderson why he doesn’t retire, and having him reply like this:

        Let me be your servant:
Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;
For in my youth I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood,
Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo
The means of weakness and debility;
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly: let me go with you;
I’ll do the service of a younger man
In all your business and necessities.

You’d think, yeah, right. Get real, Rickey.

Symbolism and formal language, which permeate The Seventh Seal, are out of style these days. It occurred to me that perhaps this is why some people really hate Field of Dreams. They see the blatant metaphors, and hear James Earl Jones give his flowery “But baseball has marked the time” speech, and cringe: “Yeah, right. Get real, James.”

I don’t mind symbolism, personally. I thought about the Dodgers-Marlins trade and tried to relate it to the chess scene. The players are just pawns. Their skills erode, and eventually Old Age comes to take them. The smart GMs are constantly trying to beat Old Age. A smart move, like DePodesta’s trade on Friday, which makes you better and younger at the same time, helps you cheat Old Age.

Saturday, I attended my 20-year high school reunion. We had it on a yacht, and we cruised around San Francisco Bay. At one point, we went into McCovey Cove during the Giants-Cardinals game, which was cool. I couldn’t see any of the game, but I could see the pitch count scoreboard. Kirk Rueter had thrown 70 pitches.

The Pitch Count is following Kirk Rueter. The Declining K/9 Rate is following Kirk Rueter. Old Age is following Kirk Rueter.

Old Age is following me and my classmates, too. We’re all starting to turn gray now, get wrinkles, have health problems. In fact, four of my 250 high-school classmates have already passed away. At our next reunion, a few more of us will probably be gone, at the 40-year reunion even more. We’re all just tokens in some crazy statistical contest, players in a mad game of Strat-O-Matic with Death. We keep playing, but eventually, we all roll that unlucky combination of the dice, and the final out is recorded.

Then we shake hands, walk off into that magic cornfield, and laugh.