CHICAGO — A Southwest Side bus mechanic who placed both hands flat on his kitchen table for the duration of Thursday night’s Game 4 reported early Friday that the table has declined to release them, ahead of a decisive Game 5 Saturday in Cleveland.
The Cleveland Guardians beat the Chicago White Sox on Thursday night at Rate Field, evening the American League Division Series at two games apiece. Game 5 is set for Saturday night in Cleveland. Chicago, which entered the series as a team that had lost 121 games two seasons ago, had led two games to one.
“I told the guys at the garage where the hands go after a loss. One on the forehead, one on the back of the neck. I know that routine. I’ve been doing it since 1989,” said Ray Kolodziej, 54, whom the Reporter first spoke with Thursday morning, when he said he knew exactly what he would do if the team lost. “I just didn’t tell the table.”
By 11:42 p.m., according to Kolodziej, the table had taken a position. His hands had remained flat on its surface through the ninth inning, the final out, and 40 minutes of postgame commentary he described as “a lot of men agreeing.” When he attempted to raise his right hand to his forehead, the table, an oak pedestal model purchased in 1998, rose with it by about an inch and a half, then set it back down.
“It’s not mean about it. It’s firm,” Kolodziej said. “It’s holding them for Saturday. I think it figures I’m going to need them.”
His wife, Barb, said the table has been in the family for 28 years and that, in her experience, it has never had an opinion on baseball. She said that over the course of the evening it had moved four inches toward the television, “to see better,” and that a bowl of pretzels had not been touched since the sixth inning, “out of respect.”
Dr. Marjorie Teller, director of the Center for Measured Outcomes, said the Center has studied the household furniture of postseason fan bases since 2011. “Between Game 4 and a deciding Game 5, approximately 63.4 percent of fans report that some object in the home has begun to hold their hands,” Teller said. “The most common are couches, followed by steering wheels. A table is rare. A table that releases them is, to date, not documented. Further study is needed.”
Prof. Desmond Achterberg, who holds the Prewitt Chair in Comparative Annoyance at Ellery State University, said fan tables have historically taken a view. “In the autumn of 1848, a dining table in Leeds held a man’s hands for eleven days over a cricket match, and when it let go, the match had been rained out and he was not told,” Achterberg said. “The scholarship regards the table as the senior partner in the arrangement. I wrote the scholarship.”
Kolodziej said he planned to be in the same chair Saturday, in the same shirt, with the same hands on the same table, “or whatever the table lets me.” Asked whether he was worried, he said he was not, and then asked the reporter to check whether the pretzels were still there. He could not reach them, he said, but he could tell they were being watched.
At press time, Kolodziej said the table had loosened its hold on his left hand by about a quarter inch, “in case of a good call.”