It began with the ball going out after two seconds and went steadily downhill from there: stop, start, dive, foul, complain, repeat for ninety tedious minutes.
The opera, which begins with the ball scene at the Capulets', overdramatizes several episodes, including the first appearance of Juliet, the revelation (by Tybalt rather than her nurse) of Romeo's identity to Juliet, and Juliet's fake death, which occurs just as her father has taken her arm to lead her to the chapel to marry Paris.
And it did so in the cruelest fashion: beginning with the ball in his hands, in the waning moments that have come to define his career; but essentially ending with a sack and fumble that scuttled a potential game-winning drive.
Let us begin with the unit ball ({mathbb B}_n).
The bigger the ball to begin with, the larger the rolled sheets of phyllo will end up being.
It began with the first ball, on a length which Buttler, simply clearing his front, left, leg out of the way, belted straight for six.
Watching Bumgarner, whose amazingly extended lefty delivery begins with the held ball detouring toward short center field, I decided that his great stuff is equalled by the calm and the air of mournful apology with which it's delivered: Sorry, guys, but you've got no chance.
Surrey's attack of the jitters began with the 13th ball of the day when Tom Maynard was lbw heaving across the line against Berg.
So the program, featuring Tom Stallone, the baritone, and the singing duo Salt and Pepper, along with the 30-voice chorus under Kim Oler's direction, begins with "After the Ball," a turn-of-the-century ditty that was the first song to sell more than 1 million sheet music copies, and ends with such 1990's million-record stars as "Hero" and "Amazed".
Begin cradling with the ball in your stick.
