From a fragment discovered in the dust of the Vatican library: Hostilities ceased annually for four days. One of those days was set aside for celebration and spectacle, when combatants gathered for friendly competition to the cheers of the common people. Lancers rode out onto a bright green field, gaily garbed in white and grey…
TAMPA, Fla. — The Tampa Bay Rays opened their new stadium on Friday, with Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations/General Manager Erik Neander joining team president Matthew Silverman and Tampa mayor Bob Buckhorn to unveil the ballpark that now anchors the historic Ybor City neighborhood. With 30,842 seats, the ballpark is the smallest in MLB…
Eddie Campbell has been creating comics and graphic novels for 30 years.
I hit the road on a Friday evening in the middle of an anxiety attack. This was not the hands-shaking, skin-crawling, thoughts-racing brand of high anxiety. That was an hour ago. Now I was into freeze mode, my thinking-brain displaced by sensory hyper-awareness. It was not the best time to drive, but I had to…
I am the most heat-averse person I know. I have lived in the Pacific Northwest, the ideal climate for someone who hates extremes of temperature, for my entire life, and yet every summer I find myself bewailing how hot it is, hiding indoors during the daylight hours, and wearing a lot of silk robes. The…
Steppenwolf is one of the most famous and most misunderstood of the novels of Nobel Prize winning-author Herman Hesse. I’m having trouble understanding it myself, fifty pages in; I’d nearly given up, only to see Hardball Times editor Jason Linden give it his highest praise. Written from the perspective of Germany between the wars, the…
One Saturday in June, a little girl opened the door to the hall closet and a stack of newspapers slid out. She squatted on the floor to look at them. The paper on the top had a photo of a man lying on the floor in a halo of light, surrounded by worried people. The…
Do we only care about little girls until we want to win baseball games?
I am trying to go to more than one major league baseball game this summer. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve had the financial means and the time available to do so, and I have to go now, because who knows what might happen in the future? Things have changed so much…
(Must be Posted in a Conspicuous Place In Every Eligible Place of Employment) In American higher education, only one-third of professors are tenure track, down from two-thirds forty years ago. The majority of courses are now taught by adjunct faculty with little job security and low compensation. Major League Baseball (MLB) has determined that this…
In the final hours before his death, to the surprise and dismay of his closest friends, Socrates refused to flee into exile and instead imparted his beliefs concerning the importance of technology in baseball. His ideas on the subject were immortalized in one of Plato’s best-known dialogues, Phaedo (from which we get the dog’s name…
Warning! Extremely minor spoilers for AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR ahead! If you’re into that sort of thing! The surprise cameo appearance of Tobias Fünke of Arrested Development in Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War spurred one hairbrained internet theorist to test the limits of “the most ambitious crossover event in history,” ultimately connecting Adam West’s Batman to the…
The recent controversy surrounding Ken Rosenthal’s interview with Kevin Pillar about his “recovery” from getting caught yelling a homophobic slur last year got me thinking about my own position in the world of this sport. There’s always some element of code-switching that goes on when I sit down to write about baseball. It’s not that…
One day, the young god Obatala looked down from the sky and said, “The situation in the ballparks needs improvement! I must talk with Olorun and see what can be done.” He said to Olorun, “Poor Happy rules nothing but Joes and Bobs! What he needs are Bucks and Robertos, Roys and Dons. Everyone could…
You are a Little League player. It’s the first game of the season. You are standing at the plate, ready to lead off the third inning. You take deep breaths, watching as the pitcher scuffs his cleats on the rubber. He is long finished with his warm-up throws, and seems to be drawing a shape…
Yesterday, the Colorado Rockies announced a six-year extension for star outfielder Charlie Blackmon. The presentation was superb, but one was forced to compare it to the somewhat lackluster way that the Phillies announced their own six-year agreement with top prospect Scott Kingery a week ago. It feels a little unfair. Perhaps it’s too late, but…