The city of Philadelphia is awash in all things bamboo, thanks to the horticultural optimism of newish Phillie Brad Miller. With the team in the middle of an ugly and ill-timed skid through the NL East, Miller sought a change of fortunes through the procurement of a desk-sized (or player locker-sized) pot of lucky bamboo….
From the first-base side of the 400 level of Citizens Bank Park, everything falls into view: the green-on-green tartan of the grass, the crisp edges of the infield dirt and foul lines, the whole arc of the outfield wall and the bushes and the tall, glittering screen and all its flecks of aligning light. Television…
It doesn’t matter what ballpark I go to. It doesn’t matter where I sit. It doesn’t matter whether I am alone or with others. Every time I attend a ballgame, I end up sitting in front of “that guy.” You know the guy. Or maybe you don’t. And if you don’t, take my word for…
The circumstances of the Black Sox scandal of 1919 have generated a plethora of richly imagined reiterations, from the iconic Eight Men Out to the fanciful and forgiving representations in Shoeless Joe and its Hollywood adaptation, Field of Dreams. W.P. Kinsella’s Joe Jackson carries no taint of treachery, and even the apparent architect of the…
In a box of computer-related detritus my parents didn’t want to get rid of without my input exists a still-in-package CD-ROM, complete with what can only be cereal dust caught in the tighter corners of the plastic. On further inspection, the disc is #6 of a six-disc collaborative promotional effort from Post, AOL, EA Sports,…
Frankly, it’s embarrassing to watch the Minnesota Twins hit juiced-ball aided home run after home run. It’s unseemly. Gauche. It is not how these things are done. Not around here. For decades, the club was too modest to hit too many home runs. They were nice when they happened and all, but discerning Twins fans…
It’s the beginning of the third week of May, and my college’s commencement is over, but I’m still working on my end-of-semester grading. The seniors’ evaluations are all done, of course—and they’ve got their diplomas in hand, as of midday Saturday—and everything else that I have to read and respond to and affix a number…
Bad calls used to be bad because we all knew they were wrong and the umpire who made them was an idiot. We could boo and yell and gesture safe in the knowledge that we were better than the boys in blue. We didn’t know what the hell was wrong with them, but we knew…
In 2005, my spouse worked third shift, and in those overnight hours, our little house was very quiet. Near the end of a dead-end street and abutting a deep stretch of woods on the very edge of Binghamton, NY, the house was peaceful as I could want in the daytime. Overnight, it was just as…
June 16, 1976 To: Juan Moreno, Asst GM, Minnesota Twins From: Mike Bates, General Manager, Minnesota Twins Re: Red Sox Trade I received your memo dated this morning, about our impending trade with the Red Sox, sending Bert Blyleven, Tom Burgmeier, and Randy Bass for Carlton Fisk, Dwight Evans, John Tudor, Don Aase, and Bruce…
My 12 year old was in an opera in Cedar Rapids this weekend about Grant Wood. They needed some kids to sing and dance and be part of Wood’s grade school class for a scene from his life as a teacher, before he got successful, and my son jumped at the chance. He’s very into…
On Thursday, Markus writes out a to-do list: create the new front desk schedule, place necessary orders for tiny bars of soap and little bottles of shampoo, pay invoices for vacuum cleaner repair and swimming pool chemicals, deliver the previous day’s deposit to the bank. The paperwork goes quickly enough that he starts to dream…
The richest kid in class is the kid whose parents gave them money for the Scholastic Book Fair. I remember taking the little “catalog” home and asking my mom for money. She’d always complain at first. “Don’t you have enough books? Do you ever do anything but read?” Well mom, no, I don’t have enough…
The latest installment in the Marvel Comics film universe, Captain Marvel, is a baseball movie. From the outside, of course, it doesn’t look like one. It looks like a movie in which a woman, Carol Danvers, who can fire photon blasts from her hands and fly alien space crafts with ease, does many of the…
If you ask me, I’d say the offseason gets a bad rap. I’d even tell you I’m starting to think we’re viewing it the wrong way. Every November, we collectively lament the end of baseball season, but the offseason is a time to recover from losses. It’s a time to lick your wounds, work on…
When you were a kid, you thought you’d be an astronaut. You could think of nothing else. You borrowed all of those books from the library, memorized the constellations, begged for a telescope for Christmas, and then for your birthday, and then for the Christmas after that, at which point you finally gave up. As…