During my time as the lone, underpaid employee of a knitting store, I was privy to a great many arguments and bitching sessions between the wealthy middle-aged women who passed the hours there in each other’s company. Even as someone who was, at the time, fresh out of high school, I was unprepared for the…
On July 19, 2008, on the seemingly hottest day of that summer, I stepped into Yankee Stadium for the first time. It would also be the last time, too; new Yankee Stadium was already nearly complete across the street, and The House That Ruth Built would close its gates forever at the season’s end. This…
On January 29, 2019, Freddy Galvis became a Blue Jay. The blue jay is a member of the family Corvidae, to which crows also belong. Though tool use is not especially noted in blue jays, they can use their feet and beaks dexterously to open seeds, and their crow cousins are highly adept at using…
The closest thing in the world to time travel cost me less than ten dollars. But it wasn’t always so cheap. Once upon a time, as you undoubtedly know, baseball cards were valuable. Growing up in the late ‘80s, everyone heard the rumors and fables of the guy who found his dad’s collection of 1930s…
When I was ten years old, during the decade when all the kids collected baseball cards for three months, I had an idea. I had a couple of friends who lived up the hill from me. One lived in a giant house, the son of a doctor and a lawyer; I spent countless days losing…
Here is a ruthless summary the previous day’s baseball proceedings from the Toronto Globe on June 6th, 1888: LEATHER HUNTING AT BUFFALO BUFFALO, June 5 — Today’s result may have reduced Mr. Fanning’s opinion of his ability to pitch good ball. Even that is doubtful. The main point now with Mr. Fanning is the opinion…
You have been wandering in aimless, companionable silence for a while when your friend has the presence of mind to check the time. It’s 11:58 — too late to change course, find a nice restaurant or a good vantage point from which to view the fireworks. You’re nowhere near the waterfront now, anyway. There’s nothing…
Vermont’s Gihon River flows past the studio that is my home this month, where I am finishing a draft of a project I have lived with for nearly a decade. In this small room overlooking this small river, I write and revise. When the trickle of words dries up for the day, I drink from…
1. The crows complaining from the maple tree outside the window sound enough like that one row of fans in Philadelphia in 2006, Mike Lieberthal at the plate in the second game of the September 3 double-header against Atlanta, the one that isn’t the one where Ryan Howard hit three home runs. Lieberthal stands in…
The thing about parachute day was that you never knew it was coming. An elementary school gym class would simply arrive to the boxy combination gymnasium/auditorium and there it would be: a massive circle of silk as bright as a circus tent, making even the glare from the industrial fluorescent lights in their basketball-proof wire…
On April 3rd of last year, Stephen Piscotty probably felt about as good as he’d ever felt in his life. He had just signed six-year, $33.75 million contract extension with the Cardinals. Thanks to his hard work and success, his family’s financial future was now secure. He didn’t have to worry about arbitration or free…
In addition to coaching the Chicago White Sox Class-A Advanced affiliate, the Winston-Salem Dash, former defensive wizard Omar Vizquel maintains an Instagram account. On said account, one finds the kinds of things one might expect to encounter in the life of a retired professional athlete: photos and videos from his work as a coach, travel…
There’s a thing we do, as modern worn-out adults. We have children, and we want to give those children experiences, and we can’t afford real experiences like ruins and cathedrals and shit. Not like our own childhoods, where we were left alone for hours on end to wander empty backyards, static and safe. So we…
You are awoken in the mornings here at 6:30 by a woman with no face. There is no sunlight, because it is winter, and because your window faces west, and the blinds are unopenable. When you’re asleep, you forget that you’re not at home, so every morning at 6:30 you open your eyes confused. Then…
Roman Mosaic in the Bardo Museum Tunis, Tunisia (courtesy Wikimedia Commons) On Sunday afternoon, acclaimed classicist Emily Wilson sat in conversation with novelist Madeline Miller in The Midtown Scholar bookstore in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the same place I heard Keith Law speak two summers ago. Wilson and Miller’s subject matter was largely The Odyssey, a work…
Upon its world-wide release on April 4, 2017—just 48 hours after MLB’s opening day in the same year—Atlas’s Persona 5, the latest installment in the popular Shin Megami Tensei franchise, catapulted into popularity. At its core, Persona 5 is a role-playing game with a turn-based combat system and an emphasis on strategically cultivating social bonds…