So in the evening, again, we started ahead of the porters and went down and across the highways and through a deep thicket of strip malls and across a train depot to the stadium, where the ground was broken and the walking difficult, and afternoon sun was very hot. We walked until we reached the…
Imagine a box. A rectangular space. It has windows, big triple-pane ones, with a nice view. You are not trapped here, or even locked in this box, but you are definitely expected to be there. Everyday. Once inside, a phrase is heard aloud in a declarative, confident tone. “This pitcher thinks too much.” At face…
The terrible thing about growing old in 2018 is that everyone else talks more like Lenin and I just look more like him. It’s a Saturday in mid-April, and stinging rain pelts the retractable roof of Safeco Field, and the summer is almost over. I am sick, and amongst the youthful chatter, I feel terribly…
It’s the 9th inning; your team is clinging to a one-run lead on the road with two outs. As first baseman, it’s your job to pretty much just play catch with your teammates and not screw anything up, but there’s a problem. The left fielder and former teammate you despise has stepped into the batter’s…
Somehow, I’d never been to Camden Yards prior to Saturday night, and if it wasn’t for the fact that the Phillies, Pirates, and Nationals were all opening the season out of town, that trend would likely have continued. But the schedule is as the schedule does, and we trundled our way to Baltimore to watch…
There was a black cat chasing a group of crows–a murder of crows, one might foreshadow–in the parking lot of the Camelback Ranch spring training complex near the end of the day this week. The cat got a hold of one the crows in it claws, prompting a commotion, but the crow got loose and…
In my Catholic high school religion class they taught us the value of seeing perspective from different angles; specifically the teacher talked about looking “at the light” as opposed to “in the light.” This was meant to be interpreted as, don’t mock someone for their beliefs unless you can empathize from a perspective of believing…
It’s a matter of perspective, one’s sight-line to the game. The one I’m most used to now, of course, is the television’s panopticon: a carefully curated series of angles and cuts, close-ups and B-roll, a variety of points of view that no single fan could experience in the same near-simultaneous way that the televised game…
Photo Credit: John Trupin He’s known subsistence-level baseball. Two years of junior college, riding buses over rutted roads that are in only slightly better repair than the fields they’d buried afternoons in, where the best outcome is to not twist an ankle in a patch of marshy outfield; crowds in the double digits, indifferent umpires,…
Most of the spring training stadiums have the same package of songs they cycle through every single day. Day 1 of Hearing “Boys are Back in Town” at spring training Hey, baseball is back. Major league baseball as currently constructed is played only by individuals publicly identifying as boys. And they’re back. I get it….
The smell of the grass, the crack of the bat, the snap of the glove. In the world of spring training sensations and signs of renewal, these are all trash leftovers for the losers in life. This entire country is obsessed with lawns. You can whack things with a bat with near impunity. The glove…
Three pieces reflecting on the 1985 World Series, 2018 spring training, and the long road from there to here.
With Spring Training less than two weeks away and dozens of notable free agents still unsigned, the discussion of the frigid market has become much more public. Player agents and even general managers are beginning to speak openly about the factors at work, and what it means for the future of the game. Now, finally,…
My college students on the baseball and softball teams had their first official days of practice last week. Here in Pennsylvania, we’re a long way from the trappings of practice spring training promises—grass thick and lush even in the desert, the kind of sunlight that makes everyone squint. Instead, last week, this week, likely all…
What is causing the stall in free agent signings? Is it ownership collusion to suppress player revenues? Is it an elaborate troll that Scott Boras is inflicting on you, personally? Are teams torn between filling holes in their roster with available, experienced free agent baseball players, or with an escaped, government-made, 17-foot-tall robotic assassin spider,…
Three-thirteen. Four-twenty-five. Six-fifty-nine. I’ve repeated those three numbers to myself like a mantra. Years go by, and still I remember them, in sequence, whenever prompted. Alone, they stand impressive, but together, they stand immortal. Funnily enough, that’s what makes them so tragic. I didn’t fully comprehend what I was seeing in 2006 when I watched…