There are so many places where there is not baseball. There are the early morning bike paths, teeming with rabbits and tree roots, where dreams hide within the quadriceps tendons as each small hill rolls into view. There are the choir lessons in the church annex, where your daughter and seven other less adorable children…
Last week, I was driving down a wide city street lined with box stores, chain restaurants, and strip malls. I could have pulled off into Discount Shoe Warehouse, or Best Buy, or Wendy’s. I could have grabbed a taco while getting my oil changed. I was provided the opportunity to pick up my dry cleaning,…
On Easter Sunday, I got a call from my uncle that my dad needed to go to the emergency room. I was at brunch with friends before a Cubs game when the call came through. I didn’t want to panic because after years of living 11 hours away by car, I’ve learned there isn’t much…
(Recently the author made his first visit to Fenway Park, and offers some thoughts) Fenway the Museum: It’s a time capsule, which is very specifically different than traveling back in time. Seeing Fenway in 1920, or 1932, or some other year from the Williams/Yastrzemski/Fisk eras would mean seeing it with all the baggage of the…
I’ve long thought that a decent amount of baseball’s charm stems simply from the fact that the shape of the field is unique, rhizomatic. And it’s strange, really: one might point to the fact that nearly every other “modern” team sport takes place in the same rectangular dimensions, featuring goals or “ends” on either side…
The last perfect game in Major League Baseball was thrown by Félix Hernández, on August 15th, 2012. Barack Obama was the president of the United States, and Mitt Romney was vying to become the next one. The top grossing film was The Avengers, but the first one, not the second or third or fourth or…
Hi. I’m a philosophy professor and department chair, and I have an SOS for you. Things aren’t going well. There are far too many students who don’t understand the art of written communication. I get emails that are so garbled, I can’t work out what they say. I recently read an essay that failed to…
We’re more than a week into the 2019 baseball season and Trevor Rosenthal has yet to record an out, leaving him with an ERA of literal infinity. His job has an astonishingly simple description – get outs – though like most things that can be described simply, it’s of course infinitely more complex than that….
I am 37 and married with two kids. It is not a period of time I think anyone dreams about. Children do not fall asleep to thrilling stories of dad staining the deck, or of him waiting for the water to heat up to help us scrape the dried macaroni from a dish left out…
Today, March 27th, is Effa Manley’s birthday. Many of us know the usual things about her. First woman elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame; married to Abe Manley, owner of the Newark Eagles. Earned an induction into the Hall of Fame on the strength of her shrewdness and steadfast belief that Negro League teams…
(Editor’s Note: Light spoilers for Captain Marvel.) Captain Marvel played baseball. Baseball, the ur-American sport, the sport above all others that has been held out as what women can’t do[1], a sport that even today struggles with the idea that women can and want and should be considered shoulder to shoulder with the men in…
With the signing of (Late Twenties Player Two Years Off A Four-Win Season) for (Less Money Than Said Team’s Setup Man Earned In Arbitration) on Sunday, the story of Major League Baseball in (Current Year) continues to be one in which players and ownership find themselves at odds over the future of the game’s labor…
2/24/19: Peoria, AZ. Felix Hernandez Vs. San Diego Padres Top of the 1st You’d never had an easy relationship with your dad. He was stern, usually at work, and had little patience for your youthful liberties. But it’s 2005, and you’re married now; young, very dumb, and very broke, but married. You’ve taken a job…
You are about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, Twilight Zone Baseball. Submitted for your approval: The worst team ever assembled. A team so remarkably inept that history wouldn’t allow them to be forgotten. A team…
You didn’t know this, but Derek Jeter has never played in a baseball game on a losing team. When Derek Jeter scratches off a losing lottery ticket, he responds, “No,” and eats it like a hamster. If you are dining with Derek Jeter and finish before him, he quietly orders two more entrees and begins…