I started playing Civilization recently. I really don’t know why–I’m incredibly busy with work I need to be doing and have little to no time to be spending building faux-historical empires on my computer screen, but one does what they will. It’s been a long time since I’ve played video games, really, since the Nintendo…
You know, baseball was once a game we respected. We’d spit our orange tobacco juice on the dirt and set each other’s cleats on fire and then sigh and look at the horizon and say, “Ah, yes. Truly, this is the sport of kings.” Together, we’d say that as a team, in unison. Haunting, people…
When I was a child we went and visited some friends. The family had three children: two boys, and a girl. Playing two hand touch in the front yard, the daughter proved the most gifted athlete, prompting the father of the family to loudly exclaim “Three kids and the one athlete I got was the…
As a thirty-something father of two, I spend a lot of time sharing. Sharing space, sharing money, but most of all, sharing time. I’m a personality easily overwhelmed by stimuli and socializing, and well, parenting supplies a large dose of both of those things. The usual social retreats — video games, exercise, drinking alone in…
I didn’t stay to see them close the roof. Not like those first years, inchoate, with open mouth and wide eyes. It was a ritual at the end of each and every game: Strauss’ theme to 2001: A Space Odyssey would begin to echo over a crowd whispering their oohs and ahhs, and then once…
My son, age 10, looked up from his video game. “Wait, they aren’t letting King Felix start anymore?” *** Once we reach a certain age, society allows us to ponder our mortality out loud. Too young, and we draw the concern and chastisement of our elders. Too old, and we’re perceived as giving up. Around…
Hey guys, Wow. Twenty years already! The time really flew by, didn’t it? Feels like just yesterday we were watching me invent the Jeter Jump Throw to nail Travis Fryman in the ALCS, laughing with each individual member of the press (never understood why people thought the writers were so prickly!!) and then hitting the…
I don’t remember the name of the bar. I do remember it was late, though, and I also remember not really wanting to be in Clackamas with coworkers on a Saturday night. But funny things happen when you are in your mid-20s working a job that seems designed to suck out all your bone marrow…
A crow sits on a traffic pole ahead of you. You are walking slowly. The sun is too harsh to move any faster. It doesn’t matter how fast you walk, anyway; you have nowhere to go this time. You are not going to be out of the sun, not until it sets. Then you will…
It was hot, and he was beginning to notice the sweat pooling up in that little spot on the bottom of his back, sealed into the wool sack with a leather band around his waist. He had torn through the top of the order in the first with a series of fly balls, wearing only…
INT. RED SOX LOCKER ROOM – JULY 11, 1914 The RED SOX COACH stares out a window as it rains. COACH: We won four times in April and tied twice. People are furious. My wife is trying to convince me to fake our deaths and leave town forever. Ah, what to do, what to do……
He spit, near his shoes. Here we go again. The ball came flying back from right field, bouncing a few times to hit the cutoff man before landing back in that spot of loose leather underneath his cushioned thumb. Next up was Pinky Higgins. Years later, Higgins would stand in the Fenway park home dugout…
Cleveland Indians acquire RHP Oliver Drake off waivers from the Milwaukee Brewers. [5/5] Los Angeles Angels acquire RHP Oliver Drake off waivers from the Cleveland Indians. [5/31] RHP Oliver Drake clears waivers and has been outrighted to Salt Lake (AAA). [6/19] Look, I don’t know. Long before I became a writer, I remember reading the…
There’s a video circulating of a young man striking out his best friend to win a high school championship game, then skipping his team’s celebration to hug and console his buddy. This footage has inspired the nation to rise up as one and say, “Love is a part of baseball.” What I’m here to tell…
When the phone rang he was in the kitchen. It wasn’t that he didn’t expect a call–there were talks between scouts promising this and that since September. No, instead it was only eight PM, and he thought there would be time to refill his glass of Tab and wait for the returns to roll in….
Chaos is not anarchy. In the latter, one might imagine the chaotic bellowing from the throat of a toddler, drowning in small plastic toys and dirt stains left on the kitchen linoleum. Or perhaps the twisted metal resting peacefully on the side of a highway onramp, attesting in its relative state of calm to that…