Short Relief

Short Relief: Catch Me If You Can

by Krystal Languell, Matt Sussman, and Roger Cormier 8/02

What’s happening in Miami in the bottom of the twelfth might remind you the teapot was left to boil this morning or you missed a birthday. A cold sweat or bad dream can do the job, but instead let the more pleasant score details be the cartoon slap. The jerseys you’ll observe on vacation out...

Short Relief: We Regret to Inform You It Is Now August

by Mike Bates, Victoria Edel, and Rich MacLeod 8/01

My family put a pool in our backyard when I was in the fourth grade. I was in it almost daily for the next few summers, swimming and hanging out with friends. All the kids in the neighborhood would come by and shoot water guns at each other, play Marco Polo, and dive. The sun...

Short Relief: Look Back in Anger

by Beth Davies-Stofka, Sara Sanchez, and Matt Ellis 7/31

With thanks to my husband Steve Stofka for sharing his story. It was 1967, and I was a senior in high school earning extra money by umping 5th-grade little league games. They only paid for one umpire per game at that level, so I covered the entire field from a spot behind the pitcher. There...

Short Relief: Crimes of Bird Law, Fashion, and Metaphors

by Justin Klugh, Demetrius Bell, and Mary Craig 7/30

It was the end of the seventies in Canada, and the seagulls just weren’t right. Lake Ontario, said to be the most polluted freshwater in the world in 1979, was warping its herring gull population. Pesticides and industrial waste in the region were dulling their parental instincts: They were abandoning their nests, laying fewer eggs,...

Short Relief: Searching for Tickety-Boo

by Holly M Wendt, Bill Thompson, and Tim Ryder 7/29

While I am well known as that person among my friends who has definitely not seen whatever show everyone else has been talking about for months, I have seen Good Omens, the Amazon Prime adaptation of the 1990 Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett novel of the same name. Both of these texts are quintessentially British...

Short Relief: Diane, Susie, Judy, Nancy, Debbie, Lynn, Mary, Karen, Jane, Kim, and Zelda

by Matt Sussman, Krystal Languell, and Roger Cormier 7/26

Dusty Diamond’s All-Star Softball was one of the more overlooked baseball titles of the 8-bit era. This is an often tossed about adjective for anything that isn’t Mario or Zelda, but I can vouch for its overlookability, since I discovered it about five years ago and now it’s probably one of my three favorite baseball...

Short Relief: Testing

by Nicholas Stillman and Kate Preusser 7/25

LANCASTER, Pa. — After successfully implementing the automated strike zone, the ability to “steal” first base, and several other rule changes into the Atlantic League, on Wednesday the MLB announced something more ambitious. “We sat down in one of our brainstorming sessions,” said Jason Domo from the MLB Commissioner’s Office, who spoke with us through...

Short Relief: Sweet Metal Machine Music

by Beth Davies-Stofka, Matt Ellis, and John Sheridan 7/24

There was so much to say. I’d been unfair. We were at a crossroads. The boundaries had to be redrawn for the relationship to continue. I was the one accountable for the dysfunction and I was the one that had to change. I had to make a commitment to change. A lot of them, actually....

Short Relief: This Time Tomorrow

by Mary Craig, Sara Sanchez, and Demetrius Bell 7/23

It is a rare occasion when a woman gets to be in charge of her own narrative. More frequently, women’s stories when they’re told are done so through the eyes and voices of men who have a vested interest in telling only those parts which do not threaten their power. Our collection of stories as...

Short Relief: Parental Guidance Suggested

by Nathan Bishop, Tim Ryder, and Mike Bates 7/22

It is the top of the first inning, and Mike Leake is pitching for the Mariners. That’s a boring sentence. Mike Leake is a boring pitcher. Still, not long ago I would have been watching anyway. Instead, as Leake begins throwing his average stuff with average command against an average Angels team on a statistically...

Short Relief: Blue Moon Shots

by Krystal Languell, Matt Sussman, and Roger Cormier 7/19

So-called artistic production hits the skillet to sizzle but is in fact routine and unmusical When new students were mentioned at the stickball game I asked for their area code and predicted they’d be awful I was writing poetry about the moon and men were calling those poems patriotic Go home and clean your drain...

Short Relief: Thinking, Fast and Slow

by Kate Preusser, Bill Thompson, and Nicholas Stillman 7/18

Of the wide band of human emotions, grief is the most elusive, the most chimerical, as distinctive to each person as a fingerprint, as impossible to pin down as rain. In college I had a friend who died suddenly and for months afterward her mother, whom I did not know before the tragedy, emailed me...

Short Relief: Mac Dragon Filth

by Matt Ellis, Beth Davies-Stofka, and Tim Ryder 7/17

A big Happy Birthday to @mwilliamson7! 🎉🎂🥳 pic.twitter.com/qPsrPnpVFQ — Seattle Mariners (@Mariners) July 15, 2019 Mariners Designate Mac Williamson For Assignment https://t.co/MtQnLwnIS5 pic.twitter.com/EksQh9xLUF — MLB Trade Rumors (@mlbtraderumors) July 16, 2019 Marx once said, famously, quoting Hegel, that all historical events and persons appear twice – the first time as tragedy, the second as farce....

Short Relief: Come Watch TV

by Demetrius Bell, Mary Craig, and Mitchell McConeghey 7/16

One of the most appealing things to me about baseball is the fact that the game isn’t governed by a clock. There’s no chewing the clock or running the clock out. You play the game until the nine innings are over. I try not to be “that guy” but I will immediately correct anybody who...

Short Relief: One on One

by Mike Bates, Holly Wendt, and Davy Andrews 7/15

As Patrick Dubuque taught us last week, every man has a breaking point. I’ve seen it many times. Most recently, I saw it this past weekend. What you are witnessing in the above image from Saturday night’s loss to the Twins is Trevor Bauer’s. Slack-jawed, dumbfounded, and perplexed, he is wondering just how in the...

Short Relief: Keeping Tabs

by Matt Ellis, Krystal Languell, and Matt Sussman 7/12

It was the top of the second when Chick Hafey blooped a middle-in pitch into shallow center, but it was the AL that actually sent one across the plate a few minutes later. Wally Berger and Dick Bartell rounded out the middle of the lineup but it just wasn’t enough: for despite exciting the thousands...