A story on the greatest day in Brooklyn Dodgers history; the story of Davy’s first two New York ballpark experiences were doozies; the known history of players watching themselves hit homers to psyche themselves up before games, aka “dig me videos”, aka “taste rounds”, aka “Reggie reels.”
Prepare for the 2022 work stoppage by reading someone who was around for the last one!; we are going to need a theoretical physicist or two to figure out if Erik González is a center fielder or not; a VIP attends a ballgame
You wake up one morning and everything is fine. Your room looks the same as it did when you went to sleep. Nothing has been disturbed or altered. You didn’t have the nightmares last night. There are no demons in this room. You feel okay. You get out of bed and open the curtain. It…
It wasn’t fair. Johnny Bench hit 40, and Pete Rose was at .300 the entire year. She knew this, she knew this in part because it’s what the newspapers said, but it’s also what was on the back of the card she got from Clark’s, when her mom let her pick out one item under…
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…
(photo credit: © Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports) In the midst of their already-historic fire sale, the Miami Marlins recently announced that yet another head was rolling: The man who had, to that point, worn the suit known as Billy Marlin had been terminated from his position. While it was already sad and disturbing to see…
Angela Carter died in 1992 without ever finishing the long-rumored sequel to her 1972 surrealist novel The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman. Short Relief will be running weekly excerpts from the scraps of that sequel found in her papers after her death. The following is from the end of the book, as our hero,…
You are hiking through the forest on a foggy morning in late winter. The path you are on is a steep, winding uphill, and you don’t exercise much, and you can feel the fog filling your lungs with each labored breath. Up ahead you can see a steep stairway beginning to take shape in the…
“Is this it?” Your friend walks up and stands beside you. “Yup.” You look, aghast, at the immense pit of mud and fencing in front of you. Though the fencing separates you and the pit, as you continue to stare at it, you feel like it’s expanding, like it might swallow you up at any…
Today’s selection: Authors, animals, and artifice.
Reggie Jackson faces his italicized self, Billy Hamilton his antiquated self, and Matt ranks Metallica moments.
Mary delivers the rallying speech of an All-Star hopeful, while Patrick writes a pastiche about a rain delay.
David writes a story of the junk wax era of a man, and Patrick dissects a typical Short Relief article so you can see how the sausage is made.
Four stories of how a baseball game started, and to stories about how they ended for Ryan Howard and Jeremy Guthrie.
Three tales of relative woe: on failed ballpark proposals, the artless inspiration of Aaron Judge, and the cluttered soul.