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about this blog
Sage advice
“After writing a poem, one should wipe carefully and wash one’s hands.”
write me poetry (wriggling fish eludes grasp)
"Write me poems," she said. "Not that sonnet, rondeau crap. Make it formed, but not formal. Make it happy, poignant, heartfelt." Whew! Tall order. How to commit to words which don't bring despair, don't touch my psyche's crackling third rail? 'formed, not formal'? Wrapped around my neutrality entwine serpents of dark, of light, yet both truthful. One favors pain, despair, sadness. Countering, its mirror favors hopeful, joyous optimism. But it whispers-- 'gainst its brother-- screams less, asks more. "Everything's great!" doesn't cut it. Good news--no news. Seismic shifts, stabs to my heart grab more attention than goody-ness. Problems add edge, life's hoppy bite, offsetting its malty sweetness. But she challenged! Can happiness inspire poems? My life-garden hosts tangled plants, gnarled, tall, choking new growth. Little shoots blossom up regardless, and... Something happens. My ultimate Gardener, my concept of God nurtures sprouts, brings forth fresh flowers striving to vie with woody growths. Despite these new optimistic upstarts, my soul's garden remains wild: poison vines, weeds, burrs, thorns. No apologies. Who am I to question what grows, what does not? Why question my lived reality, denigrate my totality? Are we happy now? Are we mired in hopelessness? Do we focus on pretty new blossoms? Do we ignore the whole? Without yin there's no yang. Without black, white on white. Speak to truth no matter its source. Shuffle the deck; deal ALL its cards. Thirteen sevens multiplies two potent numbers, magical yet at odds with each other. She will appreciate [this].
On reading: a random list
I’ve just finished entering my latest e-book purchases into my preferred library cataloging software, LibraryThing. Entering new books into the library brings joy, frustration, smug self-satisfaction, and fills me with an urgency for and desire to read. I’ve noted before my acceptance for “owning” books which I will never read, that in essence I spend minor amounts of money to reserve a book, for it to sit on my bookshelves real or electronic, to tantalize me and inspire me to read. But why?
Today I’ve 422 unread books. I suppose I’ll live another 20 years. That’s 21 books per year, and frankly I’ve disappointed myself with my slow pace of late. (On the other hand I’ve read 661 books on those shelves. I’m still ahead, right?) The combination of time remaining and still to be read has changed my reading habits. No longer do I tolerate and read mediocre books. I give them a suitable audition then cruelly call “Next!” to them. The definition of mediocre has changed too. No longer does this word represent quality, but rather suitability: perfectly respectable books which just don’t grab me get tossed aside. A good example is Ben Okri’s The Famished Road winner of the Man Booker Prize for literature in 1991. It purported to be the type of book I like, a meaningful fiction filled with magical realism. Yet it became tedious (likely by design) as I endured dream-chase sequences again and again. Finally, after a much longer audition than planned (four weeks), I read a plot summary and realized little of note was going to happen which I hadn’t encountered already. Goodbye, Mr. Okri. Thanks for the entertainment.
I’ve gone through a spate of this. Gore Vidal’s Inventing a Nation proved a sad disappointment after reading Burr and Lincoln, two other books in his loose series on American history. Though I peer dimly through the decades since I read Washington, D.C., from the same series, I remember it with admiration also.
I’ll use a random number generator to select ten unread books from my library to illustrate some points. But first let’s confess to liking some of the children less than others: books are categorized as “To read” but the ones I really want to read also sit in the “To read ASAP” category. Books to consider for my next read get special billing: “The Short List” whose members change with the whims of this reader.
Our first candidate is Gap Creek: The Story of a Marriage by Robert Morgan. It interests me little. I didn’t purchase it (my wife did), it boasts of inclusion in Oprah’s Book Club–not a kiss of death, but smacking of the detraction of populism for sure–and, sadly, because it is a physical book. Nearly all of my books of interest now are e-books, a whole ‘nother topic for ‘nother day. In its favor? According to The New York Times, it’s a “Notable Book” written by a professor of English, and this blurb from the New York Times Book Review intrigues: “At their finest, his stripped-down and almost primitive sentences burn with the raw, lonesome pathos of Hank Williams’s best songs.” (Let us pause and thank the NYT Book Review for properly writing the singular possessive form of Williams.) Chances of being read before I die? Around 25%.
Book #2: A Handbook to Literature assembled by C. Hugh Holman. Another physical book, likely picked up at a garage sale in the 1980s. This is not an anthology of literature as one might suspect from the title, but instead a type of reader’s encyclopedia. In this digital age, virtually superfluous. The fact I own Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia kills any chance I would have of reading anything in this book. (Why is it still on my shelf?)
Book #3: Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler. It promises to dish out a history of all of “the world’s great tongues”. I remain equally an amateur linguist and student of literature. It sounds interesting but one must consider the reading menu. Chances I read it? About 25%.
Book #4: Northanger Abbey and Persuasion from the Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen, volume five. Intellectually I want to say, “sure, I’ve read Jane Austen.” In truth I never have. Just didn’t get assigned in college courses, didn’t break through certain barriers I had as a youth when I read just about anything, and now fights against so many more modern and personally relevant books. On the other hand, I’ve read books from the 1800s to great enjoyment. Why not Austen? I don’t know. We’ve got the entire six volumes of it, plus I snagged Sanditon as an e-book. The chance I’ll read this particular book instead of Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility or Emma? Pretty much zero.
Book #5: Between Two Worlds (The Lanny Budd Novels Book 2) by Upton Sinclair. Tellingly, I react with, “Oh. That book.” Based on a well-written blurb once, I started collecting the entire 11-book series whenever one would be offered on sale. It seemed like a good idea. Not until I had all eleven did I read book one, World’s End. How disappointing. It made me want to cry or hit someone because instead of writing a story, Sinclair wrote a narrative about a story. Don’t tell me; show me. I’m still trying to figure out how this series could ever be considered as highly as it apparently was about 75 years ago. Chances of being read? 1%, based on the perception that “maybe book two is better than book one…even though I bailed on book one before I was done with it.”
Book #6: Antimony by Spider Robinson, a science fiction anthology of his short stories. I enjoyed reading his Lady Slings the Booze, but he has a tongue-in-cheek style of writing which is clever, not good. Watching someone settle for the easy, quick, and stereotypical would bother me now. The chances I’ll read a bunch of his short stories? About 10%.
Book #7: Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within by Janet Conner. It’s the first book here marked “to read ASAP” because it’s Amazon review quotes at the top, “I am a writer. Today I write.” This grabbed me when I couldn’t ignite this writing life. Now that I’ve done so (thank you, WordPress), I’m kinda turned off by this book. The author “discovered how to activate a divine Voice by slipping into the theta brain wave state…while writing.” Yeah, no. I’m out. And I’m dropping the ASAP designation.
We’re down to the final three contenders and nothing much to show for it…but here’s one at #8: The Ghost Road (Regeneration Book 3) by Pat Barker. The first book in this series, Regeneration, was nominated for the Booker Prize. Ms. Barker felt she had been typecast as a feminist writer so she undertook this trilogy about the First World War. It purports to weave history and fiction with doses of poetry, to throw real and fictional characters into the mix, and to address how war can be terrible yet valuable all at once. I’ve categorized it “To read ASAP”, and I’m looking forward to reading it, 100%.
At #9 we have…a quite intriguing book: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry: A Novel by Fredrik Backman, translated from Swedish by Henning Koch. This is another “read ASAP” book. In this book Backman imagines a “different” 11-year-old girl who connects only with her crazy grandmother. Grandmother dies, leaving letters apologizing to people she has wronged. The granddaughter carries out her grandmother’s wish to have these delivered and experiences the connection between real and fable, experience and stories. I made that up, obviously since I’ve never read it, but I feel as if I have in an abstract sense. I yearn to read the details which underpin this story’s arc. Chance I’ll read it? 100%
Here we are at #10: New American Short Stories 2: The Writers Select Their Own Favorites edited by Gloria Norris. I can tell this physical book has sat on my shelves for 30-35 years as I’ve moved nearly a dozen times. Will I read it? The chances are a bit less than 50% because I’m not a big fan of short stories anymore unless they’re illustrative of a great writer.
There you have it. As a 27-year-old I was challenged by a professor well past her retirement age to consider the judgment of time regarding the “greatness” of an author and of a work. I slowly came around to her idea as I put more years behind me–I know several works which smacked of greatness back then now seem merely good. That’s not to disparage them, but they seem embedded in their time, incapable of providing the illuminating experience which truly great works command. Some recent (past 100 years) authors exist there already: Jose Saramago, Carson McCullers, Italo Calvino, Lawrence Durrell, Jim Harrison, Ernest Hemingway, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez to name but a few. Some contemporaries–F. Scott Fitzgerald, Donald Harington, Hortense Calisher, Annie Proulx, Neal Stephenson, John Irving, and the just mentioned Fredrik Backman–must wait until the jury renders its verdict, likely not in my lifetime. We read, though, for our own enlightenment, our own enjoyment, and our own sense of needing to connect with more than we are. We write for those same reasons. We need make few, if any, excuses for reading or writing the works which will do that for us.
the poet upon reading poems written by those who follow his
"I am humblified beyond audaciousness,
Transquilified through personal capacity
To mentify I had talent."
Just buggy
Reading into fandom
[Part three of my Baseball Fan Trilogy. Parts one and two detail the general world of Phillies Phandom and then my development into one, respectively. All hyperlinks to Wikipedia will go instead to mirror site Wikiwand. Be forewarned.]
What does one do when he finds himself obsessed with a sport? How did this happen? How can a non-athletic sort explain to himself, let alone others, how he’s accepted the cognitive dissonance caused when his obsession for a sport coexists with his disdain for the jocks he’s encountered throughout his life? (And how much does this explain other such dissonant aspects of his reality?)
I wish I could tell you. Others have found themselves in similar traps: the accommodations are acceptable but one realizes escape remains impossible. We therefore tell our fellow captives what wonders our trap displays, how surely it transcends all other traps, about the beauty it exhibits and instills, how ultimately this trap must be an allegory for heaven…anything to justify dancing around our living rooms (with or without audience) when our chosen team sends a little white ball a few hundred feet and ignites an improbable run to a championship meaningless to anyone outside of the trap.
One of our more prominent captives, George F. Will, took a shot at explaining what the basic participants–managers, pitchers, batters, fielders–think about when they apply their talents to the game. His words continue to be quoted by the obsessed, one to another.
One of the best baseball wordsmiths, Thomas Boswell, wrote How Life Imitates The World Series in 1982, although in truth it collects columns he wrote prior to that for The Washington Post. If George Will is a dry-as-dust baseball intellectual (who also wrote for The Post but as a political pundit), then what are we to make of his quote on the cover of Boswell’s book? “The thinking person’s writer about the thinking person’s sport.” Those words set a high bar. Boswell clears it. His very first entry in the book is “This Ain’t a Football Game. We Do This Every Day.” Deeply down the rabbit-hole by the time I read the book, you will have to pretend to understand my thrill at its first sentences:
“Conversation is the blood of baseball. It flows through the game, an invigorating system of anecdotes. Ballplayers are tale tellers who have polished their malarky and winnowed their wisdom for years. The Homeric knack has nothing to do with hitting the long ball.
“Ride the bush-league buses with the Reading Phillies or the Spokane Brewers or the Chattanooga Lookouts, and suddenly it is easy to understand why a major league dugout is a place of such addictive conversational pleasures.”
He had me with that last sentence. I’ve watched the Reading Phillies, the Double-A affiliate for the Philadelphia Phillies. I grew up in Spokane. I’ve been unable to confirm Boswell’s contention that a team there ever bore the name “Brewers” since the Spokane Indians were founded for the 1903 season and have been the Indians ever since. But look what just happened. Boswell and I now have a conversation going on, even though he doesn’t know I exist. It starts with a common love for baseball.
Boswell in his column announcing he wouldn’t cover the 2020 World Series due to worries about Covid-19–he was 72 at the time–wrote that he decided to remain a journalist with The Post due to covering the dramatic game six of the 1975 World Series where Carlton Fisk hit an historic home run. “Where would I be today if Fisk’s ball had gone foul?”
Where indeed? We understand, Mr. Boswell, those of us down this same rabbit-hole of a trap. I started digging ever deeper into the tunnels about 20 years ago when I read Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis. Though entertaining, the movie does little justice to the deeper tropes of the book. In the book, Lewis expertly relates how eventual Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane attempts for years to explain to himself how he could have had such promise that the New York Mets drafted him in the 1st round (23rd overall), yet he flamed out with little to show for all those predictions of greatness: he played regularly only one year in the majors (1986) with a few plate appearances in five other years 1984-1989. His career batting average was .219 with a fielding percentage to match.
During that same time he played with Darryl Strawberry who the Mets drafted #1 overall in the same year they took Beane at #23. Theoretically the two should have enjoyed a friendly rivalry, spurring each other on to the big leagues. In actuality, Strawberry got there a year earlier than Beane. Strawberry played regularly as soon as he entered the majors, and played from 1983-1999 with eight appearances in the All-Star game. Beane had his one “good” year in 1986, when Strawberry earned his third trip to the All-Star game.
Beane deduces that the scouts basically screwed up when they thought he possessed talents anywhere near Strawberry’s. He learned of the nascent movement to quantify baseball more with advanced statistics when Sandy Alderson, Sr., handed him a pamphlet from Bill James one of if not THE pioneer of sabermetrics. And then he…ah, but there I go down the rabbit-hole again. Sorry.
Early in my baseball initiation I read Prophet of the Sandlots: Journeys with a Major League Scout by Mark Winegardner. Winegardner follows Anthony “Tony” Lucadello who scouted for over 50 years, first for the Chicago Cubs and then for the Philadelphia Phillies and–wait what? The Phillies? Okay, I’m in. A great piece of irony occurs when the book details Lucadello’s pursuit and signing of Mickey Morandini, but the book’s appendix doesn’t list him on its list of Lucadello signees who played in the majors. Why? Because Morandini, who starred at second base for the 1993 National League Champion team, didn’t make the Phillies until 1990, the same year the book was published. Lucadello signed 52 players who made it to the majors including Ferguson Jenkins and Mike Schmidt. The description about how he finds, nurtures, and convinces Morandini to sign with the Phillies justifies the cost of the book.
Most baseball books do one of two things: they explain the aspects of the game or they serve to record for posterity’s sake the great teams and individuals of the game. A few overlap between the two, such as Men At Work mentioned previously. A few, though, do neither. They illuminate the soul. I purchased Baseball As A Road To God: Seeing Beyond The Game by John Sexton in hopes of illumination. I left the book educated, provoked, but ultimately unsatisfied. I mention it here to show the lengths to which baseball fans who are also erudite readers find themselves pursuing to satisfy their urges. Sexton taught (still teaches?) a course at New York University on the same subject as the book. He writes about the shared aspects between baseball and religion. I saw the similarities. I didn’t see how baseball gave me a road to God in the Buddhist sense of many paths/one goal. But the 4.5 star rating on Amazon indicates many have found the book worthy.
More often baseball aficionados like to read about the nooks and crannies of the sport. One such book is Dan Barry’s Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game. For those who know little of baseball, a regulation game is nine innings long. Both teams get a chance to bat against the other, the visiting team going first in the top half of the inning. The home team follows in the bottom half. If, however, the score is tied at the end of nine innings, the two teams keep playing. Baseball does not tolerate ties (except when it does, albeit rarely). A Triple-A game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings started on a Saturday prior to Easter Sunday 1981, and it seemed neither could score on the other–wait that’s not true! Both teams scored one run in the 21st inning! Baseball’s participants adhere to the game’s rules with the same religious fervor as those attending Easter Sunday services. Because no one could raise the league’s commissioner–the only person allowed to suspend the game–they played on. And on. And on. When it ended around dawn the next day, the teams had played nearly four games’ worth of innings. Future stars Cal Ripken, Jr., and Wade Boggs were players in the game. Future manager Bruce Bochy also was there.
Since Jim Bolton’s Ball Four, baseball books written by former or active players tend to be much more jocular and comically entertaining. Former relief pitcher Dirk Hayhurst has written four such books. The first, The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran, remains the best from the standpoint of providing both entertainment and insight. In it, Hayhurst gives us his anecdotal account of being part of a Triple-A bullpen, hoping one day to play in the majors. I constantly think about his description of a sudden, late-season callup from the Portland Beavers to the San Diego Padres–not for his description of the play but for his Oh-My-God reaction to all the perks major league players get. Hayhurst spent all of 39 and one third innings in the majors, or approximately six innings longer than that Triple-A game in Pawtucket a quarter century prior. Somehow he managed to parley his constant conversation into a commentary role on several broadcasts.
In the same vein but more parochial lies The 33-Year-Old Rookie: How I Finally Made It to the Big Leagues After 11 Years in the Minors by Chris Coste. The novelty of a player languishing in the minors for over a decade yet never appearing in the majors at any time seems unbelievable to anyone who follows the sport. Few would stick it out that long, for one. However Coste played catcher, a coveted position making him instantly more valuable than just about anyone else on that Triple-A team. Relief pitchers with any promise have been called up long before their 33rd birthday. Starting pitchers have been converted to relief pitchers (see last sentence). Position players have been let go to clear the way for younger, more promising players. Coste pigheadedly played in independent leagues from 1995-1999, which is just crazy. To the best of my knowledge no one has ever made it into the Major League Baseball system of minor leagues by spending five years in independent ball right out of high school or college. Coste, however, managed to get signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1999, briefly, but wound up playing independent ball again that year. In 2000 he latched onto the Cleveland system, playing AA and AAA. In 2003 he moved to the Boston system, in 2004 to the Milwaukee system. In 2005 he signed with the Phillies, playing AAA in Scranton-Wilkes Barre. Scranton-Wilkes Barre now hosts the Yankees’ AAA club but was affiliated with Philadelphia at the time. And in 2006 he got “the call”.
Adding to the book’s value, Coste just didn’t make it to the majors at age 33, but when he got there he stuck there. This never happens for a backup player called to fill a minor gap at age 33, yet alone for a player who spent 1995-2005 just scratching his way toward yet another AAA assignment. Adding an extra layer of enjoyment: when Coste joined the major league club, he backed up starting catcher Mike Lieberthal the long-time symbol for futility for the Phillies. Lieberthal was the backup catcher for 1994-1996 right after the team went to the World Series, and then guided the pitching staff through 2007, the first year the team again tasted the postseason. Coste continued with the team in 2007 and 2008 when Carlos “Chooch” Ruiz solidified his claim to the dirt behind home plate (edging out the unlucky Lieberthal who retired). In 2008 Chooch helped lead the Phillies to their first Championship in 28 years. For a Phillies fan, this book is like being told you’re getting a triple-fudge chocolate cake and then seeing it’s iced with the richest frosting imaginable AND IT HAS ALCOHOL-INFUSED BON BONS ON TOP! (Well, at least for this Phillies fan.) Coste was traded to Houston in mid-2009 and that year was the end of his major league appearances. Want some extra ganache on top, Phillies Phan? Coste attended Concordia College in Morehead, MN, just across the river from Fargo, ND. My father had many close relatives living in or near Fargo, and his mother graduated from Concordia. My best friend in high school attended Concordia. Ah, sweet serendipity!
If we spend time going through my entire bookshelf of baseball books, it will be like those times you got stuck in a promising bar only to allow the bar’s resident know-it-all bore you tears because he promises you free drinks: a terrible price to pay for only mild enjoyment. Let’s just mention one more. My most recent baseball read occurred this year and takes its place alongside some of the best I’ve read: The Baseball Whisperer: A Small-Town Coach Who Shaped Big League Dreams by Michael Tackett. The subject matter nearly overpowers the author’s skills to tell it, but transports nonetheless. The book profiles Merl Eberly who coached a summer college league in Clarinda, Iowa. College summer leagues serve two purposes: (1) young players getting ready to enter college or just beginning their college baseball careers often need some extra work–or to showcase their abilities; and (2) college leagues use wooden bats where the colleges (and high schools prior to them) have provided only metal bats for their players. Metal’s makes getting hits easy; wood…not so much. In the middle of cornfields and nowhere, Eberly guided and developed many young players. Among them were future stars Ozzie Smith (15-time All-Star and Hall of Famer) and Von Hayes (1989 All-Star and a Phillie when the team went to the World Series in 1983). Tackett’s ticket into the story occurred when his son wanted to play for Eberly. The Iowan coach may resemble a small-town John Wayne–and Clarinda is only a 90-minute drive from John Wayne’s hometown of Winterset–but his compassion tempers his strict, disciplinarian approach. There were moments I wiped tears from my face, but I will not spoil it for you. As MLB.com stated, “Field of Dreams was only superficially about baseball. It was really about life. So is The Baseball Whisperer… with the added advantage of being all true.”
I’ve failed to capture the elusive spiritual, pulse-of-life truth baseball holds forth for the seeker willing to dive deeper than comparing statistics or reading yesterday’s scores. To those such as myself, joy may be found on Little League and high school diamonds; pulses will quicken when we hear a horsehide-covered hardball strike a leather glove at 90-some miles per hour or hear that same ball meet a loosely swung round piece of wood; irrespective of having watched a game, we will dive delightedly into someone’s scorebook of it which bears esoteric notations known only to initiates; or our anticipation will leap when we hear our team’s signature sound bite of music blare from the TV, announcing another game getting ready to begin. These things remain elusive. Lao Tzu describes it best in the opening to the Tao:
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
This inability to fully communicate our forays into the mystic joy of baseball lies at the heart of one of my fellow captives in this rabbit-hole trap, and one of Major League Baseball’s commissioners. Professor of English Renaissance literature, president of Yale University, and seventh Commissioner of Major League Baseball, A. Bartlett Giamatti explained it this way:
[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then, just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.”
[translation of Tao Te Ching by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English, copyright 1972. Giamatti’s quote from “Take time For Paradise: Americans and Their Games”]
What I’m reading 221019
After setting aside three works to which I did not measure up, I’ve picked up a tried and true author (for me), Jose Saramago. Two days of reading Journey to Portugal has set my world aright. Fine writing will out, and regardless what others may say, most works are not fine. In this book’s case, exquisite writing offsets its meager “plot”. But I’m only into its beginning pages; perhaps it develops in time.
When your team loses…
…you head somewhere else. Why watch the team that beat yours? In 2007 the Phillies were swept in the NL Division Series by the Colorado Rockies. The Rockies went all the way to the World Series, so at least we took solace that the near-champions (they were beaten by the Boston Red Sox) had beaten us. On the flip side, the Rockies tied with the San Diego Padres for the Wild Card that year which forced an extra playoff game between them. San Diego lost and went home. Until that playoff game the Rockies and Padres also had identical records with the Phillies, and no NL team had more than 90 wins that year (the Diamondbacks).
Regardless. We headed to the southern shore of North Carolina and the Fort Fisher Aquarium.
Development of a Phan
[Warning: hyperlinks to Wikipedia articles actually go to Wikiwand which mirrors the site and provides a much lovelier interface. If you don’t want to go there–don’t click the hyperlink.]
I love baseball. Sure, I might catch a few games when Gonzaga University’s basketball teams (a hometown darling) tweak the noses of the big universities yet again in March Madness. I might watch the Kentucky Derby, just because my mother and her mother always did. There’s a chance I’ll watch 30 minutes of professional American football–and of course, the Super Bowl is a great excuse for culinary excess, beer, and oh, those commercials! But baseball has captured me with its elegance, mystery, nuance, precision, intelligence, definability, and history. It has mirrored my life, informing it. In return, Life has given me a greater appreciation for the game.
Baseball transcends simple sport. It rewards fans who can appreciate nuance and bores fans who cannot. It combines the cerebral approach of chess with occasional, all-pieces-in-motion excitement like that of soccer (football), basketball, or hockey. But before a ball is put in play, baseball proceeds at a pace where the informed fan can appreciate where fielders position themselves for this pitch, how the batter might greet that selfsame pitch, and then allows one to thoroughly examine how the pitcher delivers that pitch from the windup through the catcher’s reception of it.
In childhood, I thought I liked following sports. Given the perspective of age, I realized sports photography grabbed me more than the sports themselves. The first years of the 70’s swept away these shallow roots. Sports, associated with conformism and militarism back then, fell from my favor. I read books about rockets, aliens, sexual revolution, wizards, hobbits, and crazed soldiers in various wars and psychiatric wards. We marched against The War, watched women burn bras, contemplated world peace–surely just around the corner once The Revolution occurred–and contemplated global annihilation “if we failed”. I indulged my enjoyment of competition by watching my brother run competitively. I stayed in touch with athletics when I volunteered to be a manager for the wrestling and track teams because it freed me from the otherwise compulsory attendance in physical education classes.
I attended no football games in college nor any other sport. I jumped into the Real World as a reporter/editor of a weekly newspaper, photographing the local high school’s various sports for a half hour or so, then leaving because my boss told me to: “Don’t let them get used to thinking you’re going to cover the whole of anything.”
I left newspapering, earned another degree, this time in English Education, and sought employment as a secondary teacher of English. Inexperienced teachers without the desire to coach a sport were not in high demand. It took nearly a year to get a steady job, and even then it occurred only because the principal of the junior high and its head teacher, both on the hiring committee, argued that my potential in the classroom outweighed my lack of interest in coaching.
At the same time I was hired, the school district also hired my (somewhat) opposite: a two-sport coach with no compunctions about taking on a third sport. He taught social studies (that would basically be history for you non-Americans). The district placed him at my junior high school; I taught beside him nearly all nine of my teaching years. This teacher, RP, opened my eyes to several things. First, he was intelligent, and frankly, that was not the stereotype of the typical small town sports coach. Many of the coaches did their best to perpetuate the stereotype of the dumb jock: I won’t relate all of the stories about GG because even reducing the name to initials doesn’t adequately hide who it was. Suffice to say he thought he looked good with all those gold chains hanging around his neck.
RP however perked up when I bragged about never being defeated at Trivial Pursuit and said, “Oh ho, Pilcher, I’ll take that bet!” It wasn’t a bet, but the next time we had a staff party, there we both were. I can’t remember his status, but I was three and half sheets to the wind–I played better drunk because then I didn’t overthink. I would guess he either was sober or had sampled just a few light beers. Oddly, I can’t remember who won, which means he probably did. We both acknowledged the other as a worthy intellectual opponent. RP was “a character” but that part of him will be a writing topic for another day. What he did for me occurred in 1989 when he touted the business advantage of investing in baseball cards. I can’t believe in persons not knowing what these are, but I can conceive it. Therefore for the ignorant: baseball cards are (to quote Wikipedia) “a type of trading card relating to baseball, usually printed on cardboard, silk, or plastic….Baseball card production peaked in the late 1980s.” (More about their history here.)
Oh, and did it peak. For a dollar or two one could buy a pack of cards which might have one card in it worth tens or even hundreds of dollars due to the crazed demand. Baseball cards were the Bitcoin of their time; it was like the lottery for little kids and speculators both.
Baseball cards with the magic of their beautiful photography capturing a moment of baseball prowess rekindled my love of sports photography. The cards also sparked an interest in the game. Soon I had purchased George F. Will’s just-published book Men At Work: The Craft of Baseball, still one of the finest books written for understanding the nuances of the game. I gobbled it up when a vicious virus laid me out for a few days at home.
Just three years later, I chucked teaching to indulge my fantasy of writing, and I moved to Philadelphia. I arrived at the right time to fan my beginning baseball interests, which could not be indulged in out-of-the-way Colville, Washington, tucked near the borders with Canada and Idaho. There I had no team to follow, to cheer on. Seattle’s team, the Mariners, established in 1977 while I still attended the University of Washington, played badly and in 1990-1992 it still played badly. Besides, 300 miles with an intervening mountain range dampens one’s feeling for “your local team”.
Ah, but Philadelphia possessed a major league baseball team, and not just that, one of the very first, established in 1883! It had a sad history of losing, mostly, including 1992, the year I arrived. But the year after I arrived in Philly, the team that finished 1992 in last place captured magic and found themselves in the playoffs. (Amphetamines are strongly suspected, but hey, let’s not besmirch some loveable characters.) I raced out to buy a new color TV to replace my 20-year-old one. I cheered. I shouted. Macho Row rewarded me by playing all the way to the World Series…where a walk-off home run by Toronto’s Joe Carter in Game 6 clinched the championship for Toronto. It was a three-run homer served up by the closer, Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams. Sorry, non-baseball fans, but I’m not going to explain all the rules and terms–suffice to say a homer run (“homer”) is not good if the other team gets one. Ahead by one run at the time, the Phillies lost the game by two. There is no bigger gut-punch in sports than to be two outs away from winning a game only to serve up a home run which not only ends the game with a loss for your team but also wins the championship for your opponent. To this day, nearly 30 years later, just sit in the Phillies’ ballpark and mutter “that damn Joe Carter.” You will have instant friends, bonding over the shared pain.
I fell deeply in love with the Phillies that year. They burned their brand into my hide, injected their drug into my veins, played their Lucy-holding-the-football to my Charlie Brown. My journey to true fandom started there. I’m glad I didn’t know what a fluke that 1993 season was: the next year Macho Row reverted to its 1992 form, sitting fourth out of the five teams in the National League East when the Major League Baseball Players Association mercifully went on strike, ending the season in August.
From 1994 through 2000 I did what fans do: I followed games; I read about them in the Philadelphia press (aided by the newly introduced World Wide Web); I watched the few games I could, aided by satellite TV; and the Phillies slowly, slowly indoctrinated me about the customs and mores of fandom. One cannot usually make a living as a fan: I drifted into “real” work when the writing thing went bust, writing business reports in pharmaceutical manufacturing. Just as with the Phillies and baseball, I learned most of the basics and some the nuances about my new career.
By 2001 the Phillies had installed their third manager since the magic of 1993. From this lesson of sport, I learned life’s employment situations are ephemeral. In 1997, recently married, I had carted my bride back to my hometown in eastern Washington State. (You always have to add the word “state” for anyone born in the northeastern United States; otherwise they assume you mean the nation’s capital.) Now in 2001, I looked nationwide, found a job in upstate New York, and we moved back into the same time zone as our beloved Phillies.
Promises, promises: for four years the Phillies promised more than they delivered. Maybe I believed their press too much. A typical day started with me connecting the computer to the internet via a dial-up connection. (squeek, squarl, kweeeeeeeee-quchchchchchchchch) I would open each Phillies story in the Philadelphia Inquirer in a separate browser window. This would take time to load, so I’d start making the morning lattes. About the time I had steamed and frothed the milk, I would cycle through those browser windows, hitting “print” each time. This gave me time to pull the espresso and complete the lattes. Then my wife and I would settle before breakfast, me reading the latest stories about the Phillies.
By 2004 I realized I was a square peg in a round hole where I was working. I saw too that many in baseball might be the right guy but with the wrong team. I looked for a new job, and the Phillies looked for a new manager. They succeeded; I did not. In 2005 Charlie Manuel assumed control of those on-field decisions. After that season ended, I learned that my services were no longer needed where I worked–a layoff included me. Luckily I already had lined up an interview which led to a new state, a better job, etc., etc.
And in 2006 things looked up. My wife and I learned we should have been living in the South of the United States many years before we actually got there. The Phillies dumped their general manager at the same time and brought in Pat Gillick, a guy with a proven track record of winning. He predicted they would contend in 2008. He was right, although in 2007 the Phillies made every fan salivate when they managed to get to the postseason–only to get bounced immediately by the Colorado Rockies in a three-game sweep.
In 2007 my employment decision turned. The FDA responded to reports about our company site and showed up to perform a “for cause” inspection. These never end well. We received a Warning Letter to shape up or else. By 2008 a workforce of about 125 had experienced 17 firings and a half dozen more left voluntarily. I labored through this as the Phillies in 2008 trailed the Mets heading through August, just as they had in 2007. And just like 2007, the Mets graciously choked by playing 22-17 to the Phillies’ 27-12. It wasn’t as dramatic as 2007, but the teams had been close. By dropping six of their final nine games, the Mets finished three games behind the Phillies.
Then wonder of wonders, the Phillies rode that magic carpet all the way to the World Series and beat the Tampa Bay Rays for the championship…and in the middle of the Series, I accepted a new job to escape my own version of a losing season.
Pat Gillick resigned, mission accomplished. For the rest of my life as a corporate lackey–as a new, less-promising GM took over–the Phillies performed well but slid backward step by painful step. In 2009 they won more games than 2008 and returned to the World Series but lost to the New York Yankees. In 2010 they won even more games than 2009 and lost to the San Francisco Giants in the NL Championship Series–no World Series trip that year. In 2011 they assembled a wonder team and won 102 games. A troubling sign, however, occurred in early September. The team’s victories pointed to it setting a club record for total wins, but beginning on September 11th, the team finished 8-12. They played a spirited Division Series with the St. Louis Cardinal, going all five games, but in the final inning of the final Game 5, their star first baseman, Ryan Howard, sprinted toward first base and tore his Achilles tendon halfway there. You can’t run without an Achilles tendon. Just like that, the “run” was over. Philadelphia didn’t return to the postseason until this year (2022).
In 2012 the Phillies’ GM thought he could retool in a minor way and get further in the postseason. Unlike the Phillies, I realized retooling my career was not an option–I had cycled through three different roles for my current employer and none were good. My cog-in-the-machine job would get me nowhere. Embarking on eight years of consulting, I learned to evaluate organizations by looking at various companies in stress. (Companies rarely call consultants when things are going well). I could see the same signs of dysfunction in the Phillies too. The team spent 2012 and 2013 denying they had a deep problem, similar to my clients who wanted the superficial blemishes covered up rather than healing the causes for them. By 2014 the well-meaning ineptitude of the Phillies (symbolized by the GM who had run the team since the beginning of 2009) became apparent. They were stuck in one gear, spinning their tires in the mud. I too was stuck in the mud of an absolutely terrible employment assignment. It convinced me at the beginning of 2015 to seek a different contract agency, just as the Phillies chose to dump their GM at the end of the 2015 season.
My career cycled through good and bad, but the bad beat the best days of “regular” employment. Consulting let me dive fulltime into analytics–clients loved it. And the Phillies dove into analytics too. Their new GM, Matt Klentak, hired around the same time, unfortunately didn’t know what the heck he was doing–a perfect example of having a good concept without knowing how to make it happen. After stumbling along with the manager he inherited (Pete Mackanin), he hired an analytics fanboy in Gabe Kapler for the 2017 season. Kapler also didn’t know what he was doing–he’d never managed a team before. As the team entered the spring training portion of the season, I completed a 15-month assignment which reinforced that I had the chops to hang with “the big boys” in my industry. I had learned novel approaches to problems can sometimes clear a logjam of we-can’t-do-that problems. Unfortunately for the Phillies, it worked for me but not for them. Kapler made amazingly boneheaded decisions, learning on the job so that he could move on to the San Francisco Giants and earn Manager of the Year in 2021.
By that time, I had learned hiring solid performers and the occasional superstar would quickly pull a damaged company out of the spiral which led to the sewer of “thanks for trying”. Similarly, the Phillies signed Bryce Harper, Jean Segura, and J. T. Realmuto prior to the 2019 season. But the Phillies managed an 81-81 record, missing a winning season yet again, and Kapler was out.
Everything changed in 2020, and I don’t mean the pandemic. My mother died at the end of the 2019 postseason. The Phillies hired Joe Girardi the day she died. Less than two months later the Phillies hired a new GM, Dave Dombrowski. Saddled with a new manager, Dombrowski decided to figure it out before making wholesale changes. And then came 2020, the year everything was upside down.
I retired at the end of 2019. No need to work: my final years of work built a bit of financial comfort and my inheritance took care of the rest. Baseball might as well not have happened in 2020 (but we’re glad it did). In 2021, Dombrowski began to evaluate the team in earnest. At the end of that season he made sweeping changes, some of which will be felt for years. He dumped everyone in charge of player development. He reorganized things. He hired a new hitting coach, the same one who had been successful in Washington, D.C., where Bryce Harper had played.
And then he signed a slugging All-Star, Kyle Schwarber. And then he signed Nick Castellanos. Suddenly the Phillies looked (potentially) good. At the same time, the psychic blows of having the final parent die combined with the bunker mentality of the pandemic lessened. At the end of 2021 “free movement about the country” seemed even more possible. The few trips taken in 2021 seemed to be a promise of things to come. And then came 2022.
If anything, 2022 should go down as the unsatisfactory second act to 2021. Covid still scourges. Free movement about the country didn’t translate to free movement about the world. And the Phillies started the baseball season 22-27, a sad commentary on the talent assembled during the offseason by Dombrowski. And then came a “miracle” for Phillies fans. The Philadelphia had come to be known as a very loyal organization to its top employees over the past 50 years. Managers, GM’s, and presidents weren’t “fired”–they were “reassigned to special advisor” status. But on June 3rd of 2022, the Phillies fired manager Joe Girardi.
Seasons can transcend one’s existence. Throughout this piece I’ve attempted to draw a comparison to my personal life, just as all sports fans attempt to relate the performance of ‘their’ team to their own existence. There is no comparison in my life to what the Phillies have done this year. After firing Girardi less than a week before my birthday, they’ve played relaxed and more importantly, they’ve played winning. They’ve parleyed that from a barely-in-the-playoffs third wildcard seed to a berth in the National League Championship Series which starts tomorrow.
I don’t know if most persons can trace an arc to their lives through the ups and downs of a professional sports team. I do. But nothing compares to this year. This team shouldn’t have succeeded after being an afterthought one-third of the way through the season. Even after they played their way into serious consideration for a wildcard berth, no one with a modicum of sanity thought they would contend beyond the very first round. Instead they’ve quickly vanquished the St. Louis Cardinals in the Wild Card round, and dumped the Atlanta Braves with little difficulty.
All bets are off in retirement. You become a bystander without a distinct connection to society’s day-to-day rhythms. Though you have 40-50 years of experience, few value it. Thus, the Phillies and I part ways a little bit. Will I still thrill to their success? Absolutely! Will they do things which more and more mystify me? Very probably. My father-in-law remains a Phillies fan. He’s been one all of his 90-year-old life. He decries the “new” approach of taking walks instead of swinging (something which is now at least 25 years old). He complains about the superimposed box which shows the strike zone when a pitch comes in.
I look forward to being the recalcitrant fan he is.
all the voices in my head 