Gaylord Perry toiled for twenty-two seasons in the majors, and the look on his face suggests it was hard toil indeed.
Gaylord Perry toiled for twenty-two seasons in the majors, and the look on his face suggests it was hard toil indeed.
The solitude. In the summer, I dine. On hot dogs. And fast balls. Go Dodgers!
The first time this happened, I sighed when he walked away, squinting my eyes to see if he had a wedding ring.
The spring we didn’t make love,
I started following baseball—
radio on the kitchen table,
me in that old night... more
Take your pick. Me, they said I hung my off-speed stuff, lost track of the count, lacked mental toughness. I waved off too many signs.
I joined the crowd and bought an XL.
When I am young I wish I were invisible so that the white boys will stop screaming, “Go back where you came from.”
Kinsella, Annie: Cinnamon-haired romantic lead in Field of Dreams. Played with zeal by Amy Madigan. Equal parts romantic and pragmatic, she raised a farm and a daughter, vanquished small-town Nazism, and offered unconditional support to her crazy-ass ghost-loving husband.
The smell of grilled hot dogs is in the near distance.
And everyone in section ten is standing
After tonight, I’ll be demoted to my parents’ couch and a job at my uncle’s lumberyard.
Everyone was welcome. No one was cut
in this league.
In 1974 or 1975 my father took my sisters and me to our first baseball game. It was always going to be a Yankee game, wherever that might be.
You cannot think of baseball without thinking of your grandpa. The two forever tangled in each’s DNA.
Later that evening, Ken Caminiti died alone in a bug infested Bronx drug house.
Then maybe head over to the State Park near Orange City to rent a canoe and paddle gator-infested waters, strafed by black vultures and large, fictional-looking birds, for the chance to see some manatees, large and stationary in the gentle current of a warm, clear river.
Then maybe head over to the State Park near Orange City to rent a canoe and paddle gator-infested waters, strafed by black vultures and large, fictional-looking birds, for the chance to see some manatees, large and stationary in the gentle current of a warm, clear river.
Fifty cents for tickets in the bleachers—then. Fifty cents a railroad car to Pittsburgh.
A “marvel” they’d called it.... more
Summers to Harridge, April 20, 1950: I am writing to inform you of the changes in the Washington ball park. It is rather difficult to... more
"I didn't want to ever be outside of this moment. I knew at some point I would look at the picture I'd just taken and feel an overwhelming sense of loss. I thought as long as we could manage to stay inside this particular hotel room, to avoid our phones and every person with whom we'd ever come into contact, we would continue to feel whole. We were revolutionaries, goddamnit. These were our accumulation of beautiful moments. Before the world fractured us. I don't expect you to understand how I became Brad Pitt in that moment, how we all just flew along down the highway. Bandits. Ex-patriots. In love with this countryside, if not this country. Paper Moon. The Last Picture Show. All of this shot in black and white. Only the final scene in color."
FOUR NEW ESSAYS BY CHLOE CALDWELL! Plus the original essays that made you fall in love with Chloe!
Jason Phoebe Rusch is a queer writer from the Chicago suburbs. His full-length debut Dualities explores gender and patriarchy from the perspective of a man who was socialized and is currently still read as a woman. He is interested in complication and nuance and messy human failing, his own and that of others.
