Mike Hampton - P

When I wore my Astros hat and jersey to see them play the Cubs at Wrigley Field, someone threw a tampon at me, still in its wrapper. I didn’t see who threw it.

Tony

Craig Griffey ate snowflakes because he thought it would make him better at baseball.

When Craig Griffey was six he almost retired from baseball to pursue a career in motorcycles, but his

Girls, sweating in their polyester knickers, await their turns at the plate. Ankles clacking, mouths breathing, “We want a pitcher, not a belly-itcher!” Coach Agliolo frowns.

Bench 1 watches,

Renteria almost hits one out in the bottom of the ninth of a 3-3 game against Cleveland. It’s been a nightmare season of almosts for Detroit. Still, I watch them every single night. Inge pops up to

They said the scar tissue would break up in your shoulder, and that this could be a painful process. You imagine it cracking like dry earth every time you loosen up in the morning, and this helps

We are working toward converting all of the old into the new. We are not forsaking our past! But... it's going to take time. In the meantime...

the ARCHIVES!

My boss’s dealer was an Israeli guy named Amir who lived in Highland Park with his girlfriend and drove a Porsche. I met him one afternoon my first week working at Vintage Guitars. My boss Rick was

I’ll be the blonde-haired pony and you be the three-toed sloth on LSD. You be “altered.” You be “tripping balls.” You sit there, slowly drawing booger-like animals on a pad of paper with your three

The chemistry started in biology class. It was first period, and Roo had just gotten her first period. She could smell herself. Or she smelled something. It might have been the science room. Weird

My father, when he tried to quit smoking, used to suck on aquarium stones he sterilized at work. He claimed they worked better than candy or gum, which his doctor recommended. He’d slip a stone

Presume a bathroom and a row of yellow and hotly round fluorescents above the mirror. Presume a young woman with her hip to the linoleum, her temple to her wrist. She cleans with her free

You are a good-looking man. You know this because people tell you all the time, sometimes out of nowhere. You assume that people don’t get told that all the time unless it is deserved. You have

After the divorce, my uncle Nicolai became an amateur taxidermist. His first attempts were on roadkill, then the mice he took from the traps he set in the kitchen. He sent us pictures. My

This is the story about how I lost my husband.

Jamie had been in the hospital getting blood work and pre-op type treatment since finally,finally, he’d made it to the top of the

The Mayor, after several days of grieving, emerged from his hacienda at the hour that was once called lunch. He passed his guards, then slowly—laboriously—carried his voluminous frame through the streets, stopping at the square's one remaining café and ordering a well-cooked steak. The sun glared down from the cloudless sky and illuminated the Mayor, capturing him in full as he spread himself across a stool and held his knife and fork in a rehearsed display of indefatigable hope. There was still meat, he wanted the people to see. There was still a mayor. There was still a town, present and alive in that square.

I arrive at the party and there are about four people there—wait, there are ten more in the back room. Now there are six more at the door! The radiators are hissing out champagne. Everyone is

It is Sunday when the dogs come. The church bells ring and ring and my mother says to my sister like she does every week “wake up wake up we’re going to be late for church” and this is a joke,

I know a lot about the way a body grows in bed. I know a lot about sleep, which takes place inside the bed. I know about the dreams that swim around and the sweat that slips out. I like to watch

People think we’re in love, like goo-goo eyes and fingering, because we’re always together, Katie Jean and I. We’re always together, Katie Jean and I, because she has her mouth wired shut and I’m

The women were exceedingly beautiful that night. It did not move me to see them, even with their hair tossed back and asses sticking out. It did not make me feel violated, the way I wanted and

At one a.m. a man loads mannequin parts into the trunk of an orange hatchback.

“I signed up for a thing online,” he tells me. “You put your name into this big database, along with a bunch

What Daddy

Our departure is very alarming to me, still. I still feel caution tape around my heart. But also it has caused many pleasurable detriments to my existence. I have run out of

[The following text and pictures are taken from the personal website of my brother, Austin Hinderliter. It includes all posts made from April 25 — May 6, 2011. —Robert]

April 25,

The Vanishing Ball Player
Moses Cage (1960 - ?)

My hands, nets. My arms, windmills. My heart, a diamond.
-Moses Cage, 1989

Cage spent three seasons as a backup left

All Paige heard was her watch ticking. She peeled away the cement smell and damp that grew in the old basement where Buddy Cantrell had pitched her. You didn't grow up without running through a few