“So I started collecting baseball cards.” 

It means nothing now but it meant enough then, enough to change a life, to alter the smooth rhythmic turning of the world. 

What can be said about this game that hasn’t already been said about Christmas morning? Better than that. The first day of a summer break. Better than that. Evening fireworks on the 4th of July. That, too. Better than all. A graduation, an engagement, a marriage, a festival, a celebration. An outdoor fete to anything.

He doesn’t have any friends and doesn’t want any.

That’s the only way Mays can pitch, 

because he doesn’t play the game 

of fraternity formed on summer ballfields. 

Vin Scully alone in a broadcast booth, talking by himself, talking to us. Assuring the world that all’s well in Dodgeralia. Calm. Composed. At home, in a park he’ll depart at season’s end. Handpicking his words, off endless branches, branches’ branches, in a deep memory he builds, maintains over many years, keeps polished like a jewel.

Oscar kisses the child through the hard mesh fence designed for the fans’ protection.  He does not like kissing his boy through hard mesh.   

Me at my most beautiful. Me locked in. Me sacrifice stance.

Micah turned pro and the rest of us went regular. 

It is a game of beautiful pauses, pauses that take up so much of the game’s duration that calling them “pauses” seems inaccurate; the moments of action, rather, are what interrupt the long stretches of inaction.

And I had to wonder while I watched the mosh-pits if these kids were even listening.

Ten years removed from my youth baseball experience, I find myself in a car with four baseball-obsessed college buddies, headed toward the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome to see the Minnesota Twins play a mid-September game against the Detroit Tigers. I have no idea why I’m here.

He could say from experience

that Babe Ruth was an asshole,

but he never said it on the field.

How fucking weird is the knuckle ball?

That was the year Dave Kingman’s pop fly never came down at the Metrodome
Nineteen players were ejected during the Padres/Braves brawl
Angel Mike Witt threw a perfect game against the

Before the nasty glances, which I sense to be for me, I shake my downcast head, grin in disappointment, and mutter “Damn.”

While waiting in my car outside your house I counted thirteen wrinkled ticket stubs I’d tucked inside the glovebox after games
to serve as some reminder of the season so far.

Single tear

PS - Takeshi Kitano is god

I wanted to focus on the real victims, unthinkable crimes against them, but I kept coming back to those batting cages, to that uniform in Coach B's house.

Baseball is, if nothing else, a reason, and so it is everything:

While he runs, you think about how long it’s been since you stepped on a baseball field. Your chest fills up with sharp fragments of Little League afternoons, standing in left field praying for something to do and dreading it at the same time

I used to bring a six pack, pound a beer between tokens, but I’m married now and I have to get home safely.

You look like you just walked out of a punt, pass and kick contest. We gotta make you look sick."

I’m thankful for the throwaways. Like the time the Bears lost in extra innings. Randy Bass, pre-Hanshin Tigers Randy Bass, had committed an error on a routine toss to the pitcher at first. It was

Then something funny happened / after months of imprisonment, / handled like/ animals, less than/ animals, / they started playing baseball.

I wanted to quit, and was too young to realize that I could just quit anything.