When we first met in the early ‘90s, we had stage names. She went by Kali and I went by Olivia. 

Who says islands needs water? he asked. Mine is a tree island. It’s something surrounded by something different.

For the third time in as many months, I received an automated email from ebay, stating, “An item you’ve been watching has been relisted.” 

1.  It is 1994 and baseball is on strike so I will not see the first place Yankees advance to the playoffs and win the World Series.

You may doubt that the Yankees would have actually won the

“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.