I watched Jim Johnson try to close out the 9thin front of a half-capacity Camden Yards. My father was supposed to come, but he was six blocks up at Mercy Hospital relearning to use the left side of
And yet, when it came to hitting a baseball, I always liked my odds.
The solidity of contact is registered first in the hands. The knowledge radiates outward from there.
“You can’t pee here,” Brendan tells me as I climb inside the doorway leading into the belly of the Green Monster. What he means is that you shouldn’t pee here. Manny Ramirez did once, during the
Old Seals Stadium is a shopping center now. It is a parking lot, a grocery store, a 24 Hour Fitness, a Ross Dress for Less, a Japanese dollar store. I get all my errands done at old Seals Stadium—all
I’m sitting on our carpet, legs crossed, beer in my crotch.
It's their first practice in good spring weather,
not only not raining, not cold, but full of light.
He said that Thompson could be the fastest to hit five hundred, a first ballot Hall of Famer, but I just nodded and sipped my coffee.
Blessed be the millwrights on the open hearth that awaited him; the nurses and elevator operators; secretaries; plumbers; electricians
Wrigley had put out a study claiming that gum chewing increased performance on assessments and my elementary school took it as gospel, sending letters home asking for us to bring it on test days. Marshall brought Big League Chew.
The first doctor who called said I couldn’t play. The scan showed stress fractures and the only remedy was rest. It would have been a blessing the diagnosis came between seasons but, for me,
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!
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.
When I am young I wish I were invisible so that the white boys will stop screaming, “Go back where you came from.”
I joined the crowd and bought an XL.
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.
You cannot think of baseball without thinking of your grandpa. The two forever tangled in each’s DNA.
The wonderful thing about teenagers — which is what he is now — is that they are very focused on their own lives and not the least bit interested in what their parents are up to.
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.
