baseball ::
leplastrier
Highlights and lowlights from the 2011 MLB season.
Bobby strikes out. Eliminated. There’s always next year.
Rookies Served Humility by the Pack - NYTimes.com
The Crowd at the Ball Game
by William Carlos Williams
The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformlyby a spirit of uselessness
which delights them —all the exciting detail
of the chaseand the escape, the error
the flash of genius —all to no end save beauty
the eternal -So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautifulfor this
to be warned againstsaluted and defied —
It is alive, venomousit smiles grimly
its words cut —The flashy female with her
mother, gets it —The Jew gets it straight - it
is deadly, terrifying —It is the Inquisition, the
RevolutionIt is beauty itself
that livesday by day in them
idly —This is
the power of their facesIt is summer, it is the solstice
the crowd ischeering, the crowd is laughing
in detailpermanently, seriously
without thought
The Mental Assassin
I’m a certified ninja. It happened in a dream. Normally it takes a lifetime, but I did it in 12 minutes.
—- Brian Wilson
Jim Abbott, one of my all time favorites.
”I told them Daddy’s not going to play baseball anymore,” he said. “My little girl looked at me and said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said: ‘Well, Daddy’s been playing a long time. Daddy’s shoulder hurts.’ She kind of looked at me and went back to playing with the other two kids.”
There is no throwing program to struggle through anymore, no excitement to try to summon for a game that hurts too much to play. Baseball is over for Meche, who spent Monday night with family friends in Lafayette, eating gumbo, drinking beer, relaxing. He has no specific plans, except to settle in his hometown and see his children whenever he wants.
“He gave his heart and soul to his profession,” Moore said. “You only have so many throws in you.”
Meche knew he had none left, and he would not pretend otherwise. He said his dream in baseball was always simple — to pitch as long as he could — and now that he has achieved it, he needs nothing more.
(via Royals Pitcher Gil Meche Retires, Tossing Away $12 Million Guaranteed - NYTimes.com)
It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.
– A. Bartlett Giamatti: The Green Fields of the Mind