Author Archives: Jackie, The Baseball Bloggess

Unknown's avatar

About Jackie, The Baseball Bloggess

Loves the 4-6-3 and the serial comma. All baseball is good baseball, but when the Orioles or UVa 'Hoo's take the field, it's great baseball. Baseball historian ... because baseball touches everything. www.thebaseballbloggess.com And, for the Yoga ... www.peacefulhands.com

Looks At Books

Posted on by
Reply

Ĉi tiu afiŝo temas pri libroj. Eble pri basbalo. Eble pri katoj. Mi supozas, ke katoj estas neeviteblaj.

(Fun Fact: Not gibberish.)

Someone suggested I have stopped writing about baseball here because I haven’t been writing much baseball on here. (Not sure if they were disappointed or relieved.)

And anyway, not true. Look …

Pete!

Fun Fact: Pete Alonso became the first player in baseball history to lead both the National and American Leagues in RBIs, doing it with the New York Mets in 2022 (131) and the Baltimore Orioles in 2026 (113). He also led the American League with 43 home runs this season.

More Fun. More Facts: The World Series, which opens tonight in Milwaukee, will include eight former Baltimore Orioles on the Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays rosters. Five for Tampa Bay, three for Milwaukee.

Go O’s

But no, I don’t always write about baseball.

You know, The New York Times doesn’t just write about New York.

TIME magazine doesn’t always write about watches.

TIME magazine, 3/15/1963

But when it does, it sometimes mentions a cow that swallowed a watch.

Continue reading →

12 Things I Did While You Were Doing Other Things

Posted on by
15

I’m told that some baseball teams get to play in October. True?

While you were busy summering, I was doing things, too. Lots of things.

List ahead.

12 Things I Did While You Were Doing Other Things

1)  I did this weird thing that made my guitar string unravel.

2) I read Thomas Pynchon’s “Shadow Ticket” which started great and then became a slog. I’m sure you’ve been to dinner parties like that. (I’ve been to no dinner parties.)

well we had 162 good pages together

3) I cleaned six things off my desk. For the nosy amongst you – Two yoga books I had piled on the table and then couldn’t find last week because they’d been covered in papers. One post-it note carefully placed next to my computer with nothing on it. Nothing. One cryptic piece of notepaper with “4 6 10” written on it along with some guitar chords that may have meant something. An empty wrapper from a Japanese Kit Kat. A notice that they’re disconnecting our landline.

Continue reading →

Pennies For My Thoughts

Posted on by
26

On November 12, 2025, the U.S. Mint made its very last penny.

(I so wanted to title this post “Stop Making Cents” but even I have my pun limits. Associated Press, ABC News, The Wall Street Journal, and others do not.)

Penny for your thoughts.

How many thoughts will I ever have now if there are no more pennies to pay for them?

Which brings me to …

I bet you have a friend who only shows up when things are getting rough. They need your shoulder to lean on, your compassionate ear, your thoughtful, “It’s ok, things are going to be ok,” half-truth.

It’s me. Hi.

I seem to write more when baseball has gone sour. When “stinky” only scratches the surface of how maddeningly awful the Baltimore Orioles have been playing.

How awful? Let Mookie Wilson-Betts explain:

Just awful.

(The Orioles are not the worst in baseball. Rockies fans, here, come sit with me.)

Anyway, I have some thoughts. All random. Not all baseball. Not a single one is worth rounding up to a nickel.

Continue reading →

The Purgatorium

Posted on by
10

“I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end.” ~ Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America (1967)

Friends die. Democracies crumble.

This world, I’m sure you’ve noticed, is unfair. It takes no prisoners. (Unless it’s taking them to hidden prisons in far-off lands.)

I asked a friend who was in his final days in hospice to choose some music. (I was far away and wanted to feel connected.) Via text, he said, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. I knew that album would never be the same. It’s no longer a Beach Boys album. Now it is the music of my friend who passed away two weeks ago. He will be as wrapped up in that music as Brian Wilson. In every song, every time, from here on out.

You probably have people in your life like that – friends who leave themselves behind in songs that still spook you a little whenever they pop up unbidden on the radio.

As for democracy crumbling? If it’s still standing when you read this, let’s just count it as a win and move on.

I’m supposed to be here to tell you that baseball is coming. I shouldn’t have to lean on baseball for solace. It’s not going to save a damn thing. But in its stupid, sweet way, it’s going to try.

But before it does, we have to spend a few more hours, days, weeks, in the Purgratorium.

Yes, I invented that word. I’ve had time on my hands.

Other words I’ve invented recently:

Continue reading →

As The Crow Flies

Posted on by
16

“They arrive as a river in the sky.”

My friend Bill wrote that the other day on his website to describe atmospheric rivers and how rain happens in Seattle.

I liked that line so much, he said I could take it. You can keep reading if you want, but  seriously, it’s not getting any better than “a river in the sky.”

Visualize any river you want in your sky, but mine is a river of crows.

freestocks.org/Pexels.com

Yes, we’ve moved on from rain in Seattle to crows in Virginia.

(And, if you keep reading – and, look, I’m not saying you should, I’m only saying you could – eventually we’re going to get to baseball. But, mostly, we’re talking crows today. But, baseball, if you’re patient. And, if you were patient enough to sit through a nearly seven-hour World Series game last month, you can certainly wade through this river of words that won’t even take you seven minutes. Oh, and you’ll get some Bob Dylan, too, because of course you will.)

Back to the crows.

In the fall, crows arrive like a river in the sky over our little farm and then rain themselves down into our yard. Their mission: pecans.

Over the years several people have insisted there are no pecan trees in our part of Virginia.

Tell that to her.

Maybe that’s what the crows say, too, just to keep the squirrels away. “No pecans here.” Crows are tricksters that way.

Oh look, they missed one.

Continue reading →

Season of Baseball. Season in Hell.

Posted on by
11

There will be poetry and noetry (not a word. should be a word.) here today.

There will be just enough baseball to keep the “baseball” in The Baseball Bloggess. (But not too much.)

There will be a double date gone bad.

There will be poets.

And one of the best bands of the 1980s.

Let’s go.

“Season in Hell”

On Tuesday night, the Baltimore Orioles won. That had happened just 71 times this season. Which sounds like a lot, but it is not. It is not good.

On Tuesday night, despite the win, the Baltimore Orioles were eliminated from the postseason.

In short, it was a worthless, meaningless, whatever win.

(The win on Wednesday afternoon? Also meaningless.)

That means for the next 10 games, Orioles fans will go through the motions of pretending they’re having a good time.

It looks bad, I know. (Because it is.) But eight teams are even stinkier than the O’s including the uber-awful Colorado Rockies who have won just 41 games this season.

It’s like being on a double date. (Stay with me on this. It’s a metaphor and metaphorizing is not my strong suit.)

Continue reading →

12 Things You Should Know About Arlie Pond

Posted on by
14

Come for the baseball, stay for the leprosy.

(Trust me, there will be leprosy.)

A sepia-toned photo of Arlington Pond from the 1890s.

Arlie Pond, 19th-century pitcher, meets all of the unfussy criteria of my “12 Things” series – quirky name that doesn’t come around much anymore; a mess of time-worn obscurity; and a backstory that’s weird, but, and this is important, ultimately honorable.

Do my “12 Things” players come bearing a prom-date bouquet of interesting?

They never disappoint.

Sure, sometimes they give too much. What am I supposed to do with all this?

Today I’m going to squeeze into my skinny jeans of storytelling so I can get all things Arlie Pond into 12 tidy snack bites.

Let’s begin.

1. Easy Stuff First.

Erasmus Arlington Pond was born in 1873 in Saugus, Massachusetts, just north of Boston.

Colorful vintage "Greetings from Rutland, Vermont" postcard

But his family moved to Rutland, Vermont early in his life and Vermont embraces him as their own (and so shall we). He was named for an uncle who was a doctor, and his father sold medical equipment. (Remember this. It will be on the test.)

Continue reading →

Trying Again

Posted on by
33

Life is hard. Times are tough. I haven’t written on here in forever. Forever being one year, but it is forever in the land of blogs. It seems like forever to me.

I missed you, dear readers (Reader? One? Two? Anyone?)

I’ve missed wrapping my head around faded and peculiar box scores in 100-year-old newspapers.

I’ve missed the challenge of finding some new and comforting way to explain the disappointment of the Baltimore Orioles.

(I have no words for that right now. I’ll need a little time before we again wander together down that mysterious, but maybe not all that surprising, Orioles road to nowhere. At least we have Ryan O’Hearn. There. I said it.)

But, all the bad news and weight of the world have occupied my working life and made my stress’y brain foggy and restless.

(It also put me in the ER last month, but that’s a story for another day.)

I needed a challenge. Something new, but sort of familiar. And that’s where Bob Dylan comes in. Because life isn’t all baseball. (It’s not, right?)

Continue reading →

Willie Mays

Posted on by
12

1961

“Willie Mays makes us young again. He makes us feel good about ourselves, our environment. He makes us reflect and smile. He makes us want to do better and be kinder.”

— John Shea, sportswriter and co-author of Mays’ memoir 24: Life Stories And Lessons From The Say Hey Kid

I’m pretty sure Willie Mays was my first baseball memory.

Not any particular game or play. Just Willie.

Much smarter people can remember exact details of their very first baseball game.

Not me. I was in my 20s before I got to my first game. And, I can only tell you a few things.

It was the Orioles. It was Memorial Stadium. It changed me.

There’s no Willie Mays in that memory. He’d retired more than a decade earlier.

But, still, long before that first live game, Willie Mays was baseball to me.

My memory is simple. Just Willie in his Giants uniform, standing in the outfield. Playing baseball.

Bob Costas has said that Willie Mays exuded joy. Maybe that’s what I felt. I don’t know.

My dad never took me to a game. I never saw Willie play. But, I knew. I just knew, Willie Mays was everything that baseball was and should be.

Here I am, a California girl, sometime during the last seasons of Willie’s career with the Giants.

I owned no baseball cap and the glove I had wasn’t even leather — it was made of some weird plastic thing. It’s long gone.

Continue reading →

“Baseball Weather Was Very Scarce.”

Posted on by
29

Waiting 18 months between posts here … you would think we’d have a lot of catching up to do.

You would think.

Do you have friends from long-ago that you’ve lost touch with and so you avoid reconnecting because there’s just so much you’d need to recap and who has time for all that and you feel guilty constantly thinking about how much you need to keep in touch but argh the time it will take to do that just paralyzes you and hey it’s not like they’ve reached out to you after all this time and then finally you send a quick one-word text hi because it’s been so long you’re not even sure you have their right number anymore and then moments later they text hi back and you drop right into a rhythm as if no time had passed at all?

Hi.

I’m sure there is much we have to catch up on. But, in many ways there’s not so much.

Still three cats. But Mookie Wilson-Betts is now diabetic and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to hear about that. Although I think he’d appreciate if I mention that he is an incredibly good patient what with all of the poking and prodding we must do to twice-daily to check his blood sugar and stick him with little squirts of insulin. (Perhaps we have told him that the insulin will, if he is good, give him super powers. Perhaps we have told him that the insulin will give him the ability to fly. Please don’t ruin this for us.)

There. Consider us caught up. Oh and this … Continue reading →