Category Archives: Life

Looks At Books

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(Fun Fact: The following sentence, not gibberish. Promise.)

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

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

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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.

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The Purgatorium

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“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:

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As The Crow Flies

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“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.

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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.)

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Trying Again

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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?)

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It Sure Is Quiet Around Here

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January 3, 2022

You can get a lot of thinking done when it’s quiet.

Our power was out for nearly five days last week, the result of a heavy, wet snow that blanketed a big chunk of Virginia and knocked out nearly everyone’s power.

Our not-quite-but-nearly-five-day power outage is not the reason I have been quiet on here for two months now. I have no good reason for that to be honest. Things.

Yeh, it’s pretty … until the power goes out.

But, those powerless days last week were, in their way, quiet.

Although, to be honest, they weren’t completely powerless and they weren’t exactly quiet.

We are extraordinarily lucky to have a generator that feeds the house in times of power outages. But, we felt it necessary to conserve its slowly dwindling tank of fuel, as we worried that it wouldn’t last as long as the outage would, which meant turning the thermostat extremely low – (extremely low by my standards, as I am hothouse orchid) – using lights sparingly, hot water even less, and the oven not at all. Continue reading →

9 Years … 9 Things.

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It was two weeks ago that WordPress reminded me that The Baseball Bloggess is 9 years old. Happy belated birth’a’versary, me!

I would have written about this two weeks ago, but I was busy watching the Baltimore Orioles sweep the Washington Nationals that weekend. That sweeping by the lowly – but occasionally feisty – Orioles was the tipping point that led the Nationals to, quite literally, trade away 30 percent of their lineup, including sending two beloved players, Max Scherzer and Trea Turner, to the Dodgers.

Dear Washington Nationals Fans,

Sorry about that.

Your Friend, The Baseball Bloggess

Sure, I’m a little late, but I’m ready to celebrate 9 years of honing the qwerty skills I learned in Mr. Brown’s high school typing class. Whether you’ve been reading from the beginning (that’s just you, Editor/Husband) or happened upon this for the first time today, The Baseball Bloggess is glad you’re here and considers you a close personal friend.

From 9 innings to 9 players on a lineup card, baseball is a 9’centric game.

So, here are 9, 9’ish things as I belatedly celebrate the 9-year birth’a’versary of The Baseball Bloggess.

1) The 9th Most Popular Post On This Website: Edd Roush Takes A Nap In The Outfield

I gotta hand it to Cincinnati Reds fans – they love baseball history.

Well, they love this story anyway, of how, in 1920, future Hall of Fame outfielder Edd Roush found a way to take a nap … in center field … during a game. But then, who doesn’t love a good napping story?

Public Domain, via The Library of Congress

Does he look tired to you? Continue reading →

Baseball & The Moon

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“The love of base ball is wide spread. A little six year old was sitting upon the steps, with a base ball in his hand, gazing intently at the moon. ‘Pa, is there only one man in the moon?’ asked he.

“’That’s the tradition my son; the man in the moon is the only inhabitant of that bright world we have ever heard of.’

“After a moment of pause he remarked with a sigh, ‘He must be lonesome, pa, with no one to play base ball with.’”

— The Marysville (Kansas) Enterprise, 1867

Photo: “Kids In June.” The Baseball Bloggess, 6/26/2021

Photo: Pixabay via Pexels.com

 

An Unfussy Meal For An Unfussy Man

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My dad was not a fussy man.

He probably never gave a minute’s thought to whether anyone would remember him once he was gone.

I’m pretty sure he lived mostly in the moment … he didn’t sit around reminiscing about growing up or growing old, or wonder or worry about what was going to happen next.

Not out loud, anyway. Not with me, anyway.

(Did I have a mohawk?)

One of the only things my dad would reminisce about – and he talked about it often – was a Basque restaurant he would stop and eat at in Fresno from the days when we lived in California and he would work the Sacramento-Stockton-Fresno circuit.

It must have been one helluva restaurant because my dad had a good long life and many meals with which to compare. He must have had plenty of other more interesting things to remember. He must have had other good meals. Better meals.

He must have. Continue reading →