check swing

A player (rookie catcher Andrew Susac, of the San Francisco Giants) checks his swing. He holds back. He has a second thought, within a nanoseconds-limited cage. He reconsiders, and halts the muscular force of an intentional swing. In unintentionally casting his batting fate to Fate, Susac in turn receives a gift from the baseball gods and goddesses: the baseball sails over first base, ricochets off the leg of an umpire, and Susac finds himself on second base. A rally ensues. This is so not Western. In the Western world, will prevails. Will and willpower conspire to conjure results. Or so we are told. But in this instance will was thwarted. Willpower wilted. And the results were better than expected or anticipated.

garage sale: yes, we have no bananas

But we do have books, high-brow, low-brow, no-brow, pulp, pop, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, biography, spiritual, you-name-it. We put some books out for the annual Tipperary Hill Neighborhood Association garage sale. Also put out a few bicycles, a scooter, a hula hoop [should that be capped, as a brand name? Too lazy to look]. Sold the bikes, for $7 and $10 respectively. Sold some books, 10 for 10 bucks hardcover, 50 cents or best offer for paperbacks. (I typically worked out a deal for less. Just want to clear space on my shelves.) One young fella, Yankees fan, from down the street on Tipp Hill, came back to talk to me. I had given him a postcard promoting TIPP HILL LITANIES, my poetry book about Tipp Hill. He was all excited. He said he had heard me on the radio last year, on "Upon Further Review," talking about my baseball book. I happened to have a copy on the step. BASEBALL'S STARRY NIGHT. He bought one. I signed it. Good day.

While Supplies Last

Supplies.

As in ink and paper, and bits and bytes.

http://amzn.to/H4pSof

Digital order-takers digitally standing by.

Got yours?

Get on the train. It's moving fast!

Bravo, Braves Beneficence

So, Denis With One N and I head to the Arizona Diamondbacks at Atlanta Braves game. In advance of this, I have sent handwritten notes to all the official Braves broadcasters (to my knowledge) telling them I'd be at the game and asking if I could give them an autographed copy of Baseball's Starry Night and maybe even chat about the book on the air, with the full and sympathetic understanding that the book recalls a painful night for Braves fans. Tuesday morning I had received a Twitter DM from radio guy Kevin McAlpin (who had not received a note, unfortunately), but we never did end up meeting. Denis With One N and I conferred with Ticketmasterman Big Mike, holding court like a regal Buddha outside the Ted, but even Big Mike said check the box office if you insist on being out of the (for me, dreaded) sun. After buying three $40 seats (for Denis and his brother Jimmy and me), section 204L, behind the plate, third-base-ish, under the overhang out of the sun, I saw a guy with a Giants hat and -- bingo! -- animated conversation...with Tike and Dawn and Patrick, season ticket holders at AT&T, I believe, attending their 35th and 32 and 31st ballparks, something like that. Giants fans! Giants fans in Atlanta on baseball pilgrimage! I look for The Faithful all over, especially at ballparks, and it is always cool to chat it up with them. (This is ballpark number 20 for me, best I can tell.) Incidentally, the ticket window gal saw my Giants shirt and said she saw someone with a Giants hat, but I think it was someone different.

The game was a fairly sloppy and dull affair, starting off with Hudson v. Hudson, Daniel and Tim, that is, and ending with D.H. leaving early (turns out we learn today he tore an elbow ligament) and ending with a T.H. and Braves' win, 8-1. Chipper Jones three hits! Homer for Michael Bourn (and Jason Kubel. Mini fireworks, from the Gas South sign in right, for a Braves pitcher's strikeout; bigger fireworks, coming from the Coke bottle on the Skydeck in left, for a Braves HR. No such theatrics from the visitors' feats. During Bourn's homer, I was buying 10 bucks worth of 50-50 charity tix from a cute Braves volunteer or worker.

The high points were meeting and chatting with Craig P. and his son Sam, star players from Baseball's Starry Night. Craig asked me to autograph a book for Katiebravesfan, also in my book, which I did, and also, a book for Sam, which I did. It was just a very endearing moment, and they later joined us in our seats. In fact, warm moment is an understatement. It left me with the heartfelt conviction that it was totally right to drive from Syracuse to Cooperstown to Charlotte to Atlanta for this very moment, meeting these lovely people, these ardent Braves fans, this father-son duo of love (for each other and the game).

(Small World Department: Jim R. knew of Craig's wife and others in their mutual recent or current positions in the world of commerce.)

Denis With One N and I also toured the clean and friendly confines of Turner Field, getting views from left field, by the Coke bottle and the giant red Adirondack chairs, and walking all the over to the opposite side, by the right-field foul pole.

A splendid time was had by all, to paraphrase the Beatles in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 

Running on Empty-ish

On Friday, I headed east on the New York State Thruway [with its faux, new-age spelling] to Cooperstown to meet Lenny Fraraccio, known in the persona of Gio, the Tampa Bay Rays fan featured in my Baseball's Starry Night chronicle of last year's Game 162s. Gio and his kids and a friend have been making the summer rounds of Major League Baseball games in D.C., Boston, Philadelphia, and God knows where else. This was my inaugural trip driving my 2007 VW Rabbit, purchased last Monday. I have been carless since November 2009, sharing my wife's vehicle as needed.

Even though it was a Friday, approaching lunchtime, Cooperstown's sidewalks and streets were buzzing with tourists, young and old, mostly white. I sought to get my book place in some stories. Not easy. No dice. But I did leave little promotional cards in the Cooperstown Diner and in a bakery featuring canolis, macaroons, and other homemade goodies (upon leaving Cooperstown I bought very good coffee there and two macaroon cookies -- not macarons, which are hip and trendy now).

Gio was as I'd pictured him: energetic, head shaved, stocky, grayish goatee. It was a pleasure to meet his kids, Nic and Isabella, and Gio's friend Almy. All were sporting Rays gear; Almy had a Nats cap with a big W. Nic kept sweetly thanking me for including him in my book. At a pizza joint [thanks for lunch, Gio] Izzy showed us her glove with autographs by maybe one or two dozen players -- and Joe Maddon.

No Giants hats spotted, so no stories along that line. I was wearing a very handsome Game 162 t-shirt featuring an image of Evan Longoria rounding the bases after his second homer. It had been a Rays giveaway and Gio sent me a copy. In fact, Gio gave me a second Game 162 shirt in Cooperstown [thanks].

Before leaving town, I stopped at the Cooperstown, New York, post office to mail a copy of Baseball's Starry Night to former Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee. I had called him the night before and asked him if he'd like a copy. Sure. He gave me his address. No street needed. Just his name and the town and state. He said everyone knows everyone in his little town and the gene pool is about the size of a thimble. I inscribed to book, thanking Bill Lee for helping me with conversation, ideas, and encouragement, adding that the Hall of Fame, across the street, should have a special wing for The Spaceman.

As I headed on Route 28 south, the brownish wooden fence -- the kind you see on horse farms -- to my left, for maybe a mile, bordering cornfields and other green expanses made me smile. This will be a lovely journey. Not finding much to listen to on the radio, I listened to the hum of the motor and the car's AC and the thwack of the tires for long stretches. In Milford, maybe it was New Milford, NY, one home featured a Confederate flag side by side with an American flag on the porch. I kept driving south, picking up 88 to Binghamton, then south on 81 down through Scranton, Wilkes-Barre,  and Harrisburg. By evening, around 8, the rolling hills and farms south of Harrisburg were Midwesternish, with tractor dealers and auctions and barns and miles of infinite shades of green -- Midwesternish but likely hillier and with more contours. My Jackson Browne CD made for a perfect sound track, even if I had enough gas in the car to keep matters safely distinct from "Running on Empty." Cranking up the music real loud kept me awake and animated and satisfied. Staying on 81, I briefly rolled through Maryland and then into ravine-filled and lush West Virginia, soon riddled with Wal-Marts and strip malls on the sides of 81, giving an almost claustrophobic feel, sliding into Virginia, picking up the Nats at Orioles game on a Nats station (Jason Hammel would go on to win, 2-1), with the announcers describing a steady rain and distant lightning. Not for me, though.

After 470 miles or so and darkness and having eaten only a slice of sausage pizza and a bag of chips, I figured it was time to search for a room. I tried to grind on to Strasburg, just for the name, but, no, was getting tired. My first try, in Winchester, Virginia, was futile. Sold out. Get back on 81 south. I found a room at a Courtyard by Marriott, in what I thought was Romney, Virginia. I did not especially want to be staying in a place called Romney, but the given address was Winchester, Virginia, in the Shenandoah area. Check scores. Tim Lincecum has one bad inning. Giants losing 3-1. Sleep.

Saturday I woke up to the delightful news that the San Francisco Giants had rallied for four runs in the ninth inning to overcome the Oakland A's, barely, after giving up a homer in the bottom half, to protect Lincecum from a loss. He has not won since April. Sweet!

At breakfast, off the hotel lobby, I knew I was in the South and that I was a Northerner. Can't explain why or how. Perhaps the volume or the camaraderie of conversation, the bonhomie, the discussions of golf. Maybe just my paranoia.

Back on the road. Down 81 south through Virginia, along the Shenandoah Mountains, down through Roanoke, Blacksburg, lunch in Christiansburg at a very pleasant coffee shop, down through route 77 south, which featured the best vistas: breathtaking panorama of the Blue Ridge Mountains for who knows 100 miles and emergency turnoff for trucks that lose their brakes and gas at $2.99 a gallon and into North Carolina and into Charlotte and after going on the Inner Outer Inner fecking Outer Inner Inner Outer Outer Inner Infinite 485 Loop and not finding my friend Denis's [one N, Irish spelling] house I told him to come and find me at the Food Lion in Huntersville, North Carolina, or I was going to die of insanity.

And then before retiring on a Saturday night in Charlotte, I discover my beloved Giants pull out another Sweet Torture win, reminding me of sweet 2010 and the Year of the World Series.

Sweet. Like southern iced tea.

Book 'em

I now know the feeling of someone who has written a book, even if some would assert that 47,000+ words is not quite a book. Trust me, it is indeed. My book, Baseball's Starry Night, relives four Wild Card games of September 28, 2011. It involves the end point of collapses for the Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves and an evening-rising-star finish from the St. Louis Cardinals and a meteoric climax from the Tampa Bay Rays. I concentrate on the fans' experience and perspectives, which I am hoping is unusual and appealing. Folks who have read portions of Baseball's Starry Night love it.

The first sentence above says "feeling" but it is more than one feeling. I feel relieved, proud, tired, excited, anxious, evangelistic, pleased. Some of those adjectives aren't feelings, are they? That's all right.

People often talk of "writer's block." I found the writing was the most rewarding; the research, coordination, fact-checking, organizing were harder.

Stay tuned to find out more.

Baseball's Starry Night should be out in a matter of days, as an e-book and print-on-demand paperback. I just noticed that one of the Blogger-created tabs at the top of the screen is titled "monetize." I'll take that. Sure.

blahgging

Surely "blahgging" was coined before now, minted on some blase [append accent aigu over the "e"] blog or some creative commons.

No matter.

Speaking of "no matter," what would THAT be like?

Chime in.

With strings, attached.

String theory.

String quartets for existentialists and believers alike.

You're right. I'm blahgging.

Ain't got much to say today.

But hooray for baseball Spring Training!

enough to make you cry

Willie Mays. He played stickball with neighborhood kids.

No wonder he was my childhood hero.

Who shaped, opened, widened my views on race.

And why I stayed with the Giants even when they moved from New York to San Francisco.

2010: They Might Be (They Are) Giants!

Years in my head get iconic labels: 1963: JFK assassination. 1966: graduation. 1982: year my son was born, 1986, 1997: daughters’ births. 1989: Death of my father. 1995: wedding. 2005: Deaths of my friend Doug and my brother Richard. Births, deaths, marriages, job starts or terminations. 2008: Start of my successful business. Stuff like that. Milestones.

We all know the personal, note-to-self cerebral label 2010 gets:

My beloved (I've been a fan since New York) San Francisco Giants are World Series Champions. 2010? Oh yeah. Easy. That’s the Giants’ improbable World Series year. 2010? SF. 2010? Giants. 2010? Sweet. Baseball World Champions. 2010. Forever beautiful.

pen ultimate haiku 2010

pen ultimate: get it?

versus penultimate?

here you go:

sun melting snowbanks

World Series victors: Giants!

memory freeze-framed

April

What was that that T.S. Eliot said about April?

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering	5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

That's how he began "The Waste Land," published in 1922. It's a difficult poem, for sure, what with his and Ezra Pound's emendations.

Am I reading it wrong to say he is saying that April is cruel because it gives us life (as in "lilacs"), which will only fail us or leave us in the end?

He takes more comfort in snow and winter.

And he didn't even live in Syracuse!

Maybe he needed to watch some baseball, such as a 20-inning marathon yesterday, of nearly seven hours, the Mets somehow stumbling to victory over the better Cardinals.

Cardinals.

You hear them more in April.

I love them, their clarion chirp, sonorous bell of insouciance, reminding me of my late brother, who also loved them.

spellning counts

Go, Ginants?

Not quite.

lyrical baseball legacies

some well-wrought, sentimental, and savory memories over at OneFlapDown...

Continental Drift: A Giantific Obsession

So, when I said to my older brother Richard, "Who is your favorite team?" sometime around the winter of 1954-55, and he said, "The Giants," that was it. Little did I know it was fresh after the Catch and the World Series upset sweep of the Cleveland Indians. Little did I know of the nascent obsession this would engender. Little did I foresee the frustration, angst, passion, and excitement. Willie was the key. It wasn't hard to be galvanized by his free-lance style, the basket catch, the cap flying. The elan. The sheer boyish abandon. I put up Willie Mays stickers on my bureau, began a scrapbook. When playing neighborhood baseball, I chose to be number 24 and was taunted. "But he's a nigger," the other kids would say. It stung. (I was already teased for being skinny with buck teeth.) I outwardly brushed it off: "I don't care. So what." I ran from the outfield (a hillock in a housing project) with my shoulders haunched, as if it was slightly painful to run like a gazelle. My arm was good. My outfield Mays fantasy was just that, a fantasy, though Adolphus Hampton once turned to me, a few years later, when we were hitting them out, and paid me a high compliment: "Boy, you got an arm on you." I was in reality more like Charlie Brown, with the ball sailing over my head. I imitated Willie Mays's grip of the bat, the thumb overlapping, his dug-in stance, his almost-one-handed swing. They left after 1957. "Stay, Giants, stay." The clipping in my scrapbook. Was it 11,000 fans at the Polo Grounds against the Pirates? I fought back tears. 1958. They left but I stayed with them. Mostly because of Willie. But where else would I go? as one of the disciples said to Jesus. I ordered brochures from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. I was a virtual San Franciscan when we didn't say "virtual" like that. Three hours' time difference. Frustration. Morning paper. No late scores. Fortunately, the Stamford (Ct.) Advocate was an afternoon paper. WINS 1010 New York carried re-creations of the games. Les Keiter. I listened either on a transistor or at the Bendix that had tubes that had to heat up. Kenny Viola and I would call each other. "Did you bring out the rosary beads?" McCovey. Cepeda. 1962. Cuban missile crisis. Trouble at Ole Miss. Giants in the World Series against the hated Yankees, my other brother's team, my father's team. Watching Sunday afternoon Series games in a sea of AL fans who were open about their disdain of the NL's racial composition. WS rain delays. This after an exhilarating playoff win against the dreaded Dodgers, my friend Michael's team. We all really did argue over Mantle, Mays, and Snider. 1962. Everyone talks about Willie McCovey's line drive to Bobby Richardson, but I remember a catch by Tom Tresh before that as the killer. They carried Ralph Terry off the field. I was speechless. I don't recall my brother Jack taunting me; gallant of him. Many games at Shea. Marichal. Mays hits a homer at my brother Bobby's first Major League game. He tells me years later that he remembers Masanori Murakami's debut. road trips. A game in 1971 in Cincinnati. A trip to Candlestick in 1974. Autographs. I once sent a check for five or six bucks to Giants owner Bob Lurie, to give a seat to a poor kid. I was ashamed of those shamefully small crowds. Under 1,000? Get someone in those stands! A laughably quixotic move. Can you believe they cashed the check? Bud Herseth stops a move to not-so-far Toronto. 1978. Press pass to Pittsburgh. A copy editor playing reporter with a Giants hat on! No wonder Vida Blue, recently returned McCovey, Altobelli, Terry Whitfield, Montefusco were engaging and warm. No pretense of objectivity from me. My son Ethan and I having a catch ("Field of Dreams" got that phrase right near the ending) in the back yard; he misses, glasses flying off, imprint of the stitching on his forehead, ending his athletic career then and there. 2002. All set to write an emotional tribute, long-lost World Series love letter. Publish it somewhere. Finally. Nope. No such luck. 2003. With such a great wire-to-wire year, high hopes. Dashed by Marlins. And then a pilgrimage to 24 Willie Mays Plaza this year. 2009. Something overcame me when I heard that sentimental Tony Bennett song in the late afternoon, the water in the bay sparkling, the crowd filing out, buoyant. The bridge stoic and iconic. Something part arrival, part Mecca, part frustration, part holy. All parts gratitude. A sense of place. Not a stranger among strangers 3,000 miles away. A communal camaraderie. My wife, Beth, and my daughters Adrianna and Evelyn say, "What's wrong?" as I catch up with them, my face red and contorted. "Nothing's wrong. I'm just...It's good. It's all good." Eugenio Velez gives Adrianna an autograph. When I get back, I buy that Tony Bennett song on iTunes. It is said that the author John Updike moved from New York to Boston just to see Ted Williams play. I'd move to San Francisco just to see Tim Lincecum play, whose jersey my daughter wears, free of the taunts I had heard back in the "Father Knows Best" "Ozzie and Harriet" "Amos 'n' Andy" Fifties. 2009. You never know. Still alive. And kickin'. I am there. My DNA floats somewhere along Third & King, or DeHaro Street or Sacramento or Clay or Montgomery or California. Still alive.

Center Field Fantasy

an early birthday present for Willie Mays:

Center Field Fantasy

I could do that
Tap my glove gallop hat’s off
Horizon bound
Basket catch twirl homeward

I could do that
I all but said to the stranger
In the park
All shiny youth
On my sunset stroll

I could do that
If you only knew
In my dreams
Of Technicolor yesterday
Long gone
Rounding third

Sportsmanlike Conduct

I watch the scores. I follow games online. I listen to play-by-play on XM satellite radio. I consult the transactions column in the dead of winter. Hats. Outerwear. Paraphernalia with the San Francisco Giants team logo on it. You tell yourself not to get too disappointed if they lose, or too excited if they win (increasingly rare). They last won the World Series in 1954. I was alive but have no memory of it. too young. My team lives and plays home games three time zones away. They left New York after the 1957 season. They abandoned me; I stayed. I flirted with others. This is insane. It is the opposite of Zen detachment. It is attachment at its worst. What's the sense in it? Imagine if you had to explain this infatuation (most frequently indulged in by males) to an alien from another galaxy. You're disappointed why? Because someone lost playing a baseball game 3,000 miles away? Someone you never met and who does not know you exist? Explain that part again, please. Don't click on ESPN, skip the sports pages in the morning paper, ignore it all, be true to your own well-being and sense of happiness. Right. It's not just me. Extend it worldwide, to all sports, to any sport. The yelling in the stands, the barroom fights, the hooliganism, the fierce loyalties, the yelling at the television screen, the roller coaster of hope and despair. Completely and entirely manufactured and contrived by accidents of time and place or legacy or kinship. The same as the stuff of war. Oh, sure, if they were winning all the time it'd be easier, right? Hardly. Hardly. When is enough? Is abundance enough? Or is enough abundance? It does not matter. It is psychosis. It is fantasy. Astral projection makes more sense than following sports as a fan (the word fan comes from fanatic). Imagine the untold waste, the pitiful regret people express, even on their deathbeds. Oh, if only Chelsea had won. I wish I had seen the Cubs win the Series. But only if Wolverhampton had won it all. My life would've been complete if the Yankees had won just once more. Or the Sox. Or the Indians. Or Royals. But only if Team U-Name-It had won it all just for me. Just once. Then I would have been happy, my life would've been complete. Except for more. Just once more. What a displaced outlook. What a conditional way to live. Libera me. Deliver me. I pray that I wear this allegiance like a loose garment, a cloak as easily shed as a snake his skin.

My Oh! My

With all the hoopla over Barry Bonds's chase of Hank Aaron's home run record, you seldom hear the name of Sadaharu Oh.

You should. We all should.

The guy's not gettin' proper props on this homer thing.

A fellow by the name of Jim Albright, at his BaseballGuru.com, makes an impressive case for Oh's enshrinement in the Baseball Hall of Fame. And I concur. Oh-san belongs there.

My introduction to Mr. Oh (as opposed to my clumsy intro to Ms. O in my youth, HAHAHAHAHA) was about twenty years ago, in the superb biography Sadaharu Oh: A Zen Way of Baseball by Sadaharu Oh and David Falkner. (It's actually quite difficult to find this truly excellent book; I should check out that blogger again who was paring down his library for free; now who was that?).

Oh suffered discrimination because of his mixed ancestry; was a pitcher early on, just as Babe Ruth was; played through excruciating pain in a critical game; and -- get this -- swung a samurai sword at a tissue dangling from a string tied to the ceiling to perfect his swing. The key is waiting, waiting. Very Zen. Very Haruki Muakami. Oh. And he hit 868 homers. That's 8-6-8.

Anyway, great baseball players (including Tom Seaver, Davey Johnson, Pete Rose, Hal McRae, Don Baylor, Frank Howard, Greg Luzinski, Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, and Don Dyrsdale) have attested to Oh's greatness -- and have all said he would have excelled even in American Major League Baseball. (This is underscored now by all the great Japanese players forging very fine careers over here. Many players can be named. I personally saw Masanori Murakami play at Shea Stadium with my brother in 1964 before a crowd of more than 50,000. It was not only Murakami's debut; he was the first Japanese-born player to play in an American game. And, according to the linked story, he said it was easier to pitch in the U.S. than in Japan.)

So, why the cold-as-fresh-shushi shoulder?

The youth of sports reporters? Xenophobia [which isn't very Zen-like; and why doesn't that word start with a Z, huh?]? Just-plain ignorance?

Don't know.

But, way to go, Mr. Oh!

They Might Be Jints

Hope springs eternal -- as in spring training. Or at least temporarily eternal. Or maybe not at all. This unreasonable, illogical, and typically futile springtime hoping began for me sometime between the winter of 1954 and the spring of 1955. I had asked my brother, Richard, whom he rooted for. The New York Giants, was his answer. And it's been my answer from then until now. I kept a scrapbook in those Polo Grounds days; it consisted of pasted-in news clippings and baseball cards, including the card of my beloved Willie Mays and even Johnny Antonelli, who threw left and batted right and had a unibrow, all just like me. (Note the "pasted in"; that means the Willie Mays card is decidedly not worth hundreds of dollars, not that I'm selling any of it.) (Another time I'll write about my Willie Mays hero worship: trying to call him when I was 10 years old; how he influenced my attitudes toward race; how I imagined I was number 24 in the field.) I stuck with the Giants even when they left New York and abandoned me, left to listen to corny (but believable to me) re-creations of games by Les Keiter on WINS 1010, as a tickertape fed his contrived play-by-play backed up by sound effects; stuck with them despite a three-hour time difference owing to San Franciso's distance 3,000 miles away (I sent away to the Chamber of Commerce ask information about this place (they obliged by sending a brochure); remained faithful largely because of The Say Hey Kid, and all the elan and verve and reckless fun and drama he brought to the field and beyond; even remained faithful after my moving back to the NYC metro area, when the Mets were there to watch in person, or on TV, or on radio. I admit to having flirted with fan-adultery then (fantasizing an affair with the Mets), but whenever my boys came into town I could not root against them, especially after meeting Nick Harrigan on the No. 7 train after a game at Shea in 1979 or 1980 (Nick who had seen every Giants game in New York since the 1930s if memory serves); nor could I in 1978 after wearing an SF cap on my head at a game in Pittsburgh where I had a press pass and got to interview the likes of Vida Blue and Willie McCovey and John Montefusco -- with a Giants cap on for heaven's sake.

It would be easier to give it all up. Especially after the nightmare of 2002, which bears no repeating here.

The skin is thicker; the passion has waned; the naive optimism tempered -- for the Giants at least.

I rarely see them in person; it's been years. The Internet has replaced those days of dialing in games from as far away as Pittsburgh, Saint Louis, Cincinnati -- even Chicago or Atlanta on a night with a rare, good skip with little static.

The gods have left Mount Olympus, and all the seams are worn.
The hero's in the grandstands with all his memories torn.
I can hardly find the paper's box score
With all the news of war.

And as for this year's Giants, they've put me in a downright subjunctive mood. (I was indicatively captivated yesterday, browsing at Borders, by Michele Morano's winning essay on the subjunctive mood; I would check her out if I were you, before our language loses the last of this dying breed, the subjunctive.)

Might is the operative word.

Might be pretty good; might be mediocre; might even be awful.

But I most likely won't fret much, no matter which way it all goes.

After all, Willie's on the sidelines -- and he's coaching Mr. Bonds.

(See, can't help it. Just checked. The boys lost today, 10-9. Could, might, would, may be a harbinger of things to come.)


P.S. Sorry, my friend, Michael Christelman. Still can't stand the Dodgers, even though you have a better team this year. Up for a friendly wager?

Fencebusters

Bored (i.e., rich) teenagers are busting fences as a form of entertainment. According to a recent story in The New York Times, suburban Long Island (New York) teens run at and hurl themselves into wooden fences separating neighbors, sending themselves and slats flying. Then they brag about it by displaying images or videos of their, um, performance art on various Web sites.

It's called fence-plowing or fence-popping. The more technical term is:

defencestration.

This behavior is more popularly known as moronism.

To my knowledge, advanced defencestration is not yet an accredited course at any college in Southern Florida, Texas, or California.

Is Slats Dominoes their leader?

Although they undoubtedly never heard of him, were they subconsciously inspired by the late Pete Reiser, the indomitable if reckless major league baseball outfielder known for crashing into outfield walls and fences?

Do they sing "Don't Fence Me In" while performing?

Does their ritual include reciting lines from the play Fences?

They must be fans of the Boston Red Sox, because you just know they love Fenceway Park.

Where were they from 1961 to 1989?

Certainly not in Berlin. That wall just didn't have enough give, did it, kids?