The Running of the Bulls

Park on Hiawatha Boulevard, outside the stadium. Save the three bucks or whatever it is now. Moody sky, as in steel-wool and grouchy and changeable. Walk the length of the nearly-empty parking lot. The stadium lights ablaze. The boyhood thrill of the miracle of baseball in the quickening darkness. Big lights big baseball. Seek to buy one ticket at the one ticket window open, giving off a reverential residential light. "We're not selling anymore tickets. Just go right in." "Really?" "Yeah, go ahead." Waltz right through the open main gate, avoiding the turnstile and the turnstile-keepers, who ignore me. Or were they absent? Climb the stairs. The lambent landscape of Martian green with a backdrop of brighter-than-ambient-evening techno-brand-new scoreboard luminescence. Buy coffee. $2. "Need a stirrer?" "Pardon me?" "A stirrer?" "Sure." "Room for cream?" "No." Ask for creamers. Pour in the contents of one. Spy Tex. He is huddled. Hood up. For the first time, I pity him. Does he know he is at a ballgame? Looks terribly lost. And mournful. The 11,000+ seats are blue and visible because they are empty and wet from two days of rain. Maybe 200 or fewer here. Count them, if you want to take the team. Listen to the players. "Three! Three!" an outfielder yells to one of his outfield compadres, telling him to throw to third. Two players from the visiting Durham Bulls get ejected as balls and strikes are argued with the home-plate ump. In the bizarre silence you can hear them argue. "What? Yes, you what?" Sarcastic barbs traded. We the audience hear it as rude eavesdroppers. Similarly, the thin crowd amplifies the shouts of any lone complainer in the crowd, though crowd is not the word. The silly taunts to the HP ump sound all the more juvenile and shrill as the get put on center stage. The whole show has an eerie voyeuristic ambiance. "How many chicken tenders for $7.50?" "Four." "Too many." "How about the fried dough? I'll take that for $3.50." After 5 to 7 minutes, I get four cinnamon- and sugar-coated sticks of fried dough. Best bargain in the house, at least by sheer volume. So far I've spent $5.50 total to get there, park, get in. Foul ball hit to right-field over where the Bulls' bullpen sits, on the field. The foul bounces into the stands. A kid runs toward it. "That's my ball." Not that I care. I'd even give it away. It's just an attempt to be less invisible. As I walk to the five or six guys in the pen, "You know about my book on Game 162?" holding a card of it in my hand. Ignored. Ignored as if there is a Plexiglas wall. Not even a turn or shrug. Nevertheless, I sit right next to them. "Were you up in September?" "No, but he was," a stocky fellow says with a Latino accent but perfect English, nodding to the pitcher to his left, who ignores me. "The Rays will be in the Series," I venture. Ignored. Now I'm angry at them and at me. I'm not a gambler or hustler. Just say you don't want to talk to me. I continue to sit there, the lone human in right field's seats. I'm beginning to hope I'm irritating the bullpen. Then I start to enjoy the amateur-essness and doltishness of the jocks. As if scripted in a bad movie parody, my semi-friendly burly guy says "home run, home run" to any of his batters. It is so silly as to be comical. I walk away because RaysFanGio calls me in answer to my lament describing all this. He tells me the anatomical act he requests of Major League players when they are rude and arrogant to him like that. I wander around the empty, echoing stadium, settling behind the plate talking with two brothers, one a local funeral director who buried Bob Shawkey in Syracuse at the age of 90 in 1980. Shawkey pitched the first game for the Yankees in Yankee Stadium in 1923. Years later when Sehl Burns did go to the Stadium for the first time, he had box seats in left field. Left field? he inquired of the Yankees brass. When he told them he buried Shawkey he was transferred to a seat behind home plate and was treated like a sultan in the house built, as they say, by the Sultan of Swat. After the 2-1 win by the Bulls in Game 2 to gain a split of the double-header (seven innings per game), I see a guy wearing a Tampa Bay Rays hat. "Your team?" He says, "Yes." I tell him I love Joe Maddon and the Rays will be in the Series. And then I hand him and his friend cards telling them about "Baseball's Starry Night." "Oh, I saw that in the paper. That's you?" I walk out the empty parking lot. The CRV is still there on the pavement near Hiawatha Boulevard. The cars that were near it are gone, but the car is there. The stadium lights still glow in back of me.

vibes

is it me
or the ether
is it me
or the either
or the either/or
seems to be we as animals can almost smell each other as humans and sometimes not find ourselves wagging our tails in eager friendliness
I am not sure what made me think of this
maybe the look I received from a total stranger boring and drilling into me
or is it just my perception
well of course it's my perception
but how accurate is it
are you annoyed by my lack of question marks
so these people exhibited what appeared underscore bold consternation toward me
but how many times a day do I send out the same vibe to others
albeit unknowingly and perhaps unintentionally

Where Have I Been?

I've been signing copies of BASEBALL'S STARRY NIGHT.

I've been Tweeting about BASEBALL'S STARRY NIGHT, even went back on Facebook to promote BASEBALL'S STARRY NIGHT.

Do you see a trend here?

Funny, since I've been gone Blogger has assumed a new look. Strange. Everything looks just like Posterous.com. Who is copying whom, hunh?

Carry on.

As you were.

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.

alienation of affection

It's a rather poetic term, isn't it?

Alienation of affection?

Did you know it dates to at least the 1800s and is a legal term associated with tort cases involving adultery?

I didn't know that, did you?

Who is doing the alienating?

Who the affecting?

Who is alienated from whom?

From whose affection?

What would "alienation of affectation" mean?

Does alienation of affection therefore result in bonding of disaffection?

Who doesn't feel alienated from affection now and then?

Know what I mean?

How would one insource such outsourcing of affection?

Do you think this is all just fun and games, merely wordplay?

How do you measure alienation?

How do you assess affection?

When do you know you've reached the state of "alienation of affection"?

What's the cure for alienation of affection?

What is this, twenty questions or something?

Are we done here?

It Is written, Or Is It?

Two weeks ago last Saturday -- oh, who cares when it was. Does it matter? So, I'm standing by the doorway inside Chipotle (which nearly everyone pronounces as if it were spelled Chipoltee), on Marshall Street, in Syracuse. I'm observing people accessible and visible on the sidewalk, easily seen through the big plate-glass window comprising the store's facade as they busily stream by. I see this bearded fellow walk by, wearing a Boston Red Sox wool cap. Wait. We both catch each other's eye. Wait. Hold it there a sec. There's that expression "double take." Or, as Merriam-Webster.com puts it:

"a delayed reaction to a surprising or significant situation after an initial failure to notice anything unusual"

Merriam-Webster says the first known use in English was in 1930.

In 2012, we both did a double take. Just like on TV or in the movies.

Stopped in our pedestrian, quotidian tracks.

We each did a take, then stopped, then did another take, maybe even a third and a fourth take.

Then I opened the door and advanced outside.

"Dan?"

"Paul?"

"Paul?"

"Dan?"

We laughed. But, knowing Dan, he was not totally surprised. Knowing me, I was not totally surprised. Yes, we were in Syracuse, but Dan lives in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. We see each other maybe once a year, maybe once every few years. We've gone stretches of hardly having any contact for -- what? -- a decade? So, the coolest thing is we were surprised but not surprised. Dan, knowing me, and vice versa, admits of such providential possibilities. And vice versa. (There's an expression: vice versa. Why isn't there an expression "virtue versa"?)

In the movie "Lawrence of Arabia," if I recall correctly, Lawrence says to one of the Arab tribal leaders: "It is written." Wait. Wouldn't it make more sense if someone said it to T.E. Lawrence? "It is written." By whom? And is it? If I remember the movie correctly, Lawrence ends up thinking nothing is written.

For reasons I find hard to explain, the phrase "it is written" resonates with me more readily than "it is God's will" or "God has a plan for us" or "God has a plan for me." And yet. Why? One sounds more mystical? Or mysterious? Or more respectful of free will? Can't explain that.

And yet.

So, was this written? Or pure coincidence?

And does it matter?

Why?

Or why not?

killing me unsoftly

This is not an insensitive rant. It offers no disrespect to victims of violence. It's a semantic commentary, a diatribe on diction. A reflection on language. In the last few days on TV or radio news reports I've been hearing the phrases "brutally murdered" or "brutally beaten." Really? Would it be "kindly murdered"? Or "gently beaten"? I don't think so. I don't think the phrase "killing with kindness" is meant to summon those meanings. And I don't think those who utter such phrases do so with Shakespearean irony, as when Hamlet has some wordplay over the murder of his father (if I recall rightly): "a little more than kin, and less than kind."