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one of the best parts of baseball is when the manager comes out to take out a starter after a good outing and all the infielders come too to touch his butt before he goes like that’s so sweet yes let’s all five of us touch our colleague’s butt for the good job he did
need to buy baseball cards
World Series champs baby!!!
“The only thing I will say now is we’ve got a great season coming up,” he said. “Everybody is really excited about baseball. Baseball is in a great spot. We’ve got a lot of incredible players. I love baseball. I’m excited about it.” --- Clayton Kershaw as quoted in the L.A. Times
Is it me or does it sound like he’s speaking to reporters while Rob Manfred is holding him at gunpoint?
On the day that color and truth returned to the universe, the New York Mets lost their first baseball game. They would lose their next eight as well, and a total of 120 out of 160 that year, constructing a pyramid of ineptitude that has not been equaled before or since. We pilgrims, we aberrant souls, hovered beside their blue and orange NY caps like hummingbirds and suffered their losses gladly.
Robert Mayer in Baseball and Men’s Lives (pg 110)
I need all 29 other teams to lock the fuck in, I want coming of age baseball movie training montages, I want loveable losers becoming ragtag winners through the power of friendship when it matters most, I need everyone to focus on DESTROYING THEM, they MUST lose they MUST be embarrassed we must throw everything we have at them I want them to explode
On baseball and belief and the personal stakes of it all from Baseball and Men’s Lives by Robert Mayer (pg 58-60)
It is a quiet evening in June, the Mets are stalled at the .500 mark, 28 and 28, three games behind the Pirates, and they are playing a not particularly significant game at Montreal…
Unfortunately, as is my lifetime compulsion, I watch the game till the end. Gooden relinquishes most of the lead in the bottom of the eighth, and when John Franco is brought in to relieve, he blows a save for the first time this season. At the end of eight the score is tied, 5-5. My cheerful evening has slipped, with the suddenness of a spring shower, into vague uneasiness…
The Mets take a 6-5 lead into the bottom of the ninth. Exasperation tilts its face toward a watchful wariness.
Bottom of the ninth. With one out Bonilla in right breaks in for a line drive. Then he slams on the breaks and watches the ball sail over his head for a double that should have been caught. The ghost of Metsies past watches and grind. Can’t anybody here play this game? Franco uncharacteristically walks the next batter on four pitches. The tying and winning runs are on base. Wariness slumps, sunken chested, into resignation.
Earlier in the game I had eaten dinner in front of the set: roast skinless chicken breast, roasted potatoes, carrots, onions. Tasty and heart-wise. The empty plate has long since been removed to the kitchen sink, but a napkin and a toothpick are on the small table in front of me. I move the napkin, the toothpick, from the table to the desk beside me.
With the Mets about to blow another, John Franco stretches, pitches. The batter slams a sharp grounder up the middle. Franco spears it on one hop. He turns and fires toward second. The throw is high and to the right, is headed toward right-center, but Schofield (again!) leaps high, somehow manages to flag the ball while keeping his foot on the base, evades another set of incoming spikes, and completes the double play. The game is over. The Mets, undeserving, have staggered to a victory.
I slump in my chair. The dinner churning in my stomach. The Mets are now 29 and 28. Would it really have mattered, in the universal scheme of things, if they had ended this night at 28 and 29? What’s Torborg to me, or me to Torborg, that I should churn for him?
Idly, I glance toward my telephone. He won’t even call, I’m sure of it. He won’t even call to thank me for moving the napkin, the toothpick.
