the city workers arrived towards the end of the day and installed a blue bench under a tree that had been there longer than i’d been alive and people would sit on the bench, morning, noon, and night and sometimes they would be total strangers and start up a conversation about the temperature and then hockey and maybe Iran…..it was all wide open…
…And other times which was most of the time, there’d be only one person sitting on the bench like there was once an orthodontist who enjoyed the branches above the bench, the way they hung over him, a shelter feel.
and there was a janitor who sat there too and he had the most beautiful daughter and she would sit with him. she didn’t smoke cigarettes and wore an old leather hippy jacket with the waving fringes like Dennis Hopper’s jacket in Easy Rider.
And there was a homeless person that sat on the bench often and he had cancer and took all kinds of pills and he was the kindest person you’d ever want to meet and then he was gone and then one day so was the bench…
I was happy for King Felix Hernandez when he won the Cy Young in 2010 with only 13 wins and wondered if I would go on to study math at a local junior college and understand King Felix’s 7.2 WAR that year
But I’ve come to love wins again and value them as a badge of honor, nothing short of magical and one example of this Houdini courage to be chained and handcuffed, stuffed into a chest that is then locked and lowered into water, 20, 30 feet….a crowd anticipating the worst and simultaneously hoping for the best. Yes, the pitcher is Pete Vuckovich and it’s 1982 and he wins 18 games, takes home the Cy Young and yet his WHIP was 1.502 which I love him working out of jams and hi WAR, pedestrian, as they say, of 2.8.
And speaking of WAR…i have no idea how to do the calculation or what it all means but I do know a good one from a bad one which is like knowing 7 is more than 2 as in King Felix versus Pete Vuckovich.
if some casual fan asks me about WAR, my baseball ego deflates because I have no idea, only an example and then it becomes clearer to me and hopefully to them sort of and I say sort of because I’m not really sure if WAR is a tell all stat or not.
I only know 1967 from a documentary about the Red Sox and they never mentioned the word WAR, but they did sing the praises of Carl Yastrzemski with that old and tired, but effective expression – he “carried the team on his back,” so I figured Yastrzemski’s WAR for the season would be high and then with so much anticipation in my baseball mind, i looked it up and YAZ for just one season, that 67 season, he reached 12.4 or 12.5…..On baseball ref, on Yaz’s player page, it lists 12.5 and on the single season highest WAR, it says 12.4. Either way, Yaz produced the 4th highest single season WAR of all time, right behind Babe Ruth who holds the top three spots.
And now if you’ll excuse me, in addition to math, I need to study physics to better understand exit velocity or not. I’m more interested in bat control, in Nori Aoki shooting a ball to the opposite field and runner on second advances to third.
i watch dogs to osmosis me a better strategy – sleep and love
trees too, their wind dance ruffling and then sittin’ buddha silent still
i sensed it was an old tree.
hair in its ears,
bald head,
a limp in the air
afternoon snoozes,
and you could hear amnesia tree rings,
echoes
crackling voice,
lots of laughs,
embers in eyes along birch tree trunks
ready to reignite its roots feet
and begin again,
public places
conversation
a laundromat washing machine window
so many colors spinning a
t-shirt collage.
textiles
Bangladesh, i’m always gonna love you.
i was checking in on the baseball station, mlb tv, a 24 hour baseball station? an impossible thought 40 years ago. and yes, the station repeats its programming and doesn’t show a large variety of baseball movies, but 24 hours! a spoiled world for some of us. they even have pancake mix now with all you need in one box, just add water!
anyway, i’m not sure when it flashed across the mlb tv screen, but there it was, a dodgers emblem and i couldn’t believe it. how did i miss it all these years? And those dodgers world series against the yankees in the late 70’s that they lost both times and those were my post-season baseball formative years, the coast versus the coast, LA against New York and all that meant to people and i’m sure i musta seen it back then, but all i know for sure is now and i must be losing my mind because i see it, that red stitched baseball
shining its red spaceship rays
inspiring dodgers baseball blues life and i’m not even a dodger fan. I’ve never been to LA, but i like Charles Bukowski and John Fante and I’ve been to Brooklyn and i loved brooklyn and that makes me a Dodger’s fan because of Jackie Robinson though sometimes I wonder if the whole thing was a trick and the real motive was to not only obtain great players who changed teams – made them better, but simultaneously gutting the Negro Leagues which was an African American institution, a nice juicy slice of Americana and kudos, better late than never to showcase this league, but it’s hard to not daydream about baseball once again being a destination for African Americans.
LeBron says Griffey made baseball “cool” as if it wasn’t before him? But I think I get what he means for probably the same reason I loved baseball before anything else because i’m still a baseball nerd who stinks at math and common sense so advanced metrics make no sense to me but wins and losses do.
i hope wins and losses come back in vogue as they say because ultimately, all the elements have to conspire benevolently for a pitcher to win and I like the elements – the good bounces, the working out of jams, having a great defense that day, the right moon phase, favorable umpire calls……wind and that’s why i will never like instant replay and not just because of the poisonous billion dollar gambling business that probably inspired it, but because perfection all the time is boring…i mean in a hospital it saves lives and that’s good, great, and excellent but a manager arguing with an ump….. that not being around anymore? It’s like cutting scenes out of a movie, good scenes, memorable ones.
WJR. Detroit. AM dial. Tigers hosting the Brewers. Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey with the call.
Brian “moose” Haas on the mound for the Brewers and Vern “golden” Rule for the tigers. Harwell explains how Moose got his nickname…..his dad took one look at him and said he was big; that he was a moose and so it goes.
the game. May 8, 1977 and the tenor of the announcers voices is pavorotti but I know nothing about opera to appreciate its genius, but hearing Harwell say, “Staub swings and hits a choppah to second,” instant grammy award and I had Harwell pegged as a Massachusetts dude, that “choppah” as in “where’s the wine sweetheart?” “Oh, it’s down cellah.”………..turns out Harwell hails from atlanta and so what the hell do i know, just familiar names….Bill Travers, Von Joshua, Sixto Lezcano, my 1970’s Topps doubles and triples and the crowd at Tiger stadium and me too there in some compelling youtube time machine.
The Brewers cruising with Haas and out in front thanks to Dan Thomas who hit a two-run homer off Rule and the Brewers never trailed after that if I’m not mistaken? I could just go and look at the boxscore, but maybe it’s better for my mind to try and remember on its own.
early in the game, between innings, I catch the answer to a trivia question, something about Early Wynn’s 300th win happening when he was 43. I don’t remember the question, but the muse had been launched. I took a look to see who was the oldest to reach 300 and before I looked, I guessed and I got it right, Phil Niekro at 46.
I wasn’t so lucky with the youngest, that being Kid Nichols from another century before my grandpa was born.
it was vinyl jacket day at tiger stadium and there were over 25,000 fans….i had one of those jackets, Brewers colors, rain jackets and they worked unless it poured, then the vinyl just stuck to my skin, but it had the M and B Brewers logo which is all that mattered.
danny thomas’s two-run homer early in the game was one of five six homers in his short, topsy turvy, tragic career and such a horrible end to a short life…talk about potential taking an unpredictable twist. I’m sadly reminded of that beauty gone awry in the movie Requiem For a Dream.
i knew the bullet points of Thomas’s career and have a bunch of his 77 topps rookie card that he shares with Jack Clark, Ruppert Jones and Lee Mazilli, not bad company but there is something amiss in his face in this Hollywood squares card…..he didn’t look like he wanted to be there, but then again, Mazilli looks like he’s ready to disobey a restraining order and you get the idea. All these faces of players that don’t really tell their story, just what our minds conjure up in the moment.
There was birmingham where it began for Dan Thomas and mobile and illinois and tough East St. Louis and according to Danny, his mom was a fanatical, trying out many religions before settling on her own particular poison – World Wide Church of God a sect that started out as some kind of 1930’s radio church.
Danny apparently inherited his mother’s lust for jesus and solutions to this all, but his way seemed more seesaw-ish, on again – blessed be God, off again – screw you god I’m cursed and throw in some other undiagnosed mental issues and drinking and addiction and punching an umpire in the face over a “bad” call, yeh old school, waiting for him in the parking lot and clocking him in the face. Got Danny a 2 month suspension….but the brewers stuck with him, even when he announced that he would be unavailable for a chunk of the season, due to religious ritual reasons. yeh, he was back on that god wagon and with more vigilance than before….he now celebrated the Sabbath and was dubbed the sundown kid because he wouldn’t play friday sundown to saturday sundown and that could be two games.
The Brewers ultimately released him and he argued discrimination due to his religion. I don’t know what came of his accusation if it got taken to court or whatever and I don’t care. I’m just sad the way it went down for him. There were lots of different jobs and psychologists and the little money he made as a ballplayer he spent…
there’s no bottom of the barrel. the blues can go on forever and get downright creepy and get worse and then worse again and for danny thomas…no money, three kids, no job and god knows what else….he was charged with raping a 12 year old and his friend offered him a lawyer, but he declined and wound up hanging himself in jail with a bedsheet.
Danny Thomas’s career WAR was 0.8, but i bet his inner war musta been off the charts…he himself told his wife he wished he had cancer so then people would know what was wrong with him. There was no suicide note and no transcript of his last thoughts.
Oh yeh, the Brewers won the game. I forget the score, a classic bullpen finish with McLure tossing 2.1 inning of relief and Bill Catro Castro getting the last two outs. Castro went on to be bullpen coach with the Brewers for 18 years.
A brewers non-roster invitee to spring training 2026 is Gerson Garabito….began last year with the rangers and made a few appearances and then got sent down to AAA Round Rock where he was 0-7 with a 8.81 ERA, yep 8.81, so he took off and finished 2025 in Korea and it was good to him – 15 starts and a 3.56 ERA and now he’ll be in Brewers spring training and he’s 30 and from the dominican and this is for you brother…
and he stared up and all around like a star gazer for sometimes hours, totally focused on what he didn’t know and what if he did this until his last breath?……and horses ruled the world and it would be casual; it would be like vagrants and street musicians and mimes, everybody doing nothing except appreciating this one time opportunity, an expansion baseball team, a new chance, an ancient one of possibility, a preservation of who first seen this human idea as a magical one, a river is a rollercoaster is right now.
I don’t know why my parents insisted my brother and I watch the TV movie THE DAY AFTER on November 20th, 1983. We all sat down in our TV room to enjoy what I thought might be some wholesome, suburban made for TV movie, as entertaining as Leave it to Beaver or The Brady Bunch. Fat chance. That movie scared the crap out of me. I was 13. The post nuclear bomb reality in a small Kansas town injected its venom into my moldable mind… radiation, suffering, and death.
But thankfully, like many dramas, a Luke Skywalker savior appeared as an antidote to my fears. He was a family friend. Sweet Lou from Brooklyn promised he would build me a bomb shelter and it would be way underground and we would survive the nuclear holocaust and I believed him and felt relieved.
The movie featured Jason Robards and that very same year, 1983, Robards also starred in another movie Max Dougan Returns which included a cameo by legendary hitting instructor Charlie Lau who died less than a year after filming the movie. Baseball, good old reliable baseball, the ultimate tangent, an even bigger balm to all my fears about suffering and death.
When Lau lived, he was so well respected that he signed a six-year contract extension as the White Sox hitting instructor. La Russa called him a “genius.” He’s credited with helping future hall of famers George Brett, Reggie Jackson, and Harold Baines and if i’m not mistaken he kind of passed the torch to Walt Hriniak who went on to assist another hall of famer the chicken eating, 100 beers in a day Legend Wade Boggs.
As a played, Lau was a catcher, so was Hriniak. Lau Played for four teams including both the Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves and he tutored players of five teams, but most importantly, for me, this Lau helped Mathew Broderick hit a baseball in his film debut, that memorable movie – Max Dougan Returns. It was Lau’s only experience as an actor.
That movie. Ughhhhhh! Thinking about it now has me wondering what would I bring with me if I had to pack a bag and roam the roads for food. What if I could bring only one book? Which book? I’d bring an entertaining one that made me laugh and was really thoughtful too, like explored all kinds of topics or you know what, I’d just bring whatever book I was reading at the time and then trade it to someone and keep reading and trading….and so for me, if the bombs drop today, it will be FEAR STRIKES OUT by Jimmy Piersall.
i was roaming around tenafly, new jersey, around its small downtown and I came to a small walking bridge with a stream running below and in the water I spotted a dead rat and a dead dove, laying side-by-side and it was like that yin and yang idea, but i didn’t think about it for too long because I suffer from the modern pandemic we all probably suffer from – attention deficit disorder and maybe I should be like a horse and stare into a valley for hours on end, fully focused.
Osmosis.
Sometimes it feels like I’m being punished for something I did as the muse of today’s baseball slips away like some ancient and magic incantation i can no longer remember…..
but I do remember Rusty Staub when he played a year on the Tigers, and just the other day while watching the first game of the twi-night doubleheader, July 12, 1979, White Sox hosting the Tigers, disco demolition night, Jimmy Piersall and Harry Caray with the call and Piersall mentioned that Staub might be the slowest runner in both leagues and either after he said it or before, Staub stole second base and so the muse revived and I went to b-ref and was pleasantly surprised that Rusty Staub stole 47 bases during his 23 year career and that was back when stealing bases was tough with unlimited pick off moves.
I wonder who holds the record for most times reaching base without a stolen base?
everything has an origins story, even the earth and universe, but this is a simpler one, more recent than eons ago. The first ever TV dinner was born in America – Omaha, Nebraska, 1954 and designed after airplane compartment trays.
As a kid, I had an anal-retentive or OCD need to keep foods from “running into each other,” as I said back then and I was young, maybe 6 or 7 so a temper tantrum was not out of the question if applesauce got down and dirty with the ice cream scoop of potatoes so the walls between items, this TV dinner compartmentalization was a godsend for me.
I don’t remember my first TV dinner experience, but I wonder if my mom turned it into a ceremony and had my brother and I eat that first TV dinner watching the Love Boat when mom and dad were out on the town?
C.A. Swanson & Sons founded the phenomena, but according to AI overview, it was a salesman, Gerry Thomas who came up with an idea of how to use surplus turkey and presto abracadabra – Turkey, stuffing, peas, sweet potatoes, and gravy all separated by beautiful aluminum.
These days if I’m eating a TV dinner and there’s a hair in the pasta and it happened a few weeks ago. After a comprehensive forensic investigation, I unscientifically determined that it wasn’t my hair; it was from someone in the plant wherever they made the $2.99 Michelina’s Penny Pollo. I didn’t really mind. I mean I didn’t eat the hair. I’m not a cannibal, but if I were on that plane that crashed in the Andes many moons ago and if I survived, I’d eat the ones who didn’t survive or I think I would? Or maybe I’d leap off a cliff and call it a life.
Anyway, that hair…it oddly felt good to be connected to someone, to their hair. My mind jumped to the break room at the TV Dinner plant and the friendly ribbing and all that togetherness like a good baseball clubhouse vibe and that one magical guy who bridges different cliques.
And as I cleaned off the cardboard Michelina’s TV dinner and dropped it in the recycle bin, I thought back to the aluminum trays and remembered scraping the aluminum with a metal fork, wanting more. Musta been the sodium, but god it tasted good.
i know the type….shaved head to stave off balding. english major. cocksure. says Glory is a true poet because she writes about other people instead of herself…..what a privilege.
is suicide ideation a near death experience?
he had been there before, to the waiting room, waiting for another abortion victim to exit free of a child. he’d been down in those low moods his whole life too. had nothing to do with being poor and having six siblings and not really knowing his mom or dad. he was just sad and put blame on no one so he’d hang outside the abortion clinic and play the xylophone to give these girls a new sound to hear. music is magic that way and yeh, there were some fistfights. boyfriends wondering why the girl they just impregnated is drinking coffee with some 52 year old bum, the guy who skipped big family thanksgiving dinners and hung out at the local diner on church street and they gave him a complimentary piece of pumpkin pie.
Why do we waste time and money building robots to wash dishes? To each his own. I like washing dishes. I’m totally focused for a change.
People sometimes say they hear the voices of the deceased. They’re lucky. I’ve never heard from dead friends, only in dreams.
brewers baseball and things 
