Sometimes emergency measures throw six shutout innings of relief.
On Monday morning, I’ll be at my annual optometrist appointment, trying not to blink at the little puff of air during the first stage of the glaucoma test, trying not to squint against the lights bright and brighter, trying to decide which of the two lens options really is better in the series of minute…
1. The crows complaining from the maple tree outside the window sound enough like that one row of fans in Philadelphia in 2006, Mike Lieberthal at the plate in the second game of the September 3 double-header against Atlanta, the one that isn’t the one where Ryan Howard hit three home runs. Lieberthal stands in…
Major League Baseball may eventually come to Vancouver, but until then …
A crow sits on a traffic pole ahead of you. You are walking slowly. The sun is too harsh to move any faster. It doesn’t matter how fast you walk, anyway; you have nowhere to go this time. You are not going to be out of the sun, not until it sets. Then you will…
From a fragment discovered in the dust of the Vatican library: Hostilities ceased annually for four days. One of those days was set aside for celebration and spectacle, when combatants gathered for friendly competition to the cheers of the common people. Lancers rode out onto a bright green field, gaily garbed in white and grey…
TAMPA, Fla. — The Tampa Bay Rays opened their new stadium on Friday, with Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations/General Manager Erik Neander joining team president Matthew Silverman and Tampa mayor Bob Buckhorn to unveil the ballpark that now anchors the historic Ybor City neighborhood. With 30,842 seats, the ballpark is the smallest in MLB…
I could have chosen to disappear. I chose to go watch the Blue Jays instead.
Max Scherzer vs. Marco Estrada, a first trip to Rogers Centre, and the nature of displaced fandom.
I became a Blue Jays fan because I had emerged from darkness and found them there waiting for me, just like they’d always been.
I hit the road on a Friday evening in the middle of an anxiety attack. This was not the hands-shaking, skin-crawling, thoughts-racing brand of high anxiety. That was an hour ago. Now I was into freeze mode, my thinking-brain displaced by sensory hyper-awareness. It was not the best time to drive, but I had to…
I am the most heat-averse person I know. I have lived in the Pacific Northwest, the ideal climate for someone who hates extremes of temperature, for my entire life, and yet every summer I find myself bewailing how hot it is, hiding indoors during the daylight hours, and wearing a lot of silk robes. The…
Steppenwolf is one of the most famous and most misunderstood of the novels of Nobel Prize winning-author Herman Hesse. I’m having trouble understanding it myself, fifty pages in; I’d nearly given up, only to see Hardball Times editor Jason Linden give it his highest praise. Written from the perspective of Germany between the wars, the…
Todas las posibilidades están abiertas para ti, pero no puedes hacer nada.
Every possibility is open to you, and you can do nothing.