When you bounded into Sutter’s arms,
It now seems the very instant of an ascension
Of a man who brushed his burst fingers against the endurable
Only when he was ashamed.

You can do this, we know, this hitting, catching, running.
But it’s the after — the plenteous and undetailed after,
The quiet after
That you’ll always belong to.

If you could only see us seeing you, urging you
On before the hot lights and champagne,
Your words as simple as you could never hope to be.
Your words, like your swing, quavering on the hinges of a pinfold.

Come back to this game and be cloaked again,
You and that lunging, halting, hoping swing —
That motel Gideon’s Bible of a swing.
Just be anything but Sugar Creek dead.

See us. See us with
Each lens less a lens than a deep-water amphitheater
That harbored a sunken eye,
That conspired to let no one quite know

What it all looked like to Darrell Ray.

Hopefully, dear reader, the weather where you are is nicer than the weather where I am. Should that be the case, mayhap you are gearing up to patio-grill some foodstuffs for dinner this evening — delicious flank steaks or cheesy broccoli in foil packets or build-your-own kebabs.

Before doing so, however, please consider abandoning your fancy foodtsuffs and your weak-ass grill in favor of building yourself a new Baseball Monster Grill using the following schematic.

The grill is portable, so that you can easily wheel it around your cul-de-sac, frightening neighborhood child and suburban rodent alike (who would likely try to steal your grill-things as you cooked them!). Use the Grill to clear the area of such pests before proceeding with preparation of the food. The wheels and handles also facilitate travel by airplane or motorbus, or a quick, evasive maneuver into an alleyway (zero turn-radius).

You might be compelled to ask, upon viewing this schematic, “Why would a baseball have a bat in its mouth?” It does not. Instead, that is a fifth of whiskey, built to the scale of the baseball’s face, fueling it with the menace necessary to frighten the aforementioned children and rodents. The whiskey also fuels the brain-flames of the Baseball Monster Grill.

Also please notice in the schematic: the Drunken Baseball Monster Grill is meant to grill in-can Chef Boyardee products and loose potato chips ONLY. Attempting to grill anything else will result in annihilative mutiny on the part of the Grill Monster. Should you bring that fresh tuna steak from Whole Foods within five feet of it, it will turn on you the way you previously turned it on the pests of the neighborhood.

This has been Your Friday Grill.

As for your Friday Bill, please allow me to (re)introduce more horror into your lives, readers: Billy Koch, a talented relief pitcher, you’ll remember, had his career ended early (at age 29) by the mysterious Morgellons disease.

This has been a very-appetizing-indeed Friday Grill & Bill.

When he wakes up…
Yea he knows he’s going to be, he’s going to be that man who makes that catch for you
When he goes out…
Yea he knows he’s going to look, he’s going to look damn sexy making that catch too

When he jumps up
Yea he knows he’s going to keep, he’s going to keep Martinez from going for two
And if you’re worried
Well you know that Robbie G, that Robbie G will have no problem pulling through

But he would run 500 miles
And he would run 500 more
Just to ram his face against the outfield fence to help preserve the score

ROBBIE GROSSMAN!
(ROBBIE GROSSMAN!)
ROBBIE GROSSMAN!
(ROBBIE GROSSMAN!)
ROBBIE GROSSMAN ROBBIE GROSSMAN LA LA LA!

ROBBIE GROSSMAN!
(ROBBIE GROSSMAN!)
ROBBIE GROSSMAN!
(ROBBIE GROSSMAN!)
ROBBIE GROSSMAN ROBBIE GROSSMAN LA LA LA!

Promising Dodgers outfield prospect Yasiel Puig made an impression on the Teeming Masses this spring with his bat-flipping exploits — a practice he appears to have begun (as the previous hyperlink reveals) as a member of the Cuban National Team, if not earlier.

Puig brought his enthusiasm for the craft with him to Double-A Chattanooga, for whom he homered during that club’s second game of the season — and, in the wake of which home run, he proceeded to toss his bat much closer to third base than is generally the custom. NotGraphs, as a journalistic organ with its finger on the throbbing pulse of Beauty, provided due coverage of this episode, as well.

With May having arrived, the reader might find him-/herself asking — especially if he/she has precisely the same lexicon and speaking cadence and general life concerns as the author — “With regard to Yasiel Puig, I wonder if he’s been flipping his bat at all of late?”

The answer to which question is available here in the form of words: “Yes, he has.”

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FEATURED GAME

New York Highlanders @ Philadelphia Athletics
Matchup: Bob “the Gob” Shawkey vs. Raymond “Rube” Bressler

Shawkey, man of “mystifying hooks and fast ball,” makes his return to Philadelphia after moving to the Bronx last season. Handsome young southpaw Bressler, “among the most accomplished work-shirkers that ever adorned a manager’s bench,” tends to be “a marvel one day and a poor excuse for a pitcher the next.” Nonetheless, he is handsome. “[T]hey do say that the pink teas and the soirees and the bridge fights and the receptions likewise reek and drip with the shape of Heinie Groh’s legs, and guesses as to whether or no the handsome Rube Bressler is engaged…and so forth and so forth ad lib.”

OTHER GAMES

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Buried at the bottom of a Kansas City Star article mostly about Mike Moustakas and how he actually wasn’t temporarily kidnapped by aliens who replaced him with someone who looks similar but does not know how to play baseball is this tidbit of news:

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Today when I got on the bus
I said to myself,
“It is like I don’t exist.”
At the doctor’s office on a papered table
in my boxer briefs
I was like,
It is like I do not exist.
When I am at home
in an armchair
when my mouth is full of food
or dong
when I pull a well-worn dollar bill
from my Genuine Leather wallet
wherever there are books,
websites, weirdos, women,
or dullards — or ducks, really: ducks
make me feel this way —
whenever I watch a drug dealer
teem w/ existential angst
on TV
I want to be a drug dealer and
it is like I do not exist.

When Joey Votto
wants to break a bat but does not
when Joey Votto curses himself —
in high socks, no less! —
when I noticed the elastic of knee-high knickers
at Joey Votto’s knees
when I closed my eyes
and saw nothing but Joey Votto’s
hairline it is like
I do exist,
am alive, am a part of everything
that there is
to be a part of
which is only one thing:
this world of shit
w/o which nothing would exist.

Would that Joey Votto will want to break a bat
at those moments
when I wonder
if there is life on other planets
for I am not large,

cannot get past
this earth.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Oh, sorry honey. I just the worst dream.

I was in the future, and the Marlins had just won the World Series.

I know. After everything they did. After all the teardowns we did of them, they still won. It was so … so scary.

Fernandez and Ozuna ended up signing long-term money-friendly deals early, and Stanton stayed put. They somehow built a team around a core of young players. Loria was trying so hard to screw it up, but he couldn’t. The Marlins won the World Series.

And nobody knew what to think of it. Like, we were happy for the players for winning in spite of their circumstances, but  on the other hand, Jeffrey Loria won. That was the worst part. Nobody really gave two shits about the Marlins, they were way more pissed that the bad guy won. It was like the end of Empire Strikes Back, but we were Luke, and enjoying baseball was our lightsaber hand.

I mean, from the Expos, to blowing up two World Series teams, to the ballpark fiasco, to the 2012 fire sale, to suing season ticket holders … AND THIS GUY WINS?! IS THERE NO JUSTICE?!

And they had this big parade and everything. It was the worst. All these people in brand new Marlins hats lined the streets. People kept yelling “I LOVE YOU MIKE STANTON!”

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Talented surgeon and nearly irrepressible lothario, Nicasio Beckett.

Frequently in this life, we do things for reasons that are mysterious. Like marry a woman despite her open contempt for us, for example. Or remain married to her, for example, despite her continued and unwaveringly open contempt for us.

This post represents such a mystery, as well. Whilst composing today’s diamond-encrusted edition of the Daily Notes, the author discovered that, by pairing the surname of a visiting pitcher with the surname of that same contest’s home pitcher, that the resulting name — in really almost every case — resembled those such as are frequently encountered within the confines of America’s most popular soap operas.

What follows, then, is the result of the author not only identifying that phenomenon, but also following through on it in such a way so as to make any reasonable person question the value of this life.

Names listed in order of today’s first-pitch times.

Gee LeBlanc
Of unclear, but decidedly nefarious, French-speaking origin. CEO of corrupt and profitable LeBlanc Pharmaceuticals. Irrepressible lothario.

Diamond Sanchez
Wealthy and brilliant Mexican heiress who suffers amnesia and becomes exotic dancer.

Gomez Burgos
Priest who is constantly tempted by Diamond Sanchez. Also, CIA secret agent.

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Watch this here 2 minutes and 3 seconds of shameless advertisement executed by none other than soon-to-be veterans-committee-elected Hall-of-Fame second baseman Bret Boone.

Why, these days, Ol’ Booney is hocking jerky and catching softballs. But when it comes to treating ladies, he plays hardball. “Cracked pepper for ladies!” He bellows between mead gulps. “And original for me!”

“Ooh,” say the entranced womenfolk, “whither can I acquire me some of that fine jerky?”

But they already have a plateful of Brandt’s Beef Jerky. It’s up to us to read the subtext.

This video obviously comes to us via the clammy hands of managing editor Dave Cameron.