Sean Casey — no not that Sean Casey — published Carson Cistulli’s first (maybe) book-type thing, a slim chapbook called Assorted Fictions, which you can still buy for $2, postage paid.

Some years later, Mr. Casey made up for the blunder of publishing Cistulli by publishing a chapbook by the excellent Mark Leidner, called Romantic Comedies. Leidner used the romantic comedy meme again in his full-length collection, Beauty Was the Case That They Gave Me, published by Factory Hollow Press in 2012. This excerpt, from the former title:

She’s like get a load of this and he’s like whoa.

She’s a lonely air traffic controller and his name is Eric Trafalgar and he’s completely out of control.

She’s a disorienting aroma and he’s a bee crashing into a mirror.

He’s a man running up a hill while morphing into a snowball and she’s a snowball rolling down a hill and morphing into a running woman.

Her very existence depends upon the capability of mimetic art, and he doesn’t even know what mimesis is.

He stabs her in the heart with an icicle, but when the icicle melts she resurrects.

Lovers’ Quarrel

In honor of Sean Casey, then, who makes my baseball and poetry worlds collide, and in the style of Mark Leidner, here are some Baseball-Based Romantic Comedies. Please mail me my millions, now, please.

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“Hello?”

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Grand Island, NE—Further alienating himself at his new job, area Database Specialist Dick Haugstad expressed interest in getting in on a “wild game of cards,” telling co-workers, “I just love a wild card game.” Numerous subtle cues from fellow employees failed to inform Haugstad that they were, in actuality, planning on watching a game of playoff baseball.
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With all the fuss surrounding the retirements of Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Todd Helton, and Vladimir Guerrero, I’m afraid that the possible ending of another exceptional career has gotten lost in the shuffle. As any fool can guess, because it’s in the title of this post, I’m talking about Chad Griffin Durbin. Durb, who’s been featured in these pages before, started off the year in Philly on a rather handsome contract. He was released from that contract in June, after giving up 17 runs in 16 innings, on 25 hits and 9 walks. He hasn’t pitched since, to my knowledge, and this could be the end of the road for the 35-year-old righty.

It’s easy to forget just how bad Durbin has been, and for just how long. In fact, his combination of longevity and mediocrity is quite rare — rare enough to raise the question: assuming he’s done with baseball, is Durbin’s resume Hall of Shame-worthy?

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Five graphs for you. No other information. No hints. Probably easy anyway. Can you guess these graphs?

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I was up on the dance floor, trying my best not to make a fool of myself. I was having a good time, though I wasn’t really connecting with anyone. All  the guys seemed interested in other girls. Then, for some reason, my eyes moved down to the back of club, and I saw you. You were dressed a little plainly — grey pants, black shirt, black hat. You had an impressive upper body.

A group moved in front of you and I lost sight. I waited until the song was done, and made my way to the bar. You came up behind me.

“Buy you a drink?” you asked.

I noticed that you didn’t actually have a huge upper body, but were wearing a chest protector, which I thought was weird.

“I’m CB,” you said. “I couldn’t help but notice you up there. You looked great.”

‘Thanks. I should get back. My friends are still up there.”

“You can stay a few minutes, can’t you? I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t at least try to talk to the prettiest girl in the place.”

Four hours later, we were still talking as the bar closed. I never did make it back to the dance floor.

(tremendous GIF credit goes to probably-real-person Bill Baer).

Not merely some — but, in fact, most — feature-length motion pictures fail to produce as much in the way of pathos as this short video of Jim Leyland does in the wake of Detroit’s division-clinching victory on Wednesday, which video includes: Jim Leyland crying a proud father’s beautiful, faltering tears; Jim Leyland being escorted into the Tiger clubhouse via bear hug by devoted son-figure Torii Hunter; and Jim Leyland performing spontaneously a dance which, for whatever it lacks in technical proficiency, compensates for it by managing to remind the spectator that the first act of human dance, whenever it occurred, must also have been an expression of pure and spontaneous joy.

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Some time this past spring, the author resolved that he would attempt, in these pages, to document for the wide readership this season the bat-flip in all of its different and glorious incarnations.

Like most claims made by someone with a marinara stain on a weird part of his underpants, however, this one wasn’t to be trusted. In point of fact, this site’s coverage of bat flips has appeared only in fits and starts — like the love of a father who expresses his emotions only in fits and starts.

As the alternative is absolutely no coverage of bat flips, however — or no paternal love whatever — one must satisfy him- or herself with what is made available.

Credit to concerned readers JayAre and PronkTwp for bringing the author’s attention to the footage in question.

Courtesy of Baseball Think Factory, the Denver Post writes about a Rockies fan painting a picture of Todd Helton as a centaur.

This, of course, has prompted me to make a few paintings of my own.

GRIFFIN

HOSMERMAID

TROUT