Archive for Readings

David Berman’s Actual Air isn’t the reason I started writing poems — it was to impress fine ladies that I did that. Nor was it the first book to change my entire notion of what poems could be — some combination of Charles Simic’s The World Doesn’t End and Kenneth Koch’s entire oeuvre did that.

Indeed, I was rather skeptical of Berman’s book when I first saw it — on account of he was a musician, is why, and musicians are famously unashamed of everything, whereas writing good poems requires a great deal of shame. Endless shame, really.

In the interest of making a rather short story even shorter, what happened is, is I did eventually read and did very much liked David Berman’s first and only book. For a number of reasons, certainly, is why I enjoyed it — but a relevant one to this blog are the numerous references to baseball and/or baseball things.

References like these three which follow. (Note: links are available to the first two poems. I was unable to find the Cantos online, however.)

From Community College in the Rain:

Announcement: Today we will discuss the energy in a wing
and something about first basemen.

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I’m reading Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer. It is, for lack of a better word, amazing. I’m taking my time with it because, frankly, I don’t want it to end.

Kahn grew up a huge supporter of the Brooklyn Dodgers. “Within shouting distance of Ebbets Field.” By 25, he was covering the team for the New York Herald Tribune. Yet, after having read Kahn’s prose, which strikes you immediately (pardon the pun, bro), I’m having a hard time thinking of Kahn as a Dodgers fan first, and a writer second. Nobody who writes about baseball today writes the way Kahn did about the Dodgers. (Except masters of prose Carson Cistulli and Dayn Perry.) Today’s baseball writers strike me as baseball fans first, and writers second. Kahn may have grown up a Dodgers fan, but he’s a writer before anything else.

I urge you to read The Boys of Summer. You’ll learn why they were called the Dodgers, something I didn’t know until I bought the book. You’ll read about the incredible racism in the American South in the early 1950s, and what Jackie Robinson went through, and said, as he broke baseball’s color barrier. And, finally, you’ll read 484 of the greatest words I’ve ever come across about the art that is pitching. I’m going to turn it over to Mr. Kahn …

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The tenured reader — glistening from freshly completed coitus and trying to remember where he placed his fashion eyewear once passions overtook him — will recall this writer’s enthusiasm for one W.J. Slattery, crafter of prose and invader of boudoirs.

It so happens that, in the process of utilizing the best and most emergent features of the HotBot search engine, I stumbled upon one W.J. O’Connor, who shares not only leading initials with Mr. Slattery but also a dedication to the muscular prose of better days. Mr. O’Connor had this to say of a certain game in 1917, when men were men and women were, at best, “handsome” and “well preserved.” Writeth Mr. O’Connor:

“He [Johnson] first fielded it with his chest, and knocked it silly at his feet. He then laid a prehensile paw on the pill and came up with ample time to assist [George] Sisler with the out. But he suddenly lost his prehensileness, and tossed the ball over his shoulder like a superstitious person throwing salt to avoid a fight.”

Yes indeed, Mr. O’Connor. Yes indeed …

A book I have not read but shall at my earliest convenience …

A belt? I thought I told you not to wear anything complicated, you prepossessing jade!

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MLB.com’s Doug Miller has written a profile of FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron and his contretemps with stupid leukemia.

Along with what is a decidedly touching portrait of a person (i.e. Cameron) who is respected by readers and colleagues, Miller’s article reveals some other facts that will shock and/or amaze.

To wit:

• Cameron, who is obviously funny-looking, is somehow less funny-looking now that at any other time in his life. Photo evidence confirms this.

• When a 14-year-old Cameron asked Derek Zumsteg (his future USS Mariner co-editor) to remove David Pease from the alt.sports.baseball.sea-mariners newsgroup because he (i.e. Pease) was a “moron,” Zumsteg replied thusly: “[I]f we had a ‘No Morons Allowed’ rule, I’m afraid that would mean you couldn’t post either.”

• While thorough, Miller’s pieces is incomplete for its total omission of this image (courtesy Dayn Perry):

The handsome and besexed reader has no doubt been waiting, breath breathily bated, for news on the unfurling 2007 controversy surrounding the New Bedford, Massachusetts Youth Baseball League. To update:

– A 92-signature petition requesting the presumably blood-soaked removal of the league’s Executive Board has been filed with the Attorney General’s Office.

– Said Executive Board curiously won quite a large share of those league raffle dollars, in some instances, oddly enough, in increments roughly proportional to the amount of power wielded by each member of the Executive Board.

– Ejected coaches are supposed to be fined, and the coach of Manny’s Barber Shop totally was indeed fined upon being ejected. Not fined for being ejected, however, was Coach DeGrasse, who, it so happens, is a member of the Executive Board.

– Complain to the mayor about the conduct of the Executive Board, and you shall be relieved of coaching duties. At least that’s what happened to the former Coach Pereira.

– League Vice President Heather Rowan was allegedly “talking about vibrators in front of the kids.”

– Someone, someone possibly with allegiances to Ma’s Donuts, threw a rock and hit the parent of a player for Manny’s Barbershop, a team already the target of previous ruthlessness on the part of the Executive Board.

– As well, there is an almost palpable lack of “urgency from them [the big assholes of the Executive Board] to find out who threw the rock.”

– As well, there is an almost palpable “conspiracy to expel me [Coach Duarte, of Manny’s Barber Shop] from the league . . .”

Developing.

Here’s the cover of Jaci Burton’s Changing the Game:

And here I am, moved to make a noun out of “gorgeous-dangerous.” This books is a gorgeous-dangerous that I wouldn’t mind reading while safely positioned over my parlor fainting couch. Consider these pearls clutched. Consider this bodice ripped. Now consider these selected Amazon reviews of Burton’s gorgeous-dangerous:

– “Like how can you start falling in love with someone when all you do is bang them.” – eestev

– “The sex scenes were incredible and boy of boy, do those Riley boys have stamina…” – Kindle Lover

– “The sex parts were my favorite. I had a very hard time putting this book down. I can’t wait for the next book. I hope it is released soon.” – kitten123

– “One of the best I’ve read this year, and yes, a cold shower is definitely needed after this one.” – Jolie Weber

– “This one will leave you wanting a cold shower!” – Donna

– “Don’t forget to prepare the fan, ladies, because just like the first one this book is going to make you sweat, trust me ;)” – Alaiel Kreuz

– “I felt reading this book came straight out of a porn movie and she just wrote it in words.” – Roo

– “Sex. Sex, sex, sex. Sex.” – Kelly S.

– “I was bored by all the sex – which must be the biggest crime for an author of erotic romance.” – NStort

– “Boundless humping. Shorn, sinewy torsos. Loin-moistener of the week. 8.4 WAD (Wins Above Dirty). Baseball.” – D_CameronY2K

Review copy along with gold bridal hand fan hereby requested!

It’s time for another installment of “Shorter Baseball Columnists,” in which we read mainstream baseball columnists and marginalized bloggers like Murray Chass so you don’t have to! Let us begin!

Shorter Steve Rosenbloom: This is why Adam Dunn struggled last season. Maybe. Or not. I don’t know, man.

Shorter Dan Shaughnessy: Get comfortable, lads, because this one is going to be about me.

Shorter Mike Lupica: Shame on Ryan Braun for making his failed drug test a public issue.

Shorter Murray Chass: Hold on to your funny bones because you can make a “twit” joke out of the word “Twitter,” which I hate. Twitter, I mean, not the joke I just made, which is gold.

Shorter Jim Souhan: Joe Mauer is a pussy.

Blogger Murray Chass, America’s Least Favorite Grandpa^TM, is famously promiscuous with his base-and-ball opinions, and his latest gumbo of a dispatch is no disappointment. His masterstroke comes when he recounts why he’s decided not to put the maximum 10 names on any Hall-of-Fame ballot regardless of the candidates’ merits:

Having 10 players enter the Hall at the same time would detract from the honor for each player. In addition, the induction ceremony would take forever and require a break for dinner.

Once more, for championship emphasis:

… and require a break for dinner.

And so …

As noted in these pages last week, I recently purchased A Baseball Winter: The Off-Season Life of the Summer Game, a day-by-day account — edited by Terry Pluto and Jeffrey Neuman — of the 1984-85 offseason of five clubs: the New York Mets, the California Angels, the Atlanta Braves, the Philadelphia Phillies, and the Cleveland Indians.

As also noted, the book is written in a very compact, diary-like* format, which makes for an urgency, a feeling of being present, that’s very pleasant.

*Diary-esque? Diary-y? Is there an adjectival form of diary?

Here are some note on what I’ve read.

Contracts
Free agency was still a newish concept in 1984-85, and it’s clear from this text that a number of teams didn’t understand particularly well the level of risk associated with signing players — and particularly pitchers — to long-term contracts.

Consider some examples:

• Atlanta, led enthusiastically by owner Ted Turner, signed 32-year-old reliever Bruce Sutter to a six-year, $6.75 million deal — or, $1.125 million per year. A marginal win cost about $330 thousand in 1985, meaning $1 million ought to have bought ca. three wins above replacement. Sutter’s signing came after a precipitous drop in his strikeout rates, from the high-20% area in 1977-79 to about 16% in 1983-84. He would have had to produce roughly 20 wins to earn his contract. In fact, he produced 0.2 of them — wins, that is. His WPA over that same span was -3.79.

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