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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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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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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

I realize he’s not really in fashion these days, but I still have a soft spot for Ernest Hemingway. His short stories are tremendous, and I love For Whom the Bell Tolls. That probably puts me in the minority.

Of course, his most famous work is also one of his shortest, The Old Man and the Sea, a novel in which a Cuban fisherman hooks a beautiful marlin, and struggles to get it to shore before the sharks rob him of his prize catch. While it’s not, in my opinion, his best work, it does have the weight of a Nobel Prize for Literature behind it, and famously includes some warm words about Joe DiMaggio.

What people do not know is that the first draft was actually much more focused on baseball. One of my former graduate school compatriots has become one of the leading authorities on Hemingway, and she assures me that I did not just make this up this morning before having any caffeine:

“He always thought of the baseball as ‘la pelota’ which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman. Some of the younger ballplayers, those who used iPads as ways to review video in between at bats, bought when the home runs had brought much money, spoke of her as ‘el pelota’ which is masculine and not grammatically correct in Spanish. He had learned as, like, a freshman in high school. They spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favors, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought. Then he swung mightily at an Addison Reed slider down and in, and clubbed it well over the wall in right field to win the game and bring joy to the multitudes of Cleveland.  He could die now, alone and happy, in the rain.”

Weirdly prescient:

This has been Prince Fielder Surfing, presented here for the first time. It shall not be the last.

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Whoever was responsible for the caption under Young Vin Scully’s photograph for Fordham University’s The Maroon seems to have forgotten a few words. The caption should read, Vincent Scully / The Bachelor of All Arts / The Radio Gentleman’s Gentleman.

Some people have said that Young Vin Scully is “in touch with Nature.” Instead, it should be said that Nature is in touch with him. For the Oceans of the World all model their waves after the form of Young Vin Scully’s coiffure; the Bees, their comb after the pattern on his self-woven necktie.

Having forgotten his overcoat at the hotel, Young Vin Scully ripped the awning off a bodega to lay across a large and oily puddle for a group of Fordham Prep students and their dates. To the young ladies, he doffed his cap; at the Fordham boys he cast a glance, which, for the rest of their lives, the boys would imagine whenever they failed to consider the well-being of others. As for the owner of the bodega, who had rushed outside in a huff, Young Vin Scully gently placed a hand on his shoulder and handed him a blank check. “For the repairs, and for your inconvenience,” was all that Young Vin Scully said.

Young Vin Scully doesn’t so much shave his face as he coaxes his whiskers to rest.

Young Vin Scully is capable of wonder and appreciation for many things on earth, even many things that are of lesser measure than himself — because almost all things will be of lesser measure than the man that Young Vin Scully knows he will become. Yet Young Vin Scully sees something in the future of which he is deeply skeptical: One day, they will try to name a street after Agéd Vin Scully. When that happens, when they try to name a street after Agéd Vin Scully, he will cock his unsmiling head in a way that evokes the determination of Young Vin Scully, and he will say, with both the force of the Oceans and the sweetness of the Bees’ Comb, “No, thank you, Mr. Mayor. In lieu of this action, please feed the hungry.”

The Yankees will finish up their season-long tribute to Mariano Rivera by requiring all fans attending Thursday’s final regular season home game to submit to receiving Mariano Rivera tattoos on their forearms. The tattoos will feature the image of Mariano Rivera jogging out of the Yankees’ bullpen, number 42 on his back, and five world series trophies coming out of his mouth. The tattoo will also feature the names of all 1,172 players Rivera has struck out in his career (with additional space for any new strikeouts between now and the end of the season). In case the tattoo is too big for your arm, the Yankees will provide an extra arm for the rest of the image. These extra arms will be harvested from Mariano Rivera’s arm, since now that he’s retiring, he won’t need his arms anymore.

The tattoos will be inked using an Andy Pettitte commemorative human growth hormone injection needle, which each fan will be invited to take home as a souvenir.