Quote of the day
November 7, 2014
The best thing about baseball is that you can do something about yesterday tomorrow.
~Manny Trillo
Month: November 2014
“Baseball Canto,” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
November 6, 2014
I’m a pretty big fan of the Beat poets, so I’m rather excited about the discovery of this 1972 piece by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. While his style is a bit different from the New York Beats, Ferlinghetti is closely associated with the movement, and he acted as publisher for much of their work.
*
Watching baseball, sitting in the sun, eating popcorn,
reading Ezra Pound,
and wishing that Juan Marichal would hit a hole right through the
Anglo-Saxon tradition in the first Canto
and demolish the barbarian invaders.
When the San Francisco Giants take the field
and everybody stands up for the National Anthem,
with some Irish tenor’s voice piped over the loudspeakers,
with all the players struck dead in their places
and the white umpires like Irish cops in their black suits and little
black caps pressed over their hearts,
Standing straight and still like at some funeral of a blarney bartender,
and all facing east,
as if expecting some Great White Hope or the Founding Fathers to
appear on the horizon like 1066 or 1776.
But Willie Mays appears instead,
in the bottom of the first,
and a roar goes up as he clouts the first one into the sun and takes
off, like a footrunner from Thebes.
The ball is lost in the sun and maidens wail after him
as he keeps running through the Anglo-Saxon epic.
And Tito Fuentes comes up looking like a bullfighter
in his tight pants and small pointy shoes.
And the right field bleechers go mad with Chicanos and blacks
and Brooklyn beer-drinkers,
“Tito! Sock it to him, sweet Tito!”
And sweet Tito puts his foot in the bucket
and smacks one that don’t come back at all,
and flees around the bases
like he’s escaping from the United Fruit Company.
As the gringo dollar beats out the pound.
And sweet Tito beats it out like he’s beating out usury,
not to mention fascism and anti-semitism.
And Juan Marichal comes up,
and the Chicano bleechers go loco again,
as Juan belts the first ball out of sight,
and rounds first and keeps going
and rounds second and rounds third,
and keeps going and hits paydirt
to the roars of the grungy populace.
As some nut presses the backstage panic button
for the tape-recorded National Anthem again,
to save the situation.
But it don’t stop nobody this time,
in their revolution round the loaded white bases,
in this last of the great Anglo-Saxon epics,
in the territorio libre of Baseball.
This day in baseball: Palmer awarded the Cy Young
November 5, 2014
On November 5, 1976, for the second consecutive season (and third ever), Orioles pitcher Jim Palmer won the Cy Young Award. In the voting cast by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA), Palmer won 19 of 24 first place votes. That season, Palmer finished with a record of 22-13, a 2.51 ERA, and an average of 4.5 strikeouts per nine innings.
Montreal Expos song: “Long, Long Time Ago”
November 4, 2014
Steve from Broken Bats Baseball shared this song with me. There’s a note that the song was created by CHOM 97,7 FM Montreal, and I assume by the poster, Mathieu Bibeau. The use of the “American Pie” tune amused me, and it’s awfully hard on Jeffrey Loria, but all in all, it’s a pretty great tribute.
Quote of the day
November 2, 2014
A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings.
~Earl Wilson
Reflections on the Royals’ 2014 season
November 1, 2014
The last few moments of the 2014 Royals season didn’t turn out the way that I hoped that they would. Indeed, falling a mere ninety feet from tying up Game 7 of the World Series proved heartbreaking as a Royals fan, especially considering that, in the twenty years that I have rooted for this team, this is the first season in which they even achieved a playoff berth. The last time they did so, I wasn’t old enough to even grasp the concept, much less to root for a team.
I didn’t make it to as many games as I would have liked this past summer, but each trip to the K remains as memorable as ever. As the season progressed, and the Royals continued to hold their own, bouncing between first and second place in the division, I watched the crowd at Kauffman grow increasingly larger and more rambunctious. I’m generally a pretty introverted person, but there is something about a stadium full of people cheering devotedly for its team that evokes a sense of solidarity in me. I had the privilege of attending Game 3 of the American League Championship Series, and never before in my life had I seen so much blue in one place. That, combined with the energy that emanated from the crowd, made me fall in love with the stadium and the Royals all over again.
As the regular season came to an end, I found myself checking the standings daily, sometimes more. The Royals had a shot at winning the division, but if they didn’t, it was also a close race in the fight for a Wild Card spot. When the Royals made the Wild Card, I cheered at the prospect of a “Blue October,” not realizing just how true this prediction would become.
My October flooded with late nights, which culminated in exhaustion as I no longer slept enough each night. Many times, especially when games went into extra innings, my adrenaline would get pumping so hard that, even when the final out was made or the winning run was scored, I wouldn’t be able to sleep right away. I exchanged numerous excited texts, phone calls, and emails with friends and family as the Royals not only won the Wild Card, but went on to sweet the Angels and the Orioles, en route to their first World Series in almost thirty years.
When the World Series won, I prayed that the Royals’ winning streak would continue, but was unsurprised when it did not. Streaks, as we all know, are fickle, and they are always broken sooner or later. The roller coaster of the series as a whole put me on the edge of my seat throughout. When the Giants took a 3-2 lead, I found myself filled with a curious combination of dread and confidence. When the Royals came back in Game 6 with a whopping 10-0 victory, I knew that Game 7, with the possibility of Madison Bumgarner making an appearance out of the bullpen, would be close. I just hoped that Bumgarner would be too exhausted following his complete game performance in Game 5 to pitch more than an inning or two.
This is where I, and the Royals, fell short. Once again, Bumgarner wowed the baseball world with a first-class performance, and the Royals simply could not figure out how to make anything happen offensively. When Alex Gordon landed on third base with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, I started to shake with hope and anxiety. Surely Salvador Perez could pull off the late-inning heroics just one more time, right? But, alas, it was not to be, as Salvi popped out to end this amazing run of a season.
I turned off the television immediately following the final out of the game, having no desire to have the loss drilled in any deeper, but come Thursday morning, I was pleased to learn that fans in attendance at the K had broken out in a chant of, “Thank you, Royals!” It truly was a season to remember, and while I have been a baseball fan for most of my life, my love for the game increased two-fold this year. And, yes, I have the Kansas City Royals to thank for that.
