stumbling into haiku

I like pretending that I once lived in a garage and one day my cousin Johnny came over to say hello and while he was there, I went to the grocery store across the street to use the bathroom and when I returned, I immediately noticed that my cousin Johnny had turned the radio on and set it to a specific AM station and suddenly paranoia hit me and I assumed he was sending me a message with the specific station but after he left, I listened awhile and then decided to leave the radio on and good thing I did because the sound of all those talk shows kept me company and it all felt like a benevolent conspiracy and one of the shows was about baseball and in the middle of talk about the birth of the boxscore, I pretended that my name was Leonardo and that I was old, 80 years old and smoked cigars and like that radio, the cigar kept me company, something for us both to burn away together, that slow grey snake ash to eventual smithereens of us all.

I had no family in this old man reverie or none that I knew of so day and night, collecting my pension from my days working at the rail yard, I remembered my imaginary younger brother and his mysterious disappearance, last seen a top a horse in southern Spain during Holy Week. I enjoyed the memory of his quick first step on the basketball court and knack for writing long epic poems about every day objects like the one he penned about the history of laundry, from washboards as a practical tool to it being a musical instrument and onward to a Maytag machine and its pinwheel of tumbling colors seen through the oval-shaped window.

But back to my garage room, I seldom sat still even when listening to that radio and smoking stogies. Instead, I paced and it was hot where I lived, hot and humid causing the yellow shag carpet to go brown with the trail of my footsteps. I had learned about pacing from a raggedy old Japanese book I once found outside the Salvation Army and lucky me, one of the cashiers inside was Japanese and he translated the title to me, something about an ancient form of Japanese meditation, this pacing, to tune oneself to the earth’s heartbeat, the planet breathing, the universe pulsating like a jellyfish.

This inspired all kinds of thoughts, but I knew from a Buddhist TV show I watched late at night, to not attach to my thoughts, good or bad, to just let them go like passing clouds, but one of these thoughts dropped anchor in my mind and wouldn’t budge so I followed it all the way to Spain and my younger brother and the horse and then back to North America and what a horse meant to cowboys and Native Americans….the horse, the horse, the horse is all I could think of as I paced north, south, east, and west and so my mind was soon made up, to do what a poetry friend of my brother had instructed – to make dreams so impossible that they come true and since there were no ordinance in the village prohibiting it, I took the Chatwick northbound to the Cremlin Farm, bought a horse and rode it home and then all around town and as expected, the neighbors and locals wanted to talk, to find out the horses name and could their son or daughter take a ride and I never turned anyone down and it wasn’t out of some karmic wish that I would be rewarded for my kindness, just a tribute to my brother and his disappearance.

And so there were horse riding days and they passed and days turned to weeks and then one nice horse riding day with soft, soothing breezes upsetting the humidity, I spotted an even older man, even older than me, a man I had never seen before wearing a Japanese Yomiurui Giants baseball jacket. I knew the emblem from videos I’d seen about the Japanese home run king Sadaharu Oh. The man put his arms out in front of him like a football referee indicating pass interference. I pulled gently on the reins and the horse stopped.

“What’s the name of your horse?”

“Haven’t picked one yet. I’m kind of waiting for the right moment.”

“Well, maybe this is that moment,” replied the man. “That’s a Noma horse you got right there, out of Japan, yes, bred in Japan and very endangered.”

“I had no idea,” I said.

“Well, now you do” and with that he winked, turned around, returned to where he came from, the horizon in the distance, like some sort of specter.

I knew right then and there that my horse would be called Nomo, so close to Noma in name and a reminder, of my brother’s favorite baseball player – Japanese born big league pitcher Hideo Nomo and his two no-hitters, one against the Colorado Rockies at hitter friendly Coors Field making it truly a no-hitter!!

I had read a few books about Japanese baseball, thanks to Robert Whiting, beginning with YOU GOTTA HAVE WA and more recently THE MEANING OF ICHIRO. And now with a horse named after Hideo Nomo, I read more and as is often the case with reading and research, new nuggets of info unfurled like Japanese haiku poet Masaoka Shiki liking/playing baseball as a kid, writing a textbook about baseball, creating words for specific baseball details. He referred to the game as yakyu or field-ball. He was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 2002. Shiki’s life was a tragic one filled with his own long lasting tuberculosis and an alcoholic father who died young.

And as the days passed, I thought about this Haiku expression, this three line burst of 5-7-5 syllables, 1-2-3 lines like 1-2-3 outs and I made a vow to write one, good or bad, after every baseball game I attended, whether it be a little league game or the major league ones at the closest stadium to my home and yes, I rode the horse and parked it outside the stadium at that first game and police men on horses shared a moment with Noma my horse and after that first game, I completed my vow at old County Stadium Milwaukee and wrote a haiku…

set to soar
27th out
smashed paper beer cup echo
bar open all night

ferris wheels

I was 10 years young and had never thought about suicide when former Milwaukee Brewer Danny Thomas hung himself in prison and my dad wasn’t one of those dads who sat me down insisting I watch One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Midnight Cowboy, and Apocalypse Now. But he did play catch with me and maybe that guarded me from the not so pleasant realities that await us all….old age and in the case of Danny Thomas – broken dreams after being drafted in the 1st round (6th overall), mental health issues, him “knowing he wasn’t right,” joining the World Wide Church of God and not playing Friday sundown to Saturday sundown, 175 career at bats, charges of raping/sodomizing a 12-year old girl and ultimately suicide.

And then four years passed and Danny Thomas was still dead and the only thrills I knew were opening up packs of baseball cards and hitting line drive singles and the sing song voice of Melissa García. I wish I had more guts or smarts back then. I would have asked Melissa to take a walk along the the Milwaukee River. We could have held hands and kissed behind the Dairy Queen, next to the endless railroad track and I bet I would have remembered her eyes forever. Instead, I invited Melissa to a movie. Bad idea. No chance to talk. And then after the movie, I was too scared to kiss her or even ask her for a soda at Fitzgerald’s Pharmacy. As it turned out, I remembered her forever anyway.

I wore a winter hat in spring back then, a Cleveland Browns sand knit cap. I was afraid of nuclear disaster and dreamed of building a bomb shelter. Thankfully, I had my own bedroom and stacks of baseball cards and we had a color TV so I could watch every Brewers road game with Mike Hegan and Jim Paschke calling the action on WVTV channel 18, but then Tony Kessler came into my life and his promise of a “thrill” and the way he said it stuck out like a raft to the other side, one I never thought I’d be interested in. Then my failure with Melissa García happened and something began to eat away at me and I couldn’t stop thinking that maybe there was more and so I tagged along with a bunch of other friends, Tony in the lead, and we walked north for a good 30 minutes in a crowded forest of trees and eventually there was an opening and water below us and I immediately felt like I was atop Fenway Park’s Green monster looking 30 feet down, only there wasn’t a warning track or grass…there was water and rocks jetting out like shark fins.

I figured it was a place to wander down the ravine and maybe fish and swim, but Tony Kessler had other things on his mind and before he jumped, he dared us all to follow him and his bravery and risk taking didn’t surprise me because he had told us all that he planned on committing suicide before graduating high school. And so while he was in the air, I thought about him saying 18 years was enough and what my dad had told me about Koufax quitting while he was on top because of his arm and I later learned from the baseball encyclopedia my dad gave me that Koufax’s last season was a huge success – 27 wins and a 1.73 ERA.

As Tony emerged from the water below, he had a clenched fist raised up above his head like a Jesse Owens brother of the struggle salute. He howled, head skyward like a wolf and from that moment on, I thought of him as an Adam, a first and fearless man, someone who lived with one foot in life and the other foot in death, and that death must have fuelled his fearlessness and so I jumped too and thank God I managed to not hit any of the rocks, thank God because in the back of my mind were the Brewers being in the World Series two years earlier and how thrilling that felt and how much I wanted them to be there again. We all jumped and jumped three and four more times and we all survived and Tony Kessler did as he swore he would, he disappeared a few weeks before graduation and no one knew where he went or whether or not he killed himself and I guess it didn’t matter because we all needed that kind of mystery, that unknown as our own ferris wheels started spinning.

There were new people to meet.

barefoot Brandy

It was so many years later and yet she’d still appear in my dreams as a savior, rescuing me from quicksand or a tidal wave and in that I was never a good swimmer, never caught the rhythm of a stroke, not even doggy paddling, I figured it a good idea to find her number and call her, just to see how she was doing, but all I could find was an address so I sent her a letter. She was a writer, mostly plays and poetry. My letter went something like this…

Dear Brandy, I hate starting a letter with “Dear” but I’m nervous. I just wanted to once again apologize for the way things turned out. I know it usually takes two to screw up a romantic situation, but I feel mostly responsible. Anyway, I read a good one the other day and thought of you and wanted to share it…..

a little girl climbs up the steps and knocks on the attic door. 

“come in,” says the voice.”

“what’s a good day daddy?” she asks. 

daddy looks up from the typewriter and says, “a good day my dear is 10 pages.”

P.S. I still have the puzzle you gave me, that map of America with all the baseball stadiums. I glued the back and put it in a frame and it’s on the wall now so you’re kind of always with me as long as I’m alive and enjoy a place where I can sleep and dream.

I remember when Brandy and I first met. It was at a McDonald’s, back when I had the courage to strike up conversations with strangers. I told her I was thinking about joining the Air Force which wasn’t true. I’m afraid of flying. But I pretended that my interest in the air force was because Jimi Hendrix was in the Air Force for a short while and Jimi Hendrix was my favorite guitar player which was true and he was from Seattle and I always felt a debt of gratitude to Seattle for being the birthplace of the Milwaukee Brewers franchise as the Pilots in 1969 and that was true too. Brandy didn’t know anything about Jimi Hendrix or baseball and I didn’t know anything about poetry or theater so we had a lot to share. We talked that first day about McDonald’s once offering pizza and how plumbing probably saved the world from massive diseases and then where we were born, any brothers and sisters and then that led us to talk about how we got along with our parents and what we hoped to do with the rest of our lives.

I was reluctant to keep talking, not having much experience with women and all that, but it was as if she could read my mind or maybe she picked up on my fear because of my body language, me looking desperately for a place to hide my hands. She pondered out loud the thrill a child experiences when they wander beyond the confines of a predictable backyard. After she said that and without really knowing why, I accepted her invitation to meet at the same McDonalds later that same week and after agreeing I kind of felt at ease or more at ease anyway and so I told her about Richie Hebner once being a gravedigger in the off season, that players used to not make so much money. It was my way of trying to turn her onto the endless cast of characters in baseball. And it was a bingo bulls eye on my part.

“I assumed players always made a lot of money,” she said, “way more than teachers and what not.”

She was excited to learn something new and apparently it inspired her too because she replied with a confession. She looked at her hands and said,

“I take so much for granted, like how my mind and body are connected like I send a message from my mind to my legs and they lift and it’s one foot in front of the other and locomotion….far out!”

This inspired me to talk about the locomotion of base stealers and Ron LeFlore transitioning from prison to playing major league baseball. I soon learned that Brandy had a pet bird, a monk parakeet that she said she found, wounded in a Brooklyn bus cabin. She knew all about these parakeets.

“In such a cold climate like Brooklyn?” I asked, more than a little surprised and very excited by the strange geography of it all.

Brandy said the parrots escaped from a crate at JFK airport and the rest was birds and bees proliferation history. There was then a long pause and I mentioned the size of a horses toe nails and what was so great about our conversation was that there were no rules, just one random thing after another and breakfast coffee turned into a fish sandwich lunch and then we walked in Greenwood Cemetery and she took off her socks and shoes and of course I thought about Shoeless Joe Jackson and told her about the Black Sox scandal and for some reason or no reason we stopped and right in front of us was Henry Chadwick’s tombstone and it was all too much, too perfect because I had just begun to study a bit about Sabermetrics and I knew Chadwick was kind of the godfather of the box score and he knew way back when that a defender with more range was bound to make more errors so range was as important as the number of errors committed. I loved the logic in that, but it was my emotions that took over at that point which was rare for me.

“I have a 1976 Topps Lymon Bostock card,” I said. “He was shot and killed and every once in a while I look at the card and remember the fragility of life and I also have a Mike Hargrove card from the same set and he took his time in the batter’s box and that reminds me to take my god damn time too, that there’s no rush.”

Immediately after I said that, I looked down at Brandy’s naked feet and I swear she was flexing her toes as if they were yawning, but I knew it wasn’t out of boredom or fatigue, more of a relaxing feeling like she wanted me to keep talking.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell Brandy much about advanced metrics, but that year we shared together…wow! and after it was done, I returned to Milwaukee and got to see Robin Yount get his 3,000th hit. I forget who the pitcher was, but the hit was a patented Yount line drive single to the opposite field.

Signs and more signs

It was like no other year because there was talk about Milwaukee Brewer’s shortstop Pat Listach winning the rookie of the year and the Brewers had never had a rookie of the year before. It was still only August, 1992 but Brewers fans couldn’t help thinking back to first kisses and first drunk nights and in the case of Johnnie Raddle, a first homerun he hit over his little league fence. He was 48 years old when he hit it, yes 48 and no he wasn’t pretending to be Satchel Paige and play forever. He had hit one on a bounce to the fence when he was 12, but never over that fence so he recruited one of his roommates who they called the Squibbler because of a pasta dish he made and together they walked to Watertower Park and the Squibbler threw one pitch after another and Johnnie Raddle eventually hit one over the 200 foot fence and for the first time in his life he got to take that slow trot around the bases and ever since then, he started to buy people drinks at bar time.

Listach was hitting well above .250 and already had 45 stolen bases and doing whatever else it might take to win the rookie of the year prize. Johnnie Raddle and the Squibbler and three other tenants at 2345 North Nachman Avenue celebrated the Listach excitement by buying a cat and naming him Listach and it was that same day that Johnnie Raddle decided to switch gears in mid career course, surrendering his financial advisor job at the First Wisconsin building for a masters degree in physics at University Wisconsin Milwaukee, a ground level pursuit, to better understand how the universe works.

And that’s when they started to call Johnnie Raddle the Tinker Man because they knew he was gonna be poor after surrendering his big financial salary to become a student. They made jokes about him peddling on the avenue old pots and pans, yeh, the Tinker Man. He called for a group meeting and asked if he could squat in the attic for a nominal fee of 200 bucks a month.

No one complained because they could get the Tinker’s 200 for the attic which would give them an extra 200 to spend on beer and brewers tickets plus a new roommate which would make six of them.

The Tinker Man fixed up the attic nice and good too with a bed and a desk and a window

The new tenant Artie Hemlock didn’t say much and it seemed like he didn’t listen either because he often didn’t answer the other tenant’s questions and had a habit of fleeing rather suddenly in the middle of a conversation. But no one minded because he paid the rent and never complained about them making noise when the Brewers were on the west coast.

They later learned that Artie couldn’t hear out of one ear and his other one wasn’t so great either. He knew nothing about baseball so the Tinker Man took him to a game. The five of them typically sat in the bleachers because they were benches instead of assigned seats and so that’s where Artie and Tinker Man sat and Artie didn’t understand why the Tinker Man brought binoculars, but he didn’t mind either because seeing was what he did most on account of him not hearing so well.

The Tinker Man gave Artie the binoculars and told him to focus on the plate.

“Home plate,” he explained, “where the umpire and batter are. You see them standing there together, the umpire crouched a bit like he’s leaning on the catcher’s back.”

The Tinker Man looked over at Artie and his smile said it all. He had seen the catcher flashing signs towards the pitcher.

“Sign language,” he said.

And later in the game, The Tinker Man told Artie to aim the binoculars at the manager and then at the third base coach and then Listach took off and ran to second and stole the base and there was another smile on Artie’s face.

“More sign language,” he said.

It was later that same night that Artie asked if Listach the cat was named after Listach the rookie.

rings around her fingers

Sewer Cap Johnnie spotted her leaning against the front door of the Rosicrucian center. He watched as she flipped a cigarette onto the sidewalk and stomped it. Such a waste of fire, thought Sewer Cap Johnnie. If she would have let the damn cherry fade on its own, he would have scooped it up and smoked like it was the first cigarette of his life. The lady looked down at her red Chuck Taylor high tops and marched towards Boomer’s saloon, on a mission, a drinking one, a parched damsel in need of a glass of beer many drunk, thought Sewer Cap Johnnie, still under the influence of reading a western romance novel.

Sewer Cap Johnnie never lacked the desire to duck into Boomer’s, to drink and be at ease for some rib and ridicule, to share a little human misery, but he couldn’t enter. His armpits let loose a waterfall of sweat just thinking about it. Drinkers would stare at his hands as he struggled to find a place to hide them.

Sewer Cap Johnnie felt more alone in groups than he did at home, drinking a 12 pack of Pabst reading some science fiction book, but lately he’d switch to these western romances and began to daydream of endless rivers and mountain peaks and big skies and gangs of cowboys on horses and that thought once again creeped into his mind, of being part of a community, a tribe, something, anything outside his own mind and there were many choices, from vegetarian Buddhist brunches to bowling and softball teams, Catholic dance club, AA meetings, volleyball/karaoke bar nights and in a best case scenario – being part of a band and communicating without words, and now this Rosicrucian lady. He suddenly needed to know her like some lit-up mystic stripped down to his tightie whities on the church steps insisting to speak with Jesus so he made his way across the street.

The doors were just as Johnnie imagined, flapping wild west saloon doors, the way they couldn’t be back east because of the cold to the bone breezes. Sewer cap Johnnie sat down at the rail and looked at the booth behind him. There was a lady with lipstick and an older man wearing a cowboy hat. They were discussing the war in Gaza and climate change. Sewer Cap Johnnie took a deep breath, turned his head, and stared at the big booze bottles in the mirrored space behind the rail. It was quiet, only the hum of cool air pouring in from the vent. Shadows and sunlight were on the rail. The Rosicrucian lady was at the other end singing in whispers with her head back, eyes up at the ceiling like Valenzuela and beside her was a man with his hand on the rail shaking. She moved from chair to chair, getting closer and closer to Sewer Cap Johnnie who felt his hands shaking and speedy heart beats beginning. She was wearing large rings on many fingers and Sewer Cap Johnnie liked them because he liked gold and silver and aluminum. He collected cans, aluminum cans, all kinds of cans, from Blatz beer cans to Fresca soda cans.

“You one of them Rosicrucians, ain’t you?” mocked the bartender, his finger pointing at the lady, a half smile on his face. “I see it in your rings, see it in your face like some ancient symbols flashing there, right? A magic women with spells? Alright then bring out the incantations and miracles and let’s get this shindig seance rolling. I know I could use some good luck …we all could in here. Our Brewers have never won a World Series, more than 50 years and counting.”

“Well, aren’t you the greedy one,” snorted the lady, “asking for favors before ever finding out my name? And what’s this about Brewers? I’m no baseball maven, but don’t they play a million miles away in Milwaukee?”

“One point for you missy,” said the bartender. “We’re a bunch of Milwaukee expats that drink and commiserate here. So what’s your poison?”

“Jameson’s, no ice and why Boomers?”

“On the house,” said the bartender. “We call it Boomers after George C. Scott, not the actor though he does share the same middle initial C, but this is about the late great baseball player George Charles Scott, also known as “Boomer,” first baseman, played for the Brewers and Red Sox, a big man, a decent home run man and he could also field with the best of them.

“So do you wanna know my name or not?” she asked.

Sewer Cap Johnnie raised his hand, not too familiar with the custom of how to order a drink.

“This ain’t no classroom son,” said the bartender. “Speak up. What do you want?”

“A Pabst if you got one?” he asked and then shoved his hands under the rail.

“Well, if no one is gonna ask,” said the lady. “I’ll tell you. My name is Sally Roundtree.

Sewer Cap Johnnie knew the name, had heard the rumors, that she could talk to strangers she’d been introduced to or who she introduced herself to and she was always looking to get beyond awkward introductions, for the conversation to go on forever extra innings. And it wasn’t a sex thing. She was just out for connection and didn’t care if the guy was married or the girl was married. Some called her harlot, jezebel or abraxas and those not prone to ancient definitions called her bitch, slut, or goddess, and they said it to her face and that made her even more certain of her uncertainty over who she was and what she was becoming.

“And you?” she said while putting her arm on Sewer Cap Johnnie’s shoulder causing both his legs to shake. “What song would you like to hear on the jukebox?”

Sewer cap Johnnie looked down and wondered if she had magic words to make him happy. He still hadn’t looked at her eyes, only at her fingers and the rings. He considered leaving his Pabst and fleeing, but it was too late, he had already smelled her perfume and it reminded him of nothing so no memory prison. He was free to think whatever he wanted.

“Donavan’s Sssssss…Season of the Witch,” stuttered Sewer Cap Johnnie, surprised by his certainty and disgusted and embarrassed by the predictability of his choice, asking a lady with rings on her fingers to play a song about witches, but he said it again, “Donavan’s Sssssss…Season of the Witch,” and then he looked at her naked arm and there was a tattoo of some kind of flying dinosaur.

“My sister did the tattoo. Do you like it? I have two brothers and three sisters and a cutlery set heirloom handed down by my grandmother.”

Sewer Cap Johnnie took a swig from his glass of Pabst and suddenly, unexpectedly, realized that a heart attack, stroke, or choking on a shard of broken beer glass was always imminent so he cleared his throat.

“Yes, I like the tattoo. I like dinosaurs and see no problem with creation and evolution existing side by side.

The bartender filled a shot of Jameson’s and slid it towards Sewer Cap Johnnie.

Sally Roundtree put her hand back on Sewer Cap Johnnie’s shoulder and told him about the house she bought, how she knocked down the walls and how people lived there and did whatever they wanted, each paying what they could for rent and what a carnival it became with painters, plumbers, insurance salesman, married couples, writers, newspaper delivery men….

“you should come join us…”

and with that she raised her arms, waved them back and forth like a Pentecostal devotee and then slipped Sewer Cap Johnnie a card with her address. She downed her glass of Jamesons and danced her way out the western saloon doors.

Sewer Cap Johnnie stood up straight in his chair and knew he was there, in the bar, doing it, drinking with the fellas and a bartender and surviving, shipwrecked on a new land. He ripped up Sally Roundtree’s card and let the pieces fall to the floor. He then reached into his coat pocket, removed three cards and slid them across the rail.

The bartender watched as each one came into focus and his head moved slowly, from one card to the other – a Jackson Chourio, Tyler Black and Robert Gasser, three minor league Brewer’s that could crack the 2024 major league roster. The bartender knew about Chourio’s power speed potential and Black’s incredible OB%, his walk totals for such a young player and he knew about Gasser’s hits + walks/innings pitched ratio and strikeout totals.

The bartender poured a pitcher of Pabst, set up two glasses and walked around the rail and asked,

“What’s your name son?”

“Sewer Cap Johnnie.”

Brewers turn a new page

A few weeks ago it was announced that Brewers manager Craig Counsell would be moving on and skippering a new team, a shock to most of us Brewers fans because he’s lived in Milwaukee most of his life and an even bigger shock that he decided to join the same division Cubs which is a mere 90 miles south of Brew City and sort of a rival. But Counsell’s decision makes sense in many ways – a new experience, close to home/family and it also sends a message to owners – pay managers more money! because Counsell is now the highest paid manager of all-time at 40 million for five years which will no doubt, increase the salary of all managers going forward which is maybe better than all that money winding up in owner’s pockets.

From what I hear, Counsell was a devoted baseball player. in high school, he used to take the city bus to West Milwaukee for batting practice at Mike Hegan’s Grand Slam indoor batting cages and he eventually got a job there, went on to play at Notre Dame, his father’s alma mater, and got drafted by the Rockies. It was a great feeling to really be happy for a local Milwaukee boy when he won the World Series with the Marlins and later with the D-backs and for just making it to the big leagues!

When he joined the Brewers as a player in the early 2000’s and later on took a front office job with the team and ultimately became manager, it was hard to come up with a word because what are the odds of a kid from the very city he grew up in getting to not only play for the team he loved, but manage that same team and become the team’s all-time winningest manager!

And now he’s gone, but I’m excited about the Brewers new manager – Pat Murphy who was Counsell’s coach at Notre Dame and served as Brewers bench coach under Counsell for many years, an admirable act of gratitude on Counsell’s part for hiring Murphy, a smart baseball guy who has a good sense of humor. Makes me want to head out and find a bar that serves Guinness on tap.

According to Counsell, he didn’t like playing for Murphy at Notre Dame, but after he was done playing for him, he knew how much he had learned and this might be a good thing for the Crew, maybe a kick in the ass by a hard nosed old-timer like Murphy.

The Brewers recently non-tendered one of the team’s most popular players – pitcher Brandon Woodruff. He had season ending surgery before the playoffs started this past season and will most likely be shelved for all of 2024 and yet he’ll probably get a raise because in the short time that he pitched last season, he was dominant and well, the Brewers just can’t afford to pay a guy to sit on the bench all season, but maybe….hopefully, no team will sign him and he’ll come back to the Crew on a low budget two year deal. If not, he will always be remembered as an excellent pitcher and a super nice guy who also hit a home run off Clayton Kershaw in the 2018 NLCS.

Two other pressing matters facing the Brewers are whether to trade their other star pitcher Corbin Burnes or let him pitch next year, his final one before he becomes a free agent. The same question applies to shortstop and team leader Willy Adames who also becomes a free agent after the 2024 season.

It doesn’t seem realistic for low budget Milwaukee to be able to pay for both Burnes and Adames so if I were GM, I would trade Burnes and keep Adames. For Burnes, they could get in return an OK starting pitcher, a prospect, and maybe a third baseman who hits decent.

The Cardinals recently went on a starting pitcher signing frenzy, inking Lance Lynn, Kyle Gibson to one year contracts and a three year deal for Sonny Gray….all of them in their mid 30’s but still scary to a Brewer’s fan. I hope the crew retaliates in an offensive direction and sign Rhys Hoskins and Cody Bellinger. (my low budget pipe dream) I love great pitching, but want the Brewers to bolster their offense, give Yelich and Adames and Contreras some support.

I like the idea of the Brewers transforming from a pitching rich team to an offensive one. The change would be good. They have the prospects in place too with outfielders Garret Mitchell, Sal Frelick and to a lesser degree Joey Wiemer and I say lesser degree because as much as I love Wiemer’s elite defense, he struggled mightily at the plate last year and got demoted to AAA in September.

With many prospects already producing at the MLB level, it’s exciting that the most highly touted one of all has yet to arrive. It’s Jackson Churrio, another outfielder. I know the old adage that pitching and defense win games and the Brewers have had that the last few seasons under Counsell but struggled to advance in the playoffs and I wonder if a better offense could change that?

The Cubs visit American Family Field, home of the Brewers for a series starting May 27th and I bet there will be way more cheers than boos when Counsell walks out to home plate to hand over the batting order. If I were there, I know I would be cheering.

a letter to Tim Wakefield

Dear Mr. Wakefield,
I’ve never been to Japan, but I know about Eri Yoshida, the knuckleball princess, born somewhere in Japan and she worshipped you and taught herself how to throw a knuckleball and was the first girl to get drafted by a men’s Japanese professional team and holy crap, is that awesome! What a tribute to you Mr. Wakefield.

I knew about Wilbur Wood. I remember him because of an early 70s’s baseball card I have of him, when he was on the White Sox and they had red hats, but I didn’t know he threw a knuckler until later in my life. I guess the first knuckler I knew about or knucklers were the Niekro brothers who apparently learned the pitch from their father. That musta been no ordinary father and son catch.

And then there was Steve Sparks for the Brewers and later on Tom Candiotti when he also pitched for the Brewers and they threw knucklers and then I knew about you, Mr. Wakefield.

It feels like you were part of like some ancient tradition passed on from one to another like karate belts or oral histories and for a while, it seemed like there were no more knucklers, but then word came that Eri was making a return to baseball this year and then also this year, for the Padres, Matt Waldron pitched and he threw a knuckleball and now you have passed away and from what I read you were a great guy.

I like to think about your name as in Wake Field as in wake up fielders and fans and batter and catcher and announcers and grounds crew because the unpredictable knuckleball is on its way and ain’t that, for better or worse, like every day?

From your fan,
Steve

thoughts on cloning and unanswerable questions

Every once in a while I see a dog that looks really familiar but I can’t remember who they remind me of and then it hits me, but I can’t tell a guy or girl I know that I saw a dog that looked like them because they might get offended, but that makes no sense because people often say that dogs are cute so according to that logic, if someone looks like a dog, they could be cute, assuming the dog is cute too.

I have the impression that whoever created trees, rivers and humans and whoever continues to create babies, traffic jams, and emotional breakdowns or even if there is no creator, whoever is behind all of this seems to run out of ideas and so they make things look similar and so Herman Munster looks like Ted Danson looks like Fred Merkle and this reminds me of Merkle’s base running boner and that reminds of a game I was at… the old Milwaukee County Stadium. The Brew Crew were playing the Red Sox back when the Brewers were in the American League and Steve Lyons was the tying run and on second base with two outs in the top of the ninth and Wade Boggs was up and Lyons tried to steal third and got gunned down and the inning ended and the game was over and the Red Sox lost. And so Lyons, like Merkle, made a base running boner.

I didn’t know about this Merkle boner when I was at the Lyons game, but now I do so I went to baseball reference and Lyons stole 42 bases in a 9 year career and he got thrown out 32 times where as Merkle stole more bases – 238 and only got caught 38 times or did he? Baseball reference only counted his caught steals for three seasons which reminds me that some things we will never know.

the naked rail

Santiago believed or more than believed, he knew comic book heroes were somehow related to Greek Gods and African masks and cavemen making fire for the first time and Santiago knew he had superpowers too and this made it surprising that he and Shimmy would ever become friends because Shimmy knew his life was one big pose or what they call today, cultural appropriation, or to those more prone to loving Jesus – being influenced by others, that one is the sum of all its parts, but Shimmy had no personality of his own.

Spread out all over Shimmy’s bedroom floor were Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart records and hundreds of other albums he had learned about from other people and so he thought since those other people thought they were cool, then he did too and so he learned the release dates and lyrics to impress music critics he might bump into stapling concert ads onto wood electric poles and it was all very sad because Shimmy never fingered through albums at the local wax stax records store, never took a risk on one and felt the thrill of discovery and then made a point of leading the neighborhood kids astray into new sounds.

It took a few years, almost a decade before Shimmy realized that he was nothing but a scrap on the toilet bowl rim that refused to flush and he considered overdosing on valium washed down with whisky or jumping off Milwaukee’s Hoan Bridge with Houdini’s Appleton weights attached to his ankles. It’s an Astrodome wonder that he didn’t kill himself with that self-loathing attitude, but he had experienced the miracle of a beer suddenly appearing in the fridge after being certain the fridge was empty and walking towards that fridge anyway and holy Wisconsin cheese curds, every once in a while there’d be a beer in there and that got Shimmy believing in magic so he stuck around for another roll of the dice, another day after day after day…

Shimmy believed that blushing was an everyday baptism, returning him to appreciate the impossibility of flight in both a bird and an airplane and this was too religious for Santiago, but it warmed him up to Shimmy because he felt no threat which was important because Santiago had many lady lovers, including prostitutes and escorts and he hoped or more than hoped, he was determined to lay more women than Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain who was his only influence other than Gilgamesh and his desire for immortality. Santiago had no need for kids, instead, he was happy to take hesitant spirits under his wing and let them live vicariously through him…..brothers of love, as Santiago called his people, and Shimmy proved to be a perfect constituent.

Their introduction to each other was auspicious; it aroused a laugh, even in Shimmy which was rare because he hardly ever laughed, not out loud anyway. It was a foggy, kind of gloomy late summer day, rare summer fog, for Milwaukee anyway and this inspired Shimmy to wander out because he liked not seeing in front of him or behind him, too much regret and anticipatory anxiety.

Shimmy had no idea which direction he was going when all of a sudden he bumped into the front door of the Bavarian Bowl, west of the Milwaukee River and with the sudden, unprecedented urge to know, he pushed open the door like an anonymous gunslinger entering a saloon. There was a lady at the rail in blue warm up paints and three young men next to her, one with a hoody sweatshirt and another with a buzz cut and the third guy with his head down. There were also bowlers in the alleys and some sort of rehearsal in the ball room, perhaps for a wedding, but maybe a funeral and leaning up against the jukebox, there was Santiago talking up a middle-aged lady in a leather jacket. Santiago knew that, if he hoped to catch Wilt the Stilt, he had to be open minded, but he did have some rules; he never messed with any girl under 18 or one over 65. As loose and carefree and talkative as he was, he had some anal retentive order in his life. He kept track of all the ladies he bagged, scouting reports of sort, mostly boob size and type of kisser, lots of tongue or no tongue at all. He posted his findings on a chart in his kitchen to the east of his refrigerator and just as a side note, he never drank alcohol which made his sexual exploits that much more amazing in that he needed no psychological lubricant to get the ball rolling. He focused on objects in the room like the jukebox or beers on tap or the people at the rail. That’s what he talked about and the ladies liked the way he was in the moment, tuned to their worldly worries and so they accepted his invites to dance or have a drink, a Dr. Pepper for Santiago and whatever the lady wanted.

Despite his diminishing self-esteem, Shimmy felt at ease in the Bavarian Bowl and it wasn’t surprising. It was because Frank Oslo was at the rail. Shimmy knew Frank from the Aldi’s grocery store. They would often talk about fruits and vegetables there and the Brewers and how great their pitching staff was in 2023 and how fastball Freddie might make them hard to beat in the playoffs. When Shimmy arrived, Frank was at the rail, holding court, talking to a little group and Shimmy liked that. It was like having a life guard there and Frank was talking about the Brewers adding Canha and Santana to bolster their offense, more walks, inspire the discipline and do what Shimmy loved most, hitting well with runners in scoring position. The TV had no game on, but it looked to be levitating above the mirror behind the rail.

Santiago was a good 12 feet away, at the jukebox, a Frank Sinatra song playing, but he heard the name fastball Freddie and he wanted in on the conversation.

“And our defense,” he blurted out with his open palm flat on the rail, to make sure a pig-tailed lady knew he wasn’t married and even if he was, there was no spirit of conjugality, not inside the Bavarian Bowl or there was, but not with just one person; it was with everyone, thanks to Frank who wrote the simplest of poetry like rewriting the ten commandments, with number 2 encouraging people to not stare, but instead play with each other, to tell their subconscious this and he promised a miracle would happen and at the Bavarian Bowl, it did happen. Like a bumper sticker incantation, this not so secret fortune cookie code was like a key unlocking the most timid of hearts and conversation and dance happened and it was young and old together and the bartender overlooked age restrictions and let teenagers drink. Another commandment Frank changed was number 6, more of a command – to build bars inside hospitals so people could celebrate both the lives of those who had passed and the maternity ward for the new ones arriving. Frank had a reputation amongst the university elite of being a misogynist when in fact he loved ladies. I guess it was his insistance that naked bodies are beautiful, all of them, fat and skinny, that we are all imperfect and knowing our imperfection, this will end women being scared/trying to impress all the macho men in the world.

Frank would often invite people back to his small river west home, sometimes ladies to model in the nude and other times clothed men and women to watch the Brewers game. On that night he asked Shimmy and Santiago over a long with a few ladies, everyone under the influence of the locally brewed Sprecker beer and the jolly, merry spirit at the bar. It was the first time Shimmy had been there, first time for Santiago too. In fact, the two of them had never seen each other before that night. Inside were paintings on the wall, old classic paintings that Frank had painted over with Indian masks. The three ladies removed their clothes without Frank raising a finger. He wore a bolo tie with a plaid shirt and overalls, looking like a west coast lumberjack who moonlighted as a pig farmer. He also had nice, bushy, grey beard and sandals with socks.

“Take off your clothes and join the fun,” Frank encouraged and Santiago, hoping to score, did so very quickly. Shimmy on the other had years of uptight DNA to shed if he hoped to go fully nude and so instead, he sat on the old Oscar the Grouch green sofa.

“You look like an old dentist on the brink of suffocation,” laughed Frank. One of the naked ladies, with short curly brown hair, medium sized tennis ball breasts sat on Shimmy’s lap and Santiago laughed, so Did Frank and even Shimmy smiled too and then let out a little laugh. He removed his shoes, but that’s as far as he could go.

The next day the Brewers were playing the Yankees at Yankee stadium and Santiago and Shimmy were both at the Bavarian Bowl for first pitch and Santiago bought Shimmy a beer and a Dr. Pepper for himself and picked up where he left off the night before, making small talk with the ladies and Wade Miley was pitching for the Brewers and the Brewers were in 1st place, but Santiago kept talking and so Shimmy slipped away, to the rail and sat beside a lady with a bird on her shoulder.

“What kind of bird? What’s your name?” asked Shimmy with Santiago’s confidence moving through him.

“I’m Vern” answered the lady with orange hair, “And it’s a monk parakeet and I found it, injured, unable to fly outside the bar and so I scooped it up and brought it the vet and he fixed her up, something wrong with her wings.”

Shimmy felt his own wings igniting and started in on explaining how the Brewers manager Craig Counsell changes the batting order often, “to keep everyone on their toes,” speculated Shimmy and then he discussed his favorite player, Joey Wiemer, how fast he was and what great routes he took to catching fly balls, but how he struggled at the plate and how the new, hot and trending other rookie on the Brewers – Sal Frelick was getting most of the playing time and how Wiemer might get sent down to AAA. Vern asked what was AAA and Shimmy asked if she wanted a beer and Santiago watched with the smile of a mentor at what was happening between Vern and Shimmy and there was a little over 20 games left in the season and the Brewers were in first place and Shimmy bought the next round and Vern was in and so was Santiago sipping his Dr. Pepper, and the brunette he was talking to was in too and they all made a plan to ride the Bavarian Bowl shuttle bus to the next home game, the next night, against the Marlins.

as essential as a cigar

Spring seemed hyper to Dimitri with red bulbs on branches bursting into green leaves and snow melting, dog shit reappearing on lawns left over from the previous Fall’s lazy dog walkers…..water gushing down hillsides, returning to source, to the Milwaukee river or Lake Michigan or some big puddle that hopefully one day might become another lake. People removed animal furs and exposed some of their flesh and Dimitri was no different. In full conformity to the fever all around, spring was Cinderella to him and all the hope it brings. There was a hop in his step and he tied his shoelaces fast, very fast, and careless and there were knots and he could have bought velcro sneakers from the local Walmart to slow it all down, to mellow out, to follow that middle path all the preachers preached about, but he had Jenny Carper on his racy mind and her lisp and black bowl cut bangs and limp and the cane she relied on and her talk about a fourth traffic light, “aqua sea blue?” she suggested, “a signal for everyone to stop their cars, get out, and dance” and Dimitri never asked her about favorite colors or did she like Mr. Dumabok the earth science teacher or how about the new movie theatre. He was too smitten by her gait, a two steps forward, two steps back, tap the cane three times.

The other kids at school mocked her, said she had nothing on Jeffrey Leonard’s one flap down and Dimitri had no idea who Jeffrey Leonard was or anything about baseball for that matter. He preferred the microscope and telescope and protons and stars and summer arrived and he still hadn’t asked Jenny “get to know you” questions, but he invited her to the St. Hedwig Church festival anyway and she said yes, but that was all she said because there were polka bands playing at the festival and cane and all, Jenny could dance and it musta been one of the longest days of the summer because she never said a word to Dimitri and never asked him to dance which was probably a good thing because Dimitri couldn’t dance, couldn’t loosen up and sitting there, hands tucked under his butt, he started to question his love for science and why he didn’t he like baseball or sports or reading comic books or great literature and as he walked away from the church festival and Jenny Carper, he took a vow, to find out about this game baseball and what it might do to him and if he was really lucky, maybe learn how to dance like this Jeffrey Leonard and if he was really really really lucky, get to dance with Jenny Carper.

Dimitri went to the pharmacy and picked up a baseball magazine and read a few articles and there was no spike in his serotonin levels or not until he reached the back pages where he read Arjay Hobby Center’s advertisement, a promise of instant salvation – with a one time purchase, to have it all, the Topps complete set, from number 1 – Lou Brock Record Breaker (HOF) to 726 – Wilbur Wood.

Jenny Carper had probably forgotten all about Dimitri, but he was still operating at 78 phonograph speed and he liked the idea of instant salvation even though he knew nothing about Topps or baseball cards. He jotted down the address and figured for $14.99, he had nothing to lose and it was just about that time that three kids walked into the store and without any hesitation, dropped down on the counter what was probably paper route tip money and each of them exchanged these magic silver coins for strange packs of wax, three or four packs. Dimitri did his best to not be noticed, sneaking glances and when the kids went outside, he stared out the window and watched them rip open these wax packs and he wondered why they stopped and looked away and then exchanged the rectangular cardboards, like some old barter and the smiles on their faces….and then Dimitri knew…..it was the thrill of being a hunter and gatherer and finding the leaves he collected for the previous school year’s earth science project, the junky feeling it aroused, of never being too smug and satisfied, of wanting more leaves, a desire, an anchor in this world, a longing to stay alive. And as he walked out the pharmacy door, he heard the name Jeffrey Leonard mentioned followed by an imitation of what Andrew Loggin called “a home run trot.” It was then that Dimitri knew the boys had been trading baseball cards and he ripped up the Arjay Hobby Center address and threw the pieces to the wind.

It was the instant love of holding hands.

And with summer not yet dead, Dimitri scanned box scores and learned names and marched in and out of the pharmacy and bought pack after pack and a Carlton Fisk card finally appeared and into Dimitri’s open palm it went and where in the hell was Gorman Thomas? How could a Brewers baseball card take so long to arrive in the very city where he played? And what about this Bob Lemon, manager of the White Sox and the wrinkles on his neck that reminded Dimitri of tree rings and old age and how long the earth had lasted and this game and all the thrills and frustrations of collecting cards could be like the pleasure of a cigar smoking habit enduring from 24 to 84 or whenever last breaths came.