the Heckler

his parents and grandparents and just about everyone in the family believed in psychiatrists and for christmas they bought each other psychiatrist coupons. One kid they had in the family was named Harry and he became a fan of baseball when he was really young and no one knew how or why because no one in the family liked baseball, but Harry did and he knew all the teams and all the players and he had favorites and not favorites and he delivered newspapers for a living and lived at home with his parents so he didn’t have to make too much money and so he had season tickets to all 81 games and that’s where he yelled at players and some players laughed at Harry and other players got pissed off at him, but Harry felt better because he was getting all his stress and anxiety off his chest and so the family didn’t need to sign him up for a psychiatrist meeting and some of the family even started to watch baseball and see what it was all about.

trinity plus one

beer
whisky
weed
and an old baseball game on you tube.

catfish tales

so the new students rolled in like any another enrolment tide, sign me up for latin 101, biology 103, but unlike any other tide, there were new bubbles. you could see it in their shy red cheeks, but also such opposite field swagger in the way they described dad’s beer can collection and mom’s desire to be a pilot and the professor loved their pride, but could only wonder if they knew about the Seattle Pilots one and done season or later on, Von Joshua’s 1975 .359 OB%? It didn’t matter. He knew they’d get around to it all on some jukebox night down the road and then there’d be hollering over all they didn’t know – planets, poets and etruscans and drinking straight from the pitcher and it would feel like the first supper and despite the professor having to teach a class that next AM, he would partake in the inevitable Jamesons bottle down by the sunrise river where “never” didn’t exist anymore, only “always,” for an extra inning eternity anyway and that jukebox night down the road had suddenly arrived and no, there wasn’t talk of the Seattle Pilots and Von Joshua, but Timmy Crinkle mentioned 1975 and catfish and his 30 complete games – he the horse, warrior, finisher, they all agreed and we’re still here you one track tornado trying to kill us all, to kill, to kill, to kill nearly 50 years later……and there’s another game today and tomorrow too. Play ball. Play Ball. Play ball. You wanna dance?

in memory of the cleveland indians

i remember being by the dugout. in search of an indian’s autograph and some indian set my shoelace on fire and i had been hot footed and i knew it was love.

roses from a sacramento bunker

there were noises outside the basement window…
probably tanks rolling over gravel.
old Blinker let out a farmer’s blow of green slime and
snuck under his basement steps.
he flipped on a flashlight,
removed a box of 1974 Topps
and thumbed through them,
happy all over again that he was only missing two cards from the entire 660 card set –
number 13 – Tom Hilgendorf and
number 409 – Ike Brown
he wondered what the Hilgendorf and Brown cards looked like.
he’d never seen them.
head first dive into second?
batting cage casual?
contorted motion?
pitcher?
catcher?
the questions resurrected a no longer dead part of his mind.
sudden thoughts of Bill McNulty and his 55 homer season,
1974,
Pacific Coast League,
Sacramento Solons.
The Blinker rolled his fingers like a beginning piano player.

babe ruth too!

ok, when Rick Wise hit two homers and tossed a no-hitter,
he was pitching for the National League Phillies, but
Ohtani hitting the way he does and in the American League!!
such an ironic, slap in the senior circuit’s “pure” baseball face.

on an otherwise not so romantic night

“A dirty chain ain’t half bad,” mulled Slapstick Sam. “Keeps a stranger from flying over the handlebars, keeps the links together.”

The air was thick, but it wasn’t summer, no swimming through molasses decisions needed, to move or not to move. It was almost winter and a few pitchers had already signed nice free agent contracts, a small trade here-talk of bigger trades there. Talk of January being mild, of the Sanitary Commissioner stepping down, of old Slapstick Sam unveiling his stack of basketball cards, the tall ones, from the early 70’s including the Lew Alcindor rookie and the sound of sweet Lew turned minds to Maury Wills and his 104 stolen base season, of him only getting caught 13 times, helped Slapstick Sam sleep well and he woke up good and ready, strong coffee wondering if Sadaharu Oh hit 868 homeruns, than maybe Josh Gibson hit 900 or some unknown league in Liechtenstein housed a gunner who hit 40 inside the parkers for 30 years which adds up to 1200 if these moon time calculations are accurate.

But back to that dirty chain, Slapstick Sam had his eyes on a girl. She went by the name Calypso the Copperfield, named after the magician, and she could dance, on a pogo stick or a unicycle, it didn’t matter, she had the stroke, in dirty water or high blue skies, she had the grace, that knowing she wasn’t supposed to be and so her and Slapstick Sam wandered into a wintery night and the smell was right, the wood burning and crispiness of it all December, but they turned back anyway and settled down on their cabin sofa, on a love seat, and flipped on a rerun of some old regular season game…the rib and ridicule of the play by play and color putting them at ease, glad to be alive for another night.

i think i hate november

i was gonna quit drinking but confusion and paranoia and please pour me three more!!! and good thing i did drink because after reading charles bukowski’s ham on rye i learned about a baseball player i had never heard of before – Jigger Statz and so i shared my discovery with a friend who likes baseball. (it’s hard to have a friend who doesn’t like baseball at least a little) and he reminded me that Jigger Statz is one of 8 or 9 players who amassed 4,000 hits in pro ball…..most of Statz’s hits were in the minor leagues, but so what, that’s some firewood to wrap around me all winter or at least one lonely night in november.

on the other side of science street

the game was over.
it had all the ruminations.
i learned that word today – ruminations.
i like how it’s not only a thought process, but a cow chewing its cud.
there was a complete game in the game.
the winning pitcher won.
the lights at the bar across the street went on at 2 AM.
it was always that way.
they called it bar time.
some of the locals said it was no good to stay awake past 12
and yet,
they were still there, at the rail, drinking at 1:15.
because there’s always that chance of a forbidden kiss.

a little of that old pitchback game salvation

It happened so suddenly…..
this no more talk of resurrection and red sea crossings…
this no more bird chirp dawns of spring…
this no more kids playing whiffle ball in suburban backyards…
this no more spring training number 99 who? playing shortstop…
this no more violet bulbs on branches bursting a wild rush gush of green.

this crucible we’re in.

i got that worry, that paranoia. I bought a lot of food, but in my panic i bought spicy hot dogs that are messing with my stomach. i’m failing this test so i close my eyes and watch my body walk real slow, slide across the wood floor a sort of moon walk. Along the way, I pick up a rubber ball and slide some more, towards my bedroom wall. I stand on a makeshift mound, a stack of underwear or an old newspaper and I exhale nice and slow. I throw that rubber ball.
I’m Tiant’s 180 degree tango one pitch.
Fernando’s heavenly glance the next,
and then Pedro’s three quarter,
Dave LaRoche’s eeuphus,
Kent Tekulve submarine and so on…
Tim Lincecum’s cupped ball…..Brandon Woodruff over the top and holy crap he can hit too, whacked a home run off Kershaw in the 2018 playoffs and so I dream of a bat in my hands and long for a pitcher to bring it on and suddenly i don’t know what time it is or what day and death doesn’t matter, for a few minutes anyway.