This Will Get Baseball Fans Through the Next Month -3

1/28/2014

Click

One day soon, but not soon enough,
Weary of the vapid sitcoms
And offensive commercials
We will grab the clicker
And summon the Grand Kabuki
Of baseball.

A jittery old pitcher
Scuffing at the mound.
A kid we don’t know, pinch-hitting
For the first time in the majors.
Mutual insecurities
Banging up against each other.

We will be transfixed by this duel between strangers
And we will dump Carmelo chucking it up,
And snowboarders, and bad movies,
The stupidity of 800 channels.

As my friend Ford writes,
Sitting out the winter in coastal Virginia,
Reading Blake, waiting for AA ball:
Hang in there.

Altenir Silva

1/28/2014 11:13:38 am

My dear George,

I loved this poem. In the year of World Cup, my expectations are more in Yankees bullpen than the goals of Neymar. And the most amazing, I feel no guilt about it. I love baseball.

Regards - Altenir (from Copacabana - Rio - Brazil)

George Vecsey

1/29/2014 12:06:30 am

Caro Altenir: Desfrute de Copa do Mundo.
Os Yankees ainda vai jogar depois.
Meus regareds a tua família,
George

Altenir Silva

1/29/2014 11:09:21 am

Dear George,

I'm kidding... I'll enjoy the World Cup. But before that, we have the Super Bowl. With all due respect of the Manning's family, I will root for the Seatlle Seahawks.
Muito obrigado.
Forte abraço - Altenir

Brin Savin

1/28/2014 01:28:26 pm

William Blake, eh?

"On my American plains I feel the struggling afflictions
Endur'd by roots that writhe their arms into the nether deep."

And lo the Mets yet further sinketh
to lull their fans into eternal sleep.

George

1/29/2014 12:10:34 am

"The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction."
Does that in any way apply to the poor Mets?
Whatever. I love to say it.
GV

Brian Savin

2/5/2014 11:46:41 am

Cool, touche. (I've been away awhile)

Comments are closed.

QUOTES
"Among the things that have long fascinated people about Jesus and explain his enduring appeal is his method of dialogue and teaching. "He asked a lot of questions and told a lot of stories in the form of parables. In fact, parables form about a third of Jesus’ recorded teachings. The Gospels were written decades after he died, so his questions and parables clearly left a deep impression on those who bore testimony to him....
"Some of Jesus’ questions were rhetorical; others were meant to challenge or even provoke. In some cases, Jesus used questions to parry attacks by religious authorities who set traps for him. In others, he used questions to enter more fully into the lives of others and to help people look at the state of their hearts. He asked people about their fears and their faith. Jesus used questions to free a woman caught in adultery from condemnation and to inquire whether people considered him to be the Messiah. He probed deeply into questions not many had asked before him, like “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
---(Peter Wehner, long-time White House consultant and writer, in the NYT last week about Jesus Christ’s method of teaching by asking questions.)

"Would that I could mention all the illuminating details in this biography, for example, why Wells praised Black Americans so highly, saying, 'I took a mighty liking to these gentle, human, dark-skinned people,' and 'Whatever America has to show in heroic living today, I doubt if she can show anything finer than the quality of the resolve, the steadfast efforts hundreds of black and colored men are making today to live blamelessly, honorably and patiently, getting by themselves what scraps of refinement, beauty and learning they may, keeping their hold on a civilization they are grudged and denied.''
-- "How H.G. Wells Predicted the 20th Century," Charles Johnson, NYT Book Review, Nov. 19, 2021. ***".

...the monsters arrive."
"They come in a deafening, surging swarm, blasting from lawn to lawn and filling the air with the stench of gasoline and death. I would call them mechanical locusts, descending upon every patch of gold in the neighborhood the way the grasshoppers of old would arrive, in numbers so great they darkened the sky, to lay bare a cornfield in minutes. But that comparison is unfair to locusts.
"Grasshoppers belong here. Gasoline-powered leaf blowers are invaders, the most maddening of all the maddening, environment-destroying tools of the American lawn-care industry."

---The great Margaret Renkl, from Nashville, one of my favorite NYT bylines, Oct. 26, 2021.
(She describes our Long Island enclave to every decibel, every stink.)
lwww.nytimes.com/2021/10/25/opinion/leaf-blowers-california-emissions.html
---

This Will Get Baseball Fans Through the Next Month -3

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