The San Francisco Freak Show

“The Freak” by Robert Marosi Bustamante.

"Dear Will,

The Texas Rangers made a strong bid for my allegiance too, and not just because Neftali Feliz roped A-Rod with that curve to clinch the American League championship. There’s something ebullient and, yes, winning about the Rangers. They’re slightly cocky, sweet, and sly, smiling like they’ve gotten away with something—which, as you point out, several of them have. (And don’t forget catcher Bengie Molina, traded by the Giants to the Rangers over the summer; he’ll get a ring regardless of who wins.) I love to watch Josh Hamilton’s swing, injured ribs or not—the long extension and the letting go. And I love to watch Elvis Andrus dash around the base paths—so foolish, so daring. Still, there’s something a little too Manifest Destiny about the team. I can’t help but think of the Rangers’ former owner, George W. Bush, not to mention James K. Polk.

So I’ll take San Francisco, thanks. The Giants call their style of baseball “torture,” their star “the Freak,” their NLCS MVP “Cody” (I don’t care if that’s his real name). I’m smitten with a kid named Buster Posey. Willie Mays, the “Say Hey Kid,” would fit right in. The Giants hit home runs, or not at all. And their pitching! This team plays baseball like it’s a great game of catch with diverting interruptions. The whole team is weird and improbable. After Juan Uribe homered in the eighth to break a tie in game 6 of the NLCS, Phillies Manager Charlie Manuel said, “The big blow was by what’s his name? The shortstop.” Never mind that Uribe was playing third base. Plus, when the game was over, I got to do my best imitation of Russ Hodges hollering, “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!” (My grandfather was at the game where Bobby Thomson hit his famous shot and swore he’d never attend another game—baseball couldn’t get any better.)

When do you know a game is over? When the story is over. When the suspense turns into celebration and postmortem, and you can see the losing team members mentally practicing their lines: not our game, not our year. A dumb answer, but there’s something to it. The Yankees, their stars especially, were passive from the start, but once Hamilton homered and Cliff Lee took the mound to start game 3, the ALCS was effectively over. The Yankees payroll was a $207 million ticket to somebody else’s drama. (Rangers payroll: $55 million, doled out by stat-head wunderkind Jon Daniels, the youngest general manager in baseball.)

Between Sabermetrics and steroids, it seems to me—at least from a distance—that baseball has been experiencing a scientific age. Forget the burden of history, forget the curse of the past: With the right GM and some smart statisticians, even the Red Sox can win! I have a friend who sometimes forwards me e-mail exchanges from a group of particularly knowledgeable baseball fans. They and their ilk throw around terms like WAR, WHIP, and something called the Ultimate Zone Rating. It is all very impressive, but also somewhat alarming, don’t you think? These stats-obsessed fans are like a group of geneticists examining a man’s genome to predict the exact course of his love life. I don’t mean to suggest that statistics aren’t important or revealing; they’re half the fun of following the game. Nor do I want to suggest that an interest in them precludes storytelling. (Just read Moneyball for proof of that.) Part of the beauty of baseball has always been that the narrative arc of a game can be gleaned from little columns of agate type. Still, sometimes the numbers don’t add up. Sometimes Gary Cooper doesn’t get the girl.

Play ball!


Louisa "

The Paris Review

Mikhail Horowitz - "The All-Bohemian Team"

C Jim French
1B Kelly Paris
2B Luis Sojo
SS Bobby Wine
3B Wayne Garrett
OF Art Rebel
OF Shawn Hare
OF Ted Beard

RHP Bill Reeder
Elmer Ponder

LHP Lance Painter
John Rocker

BENCH Jack Coffey
Lloyd Merriman
Tex Jeanes

MGR Tony Muser

Southpaw

"A left-handed pitcher. The word was created to describe a lefty because, traditionally, baseball stadiums were built with the pitching mounds facing west and the batter facing east, to prevent the sun from shining in the hitter’s eyes. Thus, when standing on the mound, the lefthander is facing west, but his arm is facing south." Suite101: Baseball Slang Dictionary

Ron Guidry

Wikipedia - "Ronald Ames Guidry (... born August 28, 1950, in Lafayette, Louisiana; nicknamed 'Louisiana Lightning' and 'Gator') is a former Major League Baseball left-handed pitcher. He played 14 seasons for the New York Yankees from 1975 through 1988. Guidry was the pitching coach of the New York Yankees from 2006 to 2007."
Wikipedia, Baseball Reference

Michael Palmer - "A Note on Poetics, 1974"

Let us suppose a baseball team with Kurt Schwitters at third,
Louis ("Hit-em-where-they-ain't") Zukofsky at short, Peter
Kropotkin at second, and Anon at first. Art ("Frenchy")
Rimbaud is in left, Willie the Lion Smith in center, and
Gertrude Stein in right. On the mound Werner Heisenberg, whose
notorious indeterminacy pitch has made him the club's un-
challenged "stopper". Alternating behind the plate are John
Cage and Master Canterel, and manager is Ludwig ("the Barber")
Wittgenstein, whose rep around the circuit as a staunch
disciplinarian is largely undeserved.

Then let us suppose that there's no field, no ball, and no
other team. What would would the final score be?

Pafko at the Wall

Wikipedia - "Pafko at the Wall, subtitled The Shot Heard Round the World, was originally published as a folio in the October 1992 issue of Harper's Magazine. It was later (1997) incorporated as the prologue in Don DeLillo's magnum opus novel, Underworld, with minor changes from the original version, such as a new opening line. In 2001, Pafko was re-released as a novella, by Scribner (this is the same version as printed in Underworld). In Underworld this section is titled The Triumph of Death, in reference to the painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder."
Wikipedia, amazon, Google

Phil Rizzuto.- "I Really Should Be Going Home"

It's very chilly.
As a matter -
I'm telling you,
I've been freezing.
My hands are cold.
I have low blood pressure anyway.
And arthritis.
I really should be going home.


July 24, 1983 (The Pine Tar Game)
Kansas City at New York
Mike Armstrong pitching to Rick Cerone
Seventh inning, bases empty, two outs
Tankees lead 4-3

Amy Munno - "Investment"

On the dark top shelf of my closet
a large cardboard box overflows
with baseball cards from 1986,
still sealed in original plastic,
pristine packs, the price tags stuck to the top.
My cousin and I, fifteen, feeling lucky,
bought up the wax wrappers, carefully peeling them
back like gently shifting the clothes off
a new lover to find out what you've invested in.
Snapping the stale pink sticks in our mouths,
we lined up rookies like savings bonds,
recorded their values on notebook paper,
and slipped them into plastic sheets
for a long safe sleep.

Now I drive my cousin crazy with my cardboard box.
"Open them," he chides. "Carpe diem—
cash them in." But there's something
he doesn't understand, something he missed
when he sold his cards—the Goodens
for his drunken Bahamas trip, the Strawberrys
for his drugs, the McGwires for his car
that has long since died.

There are moments that continue to accrue,
the times he and I crouched for hours
in the drugstore, bubble gum breath
in each other's faces, waxy film
under our nails as we shuffled out
the regular players from the bad poker hand,
praying like tiny monks that the one card
we needed would reveal itself divinely
at the bottom of the pack.

These memories of him,
the old ones before life got hard,
I've wrapped these up,
grouped the good,
put them away.

Bullpen

Wikipedia - "In baseball, the bullpen (or simply the pen) is the area where relief pitchers warm-up before entering a game. Depending on the ballpark, it may be situated in foul territory along the baselines or just beyond the outfield fence. Also, a team's roster of relief pitchers is metonymically referred to as "the bullpen". These relievers usually wait in the bullpen when they have yet to play in a game, rather than in the dugout with the rest of the team. The starting pitcher also makes his final pregame warmups in the bullpen. Managers can call coaches in the bullpen on an in-house telephone from the dugout to tell a certain pitcher to begin his warmup tosses."
Wikipedia

Joel Peckham - "BP"

When all the other children had gone home
we walked into the damp, hard consonants
of cold spring rain. The grackles and the gulls
calling in the pines, the crack of damp wood
in my hands—You in flannels pushed up from
your wrists and thick forearms, me in good
slacks, new cleats. Towering sixty feet
away, you were huge to me then—and distant,
calling out directions I couldn't hope to meet—
elbow up, top hand through, relax, head down.
I couldn't make it out. The ball thrown
high and tight or floating off, impossible
to hit. What could I know of contact then
Old man, warm up your arm. Fire one in here again.

William Miller - "Minor Poets"

Like players in the bush leagues,
we sit in the dugout waiting
for our turn in the magic circle,
our chance at the plate.

We swing for the fence,
sometimes topping,
but never clearing the wall.

When we steal second,
we always slide head-first,
though the tag is just in time.

And when the ball,
that glorious ball,
flies out of the sun,
we run and stumble,
strain for and almost make
the perfect catch.

Vada Pinson

Wikipedia - "Vada Edward Pinson, Jr. (August 11, 1938, Memphis, Tennessee - October 21, 1995, Oakland, California) was an American center fielder and coach in Major League Baseball. Pinson played in the major leagues for 18 years, from 1958 through 1975, and his greatest seasons were with the Cincinnati Redlegs/Reds, for whom he played from 1958–68."
Wikipedia, Baseball Reference

Dan Liberthson - "Catcher"

Senior warrior, counselor,
he crouches at the still center,
then sets the world spinning
with the minutest sign:
the diamond breaks light
into prismatic motion,
and all the game's colors
bloom from his glove.

Bat smolders orange with energy
sucked from the earth through
the batter's tensile trunk and arms,
then flares red ripping
to meet the icehard ball
that dips, dense blue,
curves, elusive green,
waits, slow rust dream, or
melts whitehot with speed.
He sets all this in motion,
sits back and watches
for a fugitive eternity until
bat cracks ball, time begins,
the play explodes and then,
like every other player
on that field of chance—no!
more naked than any other
despite the armor he wears,
shorn of all his powers save
the flesh of his sacrificial body,
he stands like a wooden idol
blocking the path of the force
he has let loose:
unbroken light lancing around
the diamond, burning home.