Weekend Reading: 'As They See 'Em' (First Chapter)

New York Times theater critic and reporter Bruce Weber (not the basketball coach) went to umpire school to write a book. That book,  'As They See 'Em' is out now.

Read the first chapter here.

Or save yourself twenty minutes and read this very short paragraph from the end of that first chapter:

In umpire nation, Applebee's and Chili's are high-end establishments, steak is a gourmet meal, and, for some reason, lite beer is preferable to regular beer. It's a place where the playing of the national anthem before a ball game is serious business, where women are discomforting, Jews are a novelty, homosexuals are unwanted, and liberals tend to keep their opinions to themselves.

Umpires, it turns out, are a lot like other  middle-aged, middle-America, blue-collar white guys.

It's easy to suspect that Bruce Weber has not spent a great deal of time between the coasts. It's also easy to suspect that this will be a book in which a coast-dwelling, fairly wealthy writer romanticizes a profession he sees as 'honest' or 'gritty,' but then realizes 2/3 of the way through that the lifestyle is a lot harder than it looks and really not for him. Just guessing.

Thursday Links: Growing Up, Growing Old

‘Soccer Is Ruining America’ says Steven Webb over at First Things, it corrupts our youth. The answer? More Baseball. He's really serious, and Britain is none too pleased. (h/t on all this to Andrew Sullivan.) Everybody just needs to look to Nomar and Mia.

A father on NPR wonders if the steroid era will somehow contaminate the apple pie innocence of his son’s passion for baseball. Apparently oblivious to baseball’s history of corruption, racism, labor abuses, and other generally wily misbehavior. (h/t Shysterball).

Josh Wilker at the painfully-honest-perspective-on existential-questions-factory Cardboard Gods: What a grim one-direction-only conveyor belt is life!

Also, feel free to go back and read Tuesday's poem of the week. It's got some childhood baseball action going on.

Bonus Material: The young and the very old.

Michael Phelps calls certain unnamed youthful indiscretion ‘bad mistake.’ No word on whether he was referring to the bong or the fact that there was a camera in the room.

92-year old Senator Robert Byrd, is on Twitter and apparently in the hands of a powerful jelly bean lobby. (Editor’s note: this blog is on twitter too, but only just barely).

The Netherlands Wins!...Or Is It Win?

I have not watched a single inning of the World Baseball Classic. And it shouldn’t have taken a jaw-dropping upset to remind me what a shameful thing that was. But it did, and I missed the Netherlands edging the Dominican Republic in extra innings last night 2-1. Yes, you read that right. The Netherlands. And apparently it was their second time beating the DR in this year’s tournament. Unbelievable. I didn’t even know the Netherlands had a team.

Since the second every-other-spring classic started getting media attention, my baseball-watching friends have consistently shat upon it. There’s the atrocious thirteen inning rule to complain about, the conspicuous absences of so many stars, the fact that this is Spring Training and nobody is mentally prepared for ‘important baseball’ yet. There are a million reasons not to watch. My spoken excuse is a good one (“don’t own a tv"), but in my heart of hearts I know its bullshit. Truth is I just didn’t care about the World Baseball Classic.

I repent. A game like last night’s rises sharply above the whiny, apathetic static of my nonexistent television. In the Majors, you don’t get guys named Englehardt, Randall Simon, Van Klooster, and Duursma digging in against Pedro Martinez. You might get a crucial 11th inning error by Willy Aybar, but you sure don’t get Yurendell De Caster coming around to score on it.

Plus, there’s the excitement. I’ve been working on an post that glances on Mexican League Baseball, and in my detailed, methodical internet research, I’ve noticed that Mexico really gives a shit about the WBC. From what I can see so does Panama, Venezuela, Cuba, and Korea. With the exception of maybe Canada, everybody else cares! And we should too. Losing at the American Pastime is embarrassing in the same way losing in basketball at the Athens Olympics in 2004 was embarrassing.

The easy argument is that we don’t need the WBC. We Americans are confident in our boys’ ability. Fair enough. We invented the sport, we host its most important league, and we put on the damn tournament, isn’t that enough? Probably. But our ego and indifference don’t cause the players to perform with any less passion, the fans to cheer with any less fervor; our ego and indifference don’t dull the excitement or weirdness of the Netherlands beating the Dominican Republic twice…at baseball.

So World Baseball Classic, Team Netherlands (and Netherlands Antilles), obese first baseman Randall Simon: I apologize for my neglect. From here on out I will do my best to watch your games, read your box scores, and write about you. Because beneath the flags and the stupid rules and the odd presence of Randall Simon this is still baseball. And damnit reader, that’s why we’re here. You and me. We like baseball.

Poem Of The Week: The Man into Whose Yard You/Should Not Hit Your Ball

Because this site is called Pitchers & Poets, and because we all need a little more poetry in our lives (I really believe that but only in the literal sense), this website will include some poems. They won’t be especially hard poems. No Keats or Byron, no Milton, no Shakespeare. In fact, there won’t be any poems at all by dead Englishmen because dead Englishmen didn’t write about baseball.

I hope you take the time and read the poems as we put them up each Tuesday. Comment on them. And if you like a particular poem, check out others by the author.

So I give you the inaugural poem of the week, by Thomas Lux.

The Man into Whose Yard You/
Should Not Hit Your Ball

each day mowed
and mowed his lawn, his dry quarter acre,
the machine slicing a wisp
from each blade's tip. Dust storms rose
around the roar, 6 P.M. every day,
spring, summer, fall. If he could mow
the snow he would.
On one side, his neighbors the cows
turned their backs to him
and did what they do to the grass.
Where he worked, I don't know,
but it set his jaw to: tight.
His wife a cipher, shoebox tissue,
a shattered apron. As if
into her head he drove a wedge of shale.
Years later, his daughter goes to jail.
mow, mow, mow his lawn
gently down a decade's summers.
On his other side lived mine and me,
across a narrow pasture, often fallow —
a field of fly balls, the best part of childhood
and baseball. But if a ball crossed his line,
as one did in 1956
and another in 1958,
it came back coleslaw — his lawnmower
ate it up, happy
to cut something, no matter
what the manual said
about foreign objects,
stones, or sticks.