23 Aug 2011, by Eric
Meanwhile, on other parts of the internet, there is a group of writers trying to raise money for a new sports website. I'm honored to be a part of that group, and as such here is the intro video for The Classical:
We're not talking about a blog here, we're talking about an in-depth publication featuring high quality, fact-checked, heavily reported essays. We're talking about smart, funny, intellectually considered content published every day. Not just by the people mentioned in the video, but by writes you love and writers you will love.
Also: we're giving out cool prizes, ranging from chip clips to our personal sports memorabilia to the folks who donate.
For more info, or if you care to contribute, CLICK HERE.
And obviously, tell your friends. And also obviously, if you have any questions, fire away.
17 Aug 2011, by Patrick
Recently I sat amidst the fog of a Seattle summer morning and read a short essay by George Orwell entitled “Why I Write”. Like Orwell, I recognized at a young age that I was a writer whether I actually wrote anything or not. I wrote short novels in elementary school, poetry in high school, essays in college, all of them shamelessly derivative. When I read, I found myself considering what worked and what didn’t work, how the words evoked reactions from me. Each time I faced my lack of originality and the surplus of talent already out there in the world, and walked away, I came back again. I think that most writers feel this way, especially in their youth.
Six months ago I turned to the internet and baseball, primarily to find a way to toy with words while escaping the drudgery of the endless string of term papers. The quarter ended but the writing didn’t. Last night my wife threw a sidelong glance at me. “Why do people write about baseball, anyway?” she asked, glancing at the open Word document on my screen.
“Funny you should ask,” I said.
In his essay, Orwell outlines four primary reasons why writers are driven to write, ignoring financial concerns. They are:
1. Egoism, the desire to accrue fame and reputation, and to prove one’s worth in relation to one’s colleagues.
2. Aesthetic enthusiasm, simple appreciation for the subject matter at hand.
3. Historical impulse, the desire to catalogue the past exactly as it happened and to put events in their correct order.
4. Political purpose, in its most open-ended sense: writing with intent to persuade the reader and alter the world through that connection.
In the realm of sportswriting there will never be any shortage of the first of these four causes. This is especially true online, where self-promotion and social networking have become increasingly vital to one’s success. Fame is a sort of social capital for writers, so easily quantified through the number of page views, comments, and followers. This is neither a good nor a bad thing, and I very much doubt that many people are drawn to the vocation solely or even primarily for the ego boost it provides. The anonymous internet commenter is always there to provide an instant remedy for such delusions.
Aesthetic enthusiasm, on the other hand, seems perfectly suited to the sport of baseball and the internet does nothing to decrease its sentiment. Few people would write about baseball if they didn’t already love the game. If the writing is good it will foster this love in the reader, only furthering their desire to read more. What makes baseball writing so vivid and varied is that each writer can find (and convey) their own unique appreciation of the sport. It can be economics, statistics, or militaristic imagery; it can even be poetry.
The historical motive is the least obvious, but perhaps the one to which baseball owes the most. I am continually amazed at the precision and quantity of data available to the baseball fan, minutia spanning from the alteration of the length of a stirrup to the performance of men who played the game in wheat fields a hundred and thirty-five years ago. That we have this historical foundation is due to the labor of thousands of determined, admiring fans. The internet, however, erodes this impulse somewhat, as it’s difficult for the writer to create a sense of permanence in a form of media which is inherently transitory.
Orwell’s own passion came from the political purpose of writing. He concludes the essay with this line: “And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.” Those who have read Animal Farm and 1984 would be unsurprised. Baseball doesn’t appear as though it would suit Orwell particularly well, but there are certain elements of political struggle present in sportswriting.
The world of baseball naturally lends itself to partisanship. It divides people into cultural regions, bound to a single baseball team, and demands of them an oath of loyalty. These regions are peppered with the occasional transplant, who must struggle in foreign lands and can only rely on USA Today and the internet to receive tidings from home.
Because of the remote nature of the game, most fans connect to it through argument. Some of the most romantic experiences we have with baseball are arguments: the kibitzing of the angry mob on sports radio after the blown save, or the debate at the bar over the Hall of Fame. The national media takes this argumentation and capitalizes on it, sensibly stoking the fire in order to drive traffic. Fans from each corner of the country clamber for the mystical quality that is “respect” from the journalism personalities.
We also see this political undercurrent to the never-ending battle between the sabermetric and traditional baseball analysis communities. These debates are pitched, and much is at stake; Felix Hernandez in part owes his Cy Young award to the charisma of baseball writers, as does Bert Blyleven his plaque. But as often as these conversations result in good, intellectually stimulating give and take, more often they’re simple diatribes aimed at the already converted. Edginess and a willingness to ruffle feathers win out over insightful analysis. Fans are yet again driven to take sides, and the result is an atmosphere eerily similar to politics.
Orwell would have been fine with all of this. But Orwell lived in a different time, one where he could afford the luxury of moral superiority. He wrote in the era of Hitler, and in Hitler the idea of an enemy to which all other enemies since have been compared via hyperbole. It was a time when strength fought strength, one of the reasons we still find that moment in history so appealing. But as fine a book as Animal Farm was, there is little in baseball that is so black and white. When it comes to baseball, I find that I can’t avoid being a relativist.
There’s one aspect of writing that Orwell couldn’t foresee, and that’s the blurring of the line between writing and publication. The act of writing itself, regardless of whether it’s read or thrown away, has the effect of organization, forcing the author to order his or her own thoughts. The research and reflection necessary for good writing - or even writing that just tries to be good – helps people to improve upon their knowledge. This is the same with conversation, which helps people clarify their ideas and understand how relevant they are to the world around them. Every piece of writing is an extension between author and reader, an attempted exchange of ideas. This exchange can certainly be persuasive. But in the end it’s primarily personal, an individual expression that may or may not reach the next person down the line.
Here at Pitchers & Poets, there’s little pretense about our preference for the aesthetic. I believe that everything has to mean something, even baseball. It’s not enough for me to say that something is good or that this causes this to happen; I’m not even particularly interested in efficiencies or the process of winning baseball games, beyond a clinical, mathematical viewpoint. I want to write about baseball as allegory, as a symbol for something greater than the game itself and greater than me, myself. The game is something that connects all of us, forms a framework by which we can develop other ideas about the world as a whole.
My hope is that this framework can attach to the framework of others to build something meaningful. It’s not a war, nor is it an attempt at a Pyrrhic victory. I write because I like sharing ideas, and sharing them makes them better. Why people read baseball writing is a separate discussion entirely.
15 Aug 2011, by Eric
I was back in America for about three days before baseball welcomed me home. It was early in Friday's Red Sox -Mariners game. I was seated midway up the first base line, top of the lower level, enjoying the rare ambiance of a crowded Safeco Field, wondering the first name of the Seattle pitcher (last name: Beaven), when a hard-hit groundball en route to first baseman Justin Smoak decided it would rather be a line drive, and struck him in the face. Smoak took a few steps back, shocked I think, and fell.
It was that moment – the ball leaping up suddenly, Smoak stumbling and falling as if he'd been shot, the sloppy aftermath of the play that nearly saw Carl Crawford thrown out rounding third – that brought baseball back to life for me. It also brought to mind another scene:
I was at a Dodger game in late 2002 and Kaz Ishii was on the mound. Ishii was a rookie that year and one of my favorites. He paused midway through his windup, threw a video game curve, and generally behaved like a renegade pop star. At some point, with the Astros hitting, I got up to use the restroom. Inside, I heard the crowd gasp loudly, and then through speakers I heard Vin Scully describe Brian Hunter hitting a line drive off Ishii's head and the ball caroming all the way to the backstop. I ran back to my seat. The crowd was silent. Ishii was out cold in the middle of the infield. Scully's matter-of-fact-description was still ringing in my ears.
I sat in my seat at Safeco and I thought about Kaz Ishii, and then I thought about the way that in baseball like in anything else, one thing reminds you of another. And that without the first thing, the exposure to baseball itself, it's hard to be reminded of those other things. It's hard to be fully engaged. And before I could lapse fully into Proustian reflection, I got distracted by some statistic up on the scoreboard.
The Smoak play was awful random and fast and electrifying. It stunned my senses. And I thank it for making me realize how far from baseball I had drifted. The truth is I've grown accustomed to a certain idisyncratic level of baseball fandom. For the last two-plus years I've thought about baseball every day. I've written about it almost as much. To leave mid-season, even just for a couple of months, was to change my life in a more significant way than I had anticipated. It was to be removed from the source of so much of what I did.
I still feel slightly removed. Not in the sense that I didn't know who the hell Blake Beavan was or that David Ortiz was having such a good year, but in the sense that I haven't fully caught up mentally to the season, or even to sports in general. The sports brain isn't clicking as fast as it should be yet. My interest in the standings and the story-lines isn't where it should be. But that will come.
11 Aug 2011, by Ted
Jesse Gloyd lives in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California, my new favorite American neighborhood. Buckshot Boogaloo is his web site, where you'll find thoughtful and valuable essays, and the Buckshot Boogaloo podcast.
I’m trying to catch the perfect mood, the perfect literary metaphor for Satchel Paige. I can’t. I can’t seem to put his life in the proper context. I can’t seem to figure out the perfect angle. It’s almost as if he purposefully made his life confusing a roadmap or a treasure map with X’s marking random spots. I can’t blame Satchel alone for my lack of context. My wife is eating cherries next to me. She’s eating cherries and flipping through a People Magazine. I can only turn up my music so loud. I can’t stand the sound of people chewing: the suck, the crunch, and the spit of the pit into the plastic drinking cup. The sounds are mixed up, faulty. They are metaphorically inaccurate.
It might also be metaphorically inaccurate to say Satchel Paige was Methuselah with a golden arm, but I’m not going for accuracy at this point. He threw three innings when he was fifty-nine. Charlie Finley put a rocking chair in the bullpen. Satchel needed his pension, so Charlie let him pitch. There’s a photo of him in the rocker with a nurse by his side. He is statuesque, a lizard basking in the sun. He looks ageless, metaphorically prehistoric. Metaphorically prehistoric sounds nice, it sounds correct, but it isn’t a thing. It’s confusing. It’s faulty.
Age rests at the heart of the confusing map that was Satchel’s existence. Age should be the perfect frame. It should be the mold that we use to cast the essence of Satchel. He was old. He was the archetype of old. He was Methuselah. He was bigger than Methuselah. He was a Patriarch, Biblical in stature. The problem is that age doesn’t tell the whole story. Age is the shadow. Age is the lamppost we use to lean. It helps us steady. It keeps us from falling.
I dedicated a great deal of thought to my grandmother when I was first putting this piece together. I wrote a detailed introduction (and then threw it out with a grandiose sweeping delete). The detailed introduction was introspective and sad. It was a window to a time when I mourned. The bridge was a bit shaky though. Satchel moved too fast to mourn. His type was rambling. He wasn’t easy to pin down. Age turned out to be the only common link between Satchel and my grandmother, age and the ravages of time.
She lived in Texas and moved around. I think her family might have been involved with the circus.
My grandmother was easy to pin down. Her life was rough, but she loved people and she made it through. The Great Depression bit her hard. She lived in Texas and moved around. I think her family might have been involved with the circus. She moved, Satchel moved. Satchel was always running away from situations; my grandmother confronted and dealt. The parallels between the two were forced, they were false. My perception was something of a lie.
Satchel Paige was a beautiful lie. Lying was his trademark, but his idea of the lie was masked. The lie became the story, the tallest of the tall tales. People paid to see him lie. They paid to watch him pitch, so they, too, could have a faulty leg to stand on when telling their own lies about Satchel. Bojangles taught him how to jangle. James P. Johnson taught him how to roll. He got the better of Dizzy Dean on more than one occasion. His lies have been documented. They were beautiful. They were integral. The best lies have a life. His could dance. His could sing. His could juke. His could jive. Understanding the lie, I thought, was the key to understanding Satchel Paige. The lies weren’t truly lies, though, because they weren’t malicious.
His lies were half-baked myths propped up with hyperbole and suspect detail. For example, his pitches, even though they were all of the same ilk, had different names: Bat Dodger, Midnight Rider, Midnight Creeper, Jump Ball, Trouble Ball, Bee Ball, Hesitation. The names made them strong, the names added to his legacy, they added to the hyperbolic metaphor that was his everyday existence. His pitches were his arsenal, his iconic weapons. But unlike Hobbs’ Wonderboy, Crockett’s Betsy, and Arthur’s Excalibur, Satchel’s pitches were disposable. They were more akin to symphonic movements. They were short, brilliantly violent bursts of poetry. They had voice. They sang. They were balladeers, their melodies existing as a means of bolstering the legend, and confusing the map.
his pitches, even though they were all of the same ilk, had different names: Bat Dodger, Midnight Rider, Midnight Creeper, Jump Ball, Trouble Ball, Bee Ball, Hesitation. The names made them strong.
He also had rules for living, rules for staying young.
1. Avoid fried meats, which angry up the blood.
2. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.
3. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
4. Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society. The social ramble ain't restful.
5. Avoid running at all times.
6. Don't look back, something may be gaining on you.
These rules added to the myth. They became canonical. They helped create the perception. But perception is easily corrupted, especially self-perception. After all, Satchel was always running. He was always looking back. He was running away from women and professional obligations. He rambled. He lied. He sang. He danced.
In 1959 he rambled onto the set of Robert Mitchum's The Wonderful Country. He played Tobe Sutton, the fictional representation of a Buffalo Soldier. In a sense, his rambling existence owed as much to the Buffalo Soldier as anything. He was a warrior, but he was taken for granted. He had to fight for respect, and the respect that he earned needed the lamppost of hyperbole and metaphor to help prop it up for the masses to accept. It was drunken respect, sloppy respect.
The social ramble ain't restful.
His involvement with the film was chronicled in the December 1959 issue of Ebony. Director Robert Parrish stated that Satchel had “every possibility to become a definite screen personality.” Screen personality. His legend lived, and still lives, in the deep mine shaft of a nation’s collective subconscious as a personality. He was great, he was magnificent, but his magnificence was hidden by his personality.
Then there was the time that he led a band of Negro League legends to the Dominican Republic. A government official commissioned him to round up the best of the best. His team would represent Rafael Trujillo[1. "Trujillo's 30 years in power, to Dominicans known as the Trujillo Era (Spanish: La Era de Trujillo), is considered one of the bloodiest ever in the Americas, as well as a time of a classic personality cult, when monuments to Trujillo were in abundance.", via wikipedia]. Trujillo was ruthless, but Trujillo loved baseball. While Satchel and his team (a team that featured Josh Gibson and Cool Papa Bell, among others) were playing in the Dominican Republican and being praised for their skill, Trujillo was executing as many as 30,000 dark skinned Haitians. It was Trujillo’s intent to lighten the country. The paradox is chilling. There were rumors of midnight executions. Cool Papa Bell was convinced their time would come if they didn’t play well. Armed Dominican soldiers would line the field. They were veterans of the firing squad. They were veterans of destruction, agents of death.
In the end, everyone made it home fine. The trip lined their pockets and added to the fractured legend that was their existence. The legend and the lies that accompanied Satchel were a needed thing. They increased his status and made him a desirable figure in a rough world.
In 1971 Satchel Paige appeared on What’s My Line? The audience knew to be excited, even though Satchel looked old, weathered. His suit was brown. The atmosphere was camp.
Soupy Sales was curious, “… is that because, you are well known, because of your appearances on television?”
“Nope,” said Satchel.
“Are you known for your work in the theater?” asked Sandy Duncan.
“Nope,” he lied.
“Are you well known?” asked Henry Morgan.
“Yap,” said Satchel, grinning because he was. He was in on the joke. He was always in on the joke. There were times it seemed he was so deeply in on the joke that reality was blurred. Sometimes the line didn't even exist. His cheek was Kaufman-esque. His cheek helped him make a living and travel the world long after the golden arm had lost its efficiency. When he was on What's My Line? the arm was hidden beneath the brown sleeve of his brown suit. He seemed pained, distant, forlorn. The laughs may have been some sort of anesthetic to the pain of age, but he had to have had an understanding of his importance.
Maybe perception and understanding are the keys to grasping the metaphorical map. I have a hard time perceiving the existence of my grandmother now that she has been dead for a few years. I can grasp it sonically when I listen to Patsy Cline sing “Faded Love”, which is why I generally skip “Faded Love” when it comes up on random. Too many things seem to be coming up on random. My disdain for the sound of chewing is probably rooted in some self-preserving desire to disconnect. I don’t want to listen to people exist. I don’t want to think about people ceasing to exist. I want everything to float along. I want my life to fill with hyperbolic metaphors. I want these metaphors to take over and numb the pain and sadness that comes with time.
I want to personify hyperbole, because Satchel was the personification of hyperbole. I want to give a life performance drenched in melancholic melancholia, to be the embodiment of embodiment, the era of an era, the man with the golden arm, and the metaphorical metaphor. Satchel was those things.
But the reality is that my stable existence, my duties as a father and husband are far too important, far too meaningful. Satchel Paige wasn't fond of the social ramble; he wasn't fond of looking back. This is fine, except that life is too short. We need to enjoy the social ramble, and our very existence depends on us looking back. If we don’t enjoy every annoying sound, and if we don’t let ourselves embrace pain, we run the risk of losing connection with the outside world. We run the risk of fossilizing our essence, of creating a metaphorical hyperbolic legend that stifles reality. We run the risk of creating maps with no real direction and too many Xs marking too many spots.
---
09 Aug 2011, by Patrick
Ted: Not long ago, we thought that the American baseball fan could stoop no lower when an adult woman plucked a foul ball from the hands of an excited child. To put it simply, we were wrong. Two days ago, two men, also adults, wrestled for control of a foul ball that had flown into a trash can. We watched while two men nearly came to blows over a piece of garbage. What has become of us, Patrick? Is this a new phenomenon made grotesque by contemporary culture, or do we just see it more now?
Patrick: I'm tempted to believe that this is an age-old human foible that's been exposed under the baleful light of the television camera. I'm sure the same phenomenon occurred in the old days, under the bleachers at the Polo Grounds, when dirt-encrusted newsies attacked each other with lead pipes and rusty nails for the sake of a foul ball. That said, back then they could have probably swapped that foul ball for a couple of moon pies or a hoagie in a rare opportunity to obtain adequate nourishment. My question: what, today, is this piece of garbage really worth? How does a foul ball drive well-fed men to madness?
Ted: Is the price of a foul ball as simple as the thrill of experience? Do I give these grandstand grapplers too much credit by suggesting that they are seeking not for the ball itself, the object, but for the need simply to suck the marrow from the bone of life? It's hard to underestimate the impact of the shot of adrenaline that courses through the veins when a foul ball shows itself on a course right towards. However, as civilized beings, it's our job to recognize in the heat of the moment the appropriate course of action and choose that over the quote natural course of action. For example, once you realize the ball is in a trash can, it is time to beg off and follow another passion before you hurt somebody.
Patrick: There may be some marrow at the bottom of that trash can, but I doubt it's palatable.
The trouble with the adrenaline theory is that once the fan has met with triumph, he or she is left with a two-dollar baseball with an extra logo. You'd think at this point the fan could locate the nearest eight year-old boy, become a hero for the next ten or fifteen seconds by giving it to him, and be on his way. People don't act like that, though; they throw Charles Barklean elbows and treat each ball as if it had a treasure map drawn on it. I can also get the visceral feeling of the ball nearing you, and I think there's more than a little of a vicariousness to it, the desire to replicate the heroes on the field. But whatever it is, something in it must stay trapped in that ball even afterward.
A while ago, we had a discussion on the Twitter after some other fan made an ass of themselves on national television, which led to your call for #foulballexcitementreform. If I recall correctly, and I do (because I can go back and look at the history), your opinion was that "the authorities should step in and regulate it [foul ball behavior]. Save people from themselves." I find myself drawn (on this rare occasion) to the libertarian viewpoint: that those who are willing to risk ridicule for the sake of their prize should be allowed to pay the price. Does this make me insensitive to the dangers of uncoordinated, usually inebriated fans? Or does it make you a communist? (Note: this is a leading question.)
Ted: I will get my #blackballed hashtag ready, Patrick, to prepare for the inevitable reaction, but I think that a baseball game is a controlled environment where many people are packed into a small space, and they gotta get along. We're not out on Ron Paul's family farm here, we're in a manmade bubble, where an overzealous ball seeker can hurt kids or himself, as we've very tragically and regrettably seen lately. Nobody wants foul balls to get all serious, but real life took care of that for us, and that occurred well after myself and quite a few other people were becoming aware of a strange overexcitement about grabbing foul balls. I haven't really thought through what it would mean to regulate the practice. I'd begin, theoretically anyway, by preventing anyone over the age of 18 from going home with a foul ball, and I'd prevent anyone from invading another's space to get one. Home runs and memorable events would be an exception, etc. Who knows if you could ever enforce such rules, and maybe what we need is a collective unspoken agreement among Us Adults, that we'll all just cool out. Are we cool, Patrick? Are we cool?
Patrick: We're cool, Ted. Here in Seattle, the fans haven't been packed in all that tightly as of late, so I tend to forget what it's like. But even if we were to appropriate the actual baseballs to give to orphanages, we still haven't deal with the attention-seeking aspect of the catch itself. Maybe we can alter the culture of fandom to prevent dangerous behavior, hopefully using copious amounts of shame.
Ted: Not knowing how to comport yourself is hardly a new phenomenon, I agree. Now, though, it seems that the actual stage is not the only stage. The stage has expanded past its traditional boundaries. Are we actually paying too much attention to the spectators, who aren't supposed to be in our purview at all, except in a warm and fuzzy, "collective experience" kind of way?
Patrick: The boundaries of culture have shifted throughout our country, especially in the past fifteen years or so. Reality television has shifted focus away from a "celebrity class", and the internet, in Twitter and sports journalism, has broken down many of the barriers between fan and player. This borders dangerously close to what the kids today call the "meta", but are we in some way contributing to the shift with this very discussion? Are we changing the story, albeit very slightly, through our telling of it?
Ted: Always.