All I Wanna Do is Dream

09 Nov 2010, by Ted

These water cooler clips are all the rage these days, so I thought I'd have a little fun with the xtranormal video creation tools and some of baseball's current events.

The Talk of the Town

08 Nov 2010, by Eric

Some brief notes of congratulations:

1. Friend of P&P (and occasional contributor) Reeves Wiedeman has published his first article, a Talk of the Town piece in The New Yorker: Far From Haiti.

2. Another friend, Josh Cohen, has launched an online interview project meant to capture the joy and spirit of another sport (also a far more effective method for commuting than baseball is) cycling: The Bicycle Story.

3. Yet another friend, Drew Fairservice of the recently redesigned Blue Jays blog Ghostrunner on First has joined up with Rob Neyer as part of the Sweet Spot Network. Obviously well-deserved. Congrats.

So Much Depends

03 Nov 2010, by Paul

One of my favorite classroom activities revolves around a little sixteen word poem by William Carlos Williams. The Red Wheelbarrow is a classic, rightfully famous for so many reasons, not the least of which how it hones in from the broadest of openings to build a specific and detailed image in a single sentence.

The activity is this. I ask students to write a sentence beginning with the words “so much depends.” It's that simple. If I'm in a science class, I might add the addendum that the sentence should be about science, or about the environment. If I'm in a literature or poetry class, on the other hand, I might ask students to focus on themselves, or I might just leave it open.

The results are often fascinating. I've seen simple, but elegant phrases like “so much depends on aloha,” or the more concrete “so much depends upon a community working together.” Perhaps the greatest lesson, for me as a teacher, is how much depends on context, on how much the immediate environment dictates and shapes what students produce.

Strangely enough, though I frequently ask students to engage in this exercise, I rarely do it myself. During the recently completed playoffs, however, I've been thinking about how much little things alter a short series, and how fitting The Red Wheelbarrow's opening line is to a team trying to win a championship. Or, perhaps more importantly, how fitting that line is to a fan watching.

With that in mind, I want to offer a few observations of my own, but I also would love to hear from anyone else. How does your “so much depends” end?

So much depends upon a long fly ball, deep to left, beyond an outstretched glove.

So much depends upon an aging Columbian shortstop, swinging his hardest one last time.

So much depends upon the number and wiggle of a catcher's fingers.

So much depends upon a Yankee captain's dollars and pinstripes.

So much depends upon out three.

So much depends upon a series lead with your ace on the hill.

So much depends, but so little seems to matter, when your home team watches instead of plays.

Situational Essay: The Last Harrah: The Last Senator, The First Ranger, The Eternal Man

02 Nov 2010, by Ted

Ben Lyon is a lawyer living in Chicago. He alone knows what it must be like to occupy his own impressive mindspace, which I liken to a shoebox full of baseball cards, each of which can speak.

It's only appropriate that in the solemn hours following the end of the Texas Rangers' run at victory, he takes a look at another who was the last of his kind: the Last Senator, Toby Harrah.

In his 1971 rumination on the failed presidential candidacy of Edmund Muskie, Hunter S. Thompson wrote that living in Washington D.C. “tends to provoke a powerful understanding of the ‘Westward Movement’ in U.S. History.” It remains unknown whether Thompson was referring to the Washington Senators II (1961 1971), but they lived his advice, fleeing D.C. in order to fulfill their destiny of becoming the most Republican professional sports team (see: Texas location, 10th-amendment-invoking flag on uniform, horrid specter of W. looming over everything, and Nolan Ryan’s history of beating on youths).

Shockingly, this move to the Southwest occurred just 2 years after the pinnacle of achievement in Senators II history: a stellar 86-76 record so inspiring that two of the Senators II faithful (aka, my father and uncle), met the team at the airport upon their return from a slightly-above mediocre road trip. (Welcoming tepid baseball teams home is actually what late 1960’s boomers were doing at airports then—not spitting on returning Vietnam vets, contrary to ongoing conservative mythology of the last 40 years).

In contrast to the recent glory of ’69, the 1971 Senators went out meekly, with two notable exceptions:

1. the final game of the season/ever vs. the Yankees that was forfeited due to “ruffians” (my father’s quote) running onto the field; at the time my father was either (a) one of these ruffians (b) in Vietnam (c) playing tennis.

2. a mid-season game at which my father’s friend stated he had seen “minor-league” teams better than the Senators, thereby causing my uncle to start launching canisters of tear gas into the stands.

The one man who bore this escape from D.C. longer than all others was former Senator/Ranger Toby Harrah, the last ever “Senator” to play in the majors. According to his Wikipedia entry (obviously written by one of the many current employees in the PR department of Toby Harrah, LLC), he was involved in “three of the most unusual feats in Major League baseball history.” One of these “feats” also involved Larry Sheets, who, as a Baltimore Oriole in 1987 (the last year of the Harrah Era), had his greatest season—and it was Larry Sheets who the children of suburban Washington D.C. had to turn to for mustachioed heroics, because the Senators had long ago left us to fulfill a manifest destiny of lower taxes, plentiful stadium parking, August games in 150- degree heat and Steve Buchele’s perm.

All of which is to say that if the Rangers win the World Series [editor's note, being the obvious] and the Republicans re-take the House of Representatives, I will attempt to kick every Republican/Ranger in the shin with the LONE exception of Toby Harrah—for to look at a 1987 Toby Harrah Topps card and see (in small type—smaller even than the Jerry Koosman card in the same set) was to see statistics earned as a Washington Senator!

How to mend a broken heart indeed.

Situational Essay: That's Not Water, That's Gasoline

29 Oct 2010, by Eric

This was not superstition. Ranger fans are not afraid of summoning the ghosts of Dave Roberts or Moises Alou or even Bill Buckner. What have they do with us? Not a thing. Those guys were part of glorious traditions of struggle in front of millions of fans in famous ballparks, while the Rangers, to this point, were… nothing.

This was not, ‘speak not of it, because how sad would it be to come this far and jinx it.’ No, this was something bigger, something that made you feel more tingly than a Robinson Cano strikeout: the Rangers were the better team and they were going to win.

The Rangers, born of the Senators’ (2nd) failure, long the joke of the American League, hitters of meaningless home runs, desperate takers of steroids… A team that traded Sammy Sosa for a bag of balls, that had a baseball bounce off its outfielder’s head for a home run, that had a manager quit after one day on the job, that’s been ignored for 40 years by a town in love with football… That team was going to put all that shit in a trash can and slam down the lid. They were going to send “the most storied franchise in the history of blah blah blah” home empty – a day early, no less – and then drape the bunting for the World Series.

The idea of it was almost too big to say out loud. It sounded crazy, even whispered to yourself. “Holy shit,” said the guy in front of me, with three outs to go, “We’re going to the, to the— the next round.”

Maybe “ignored” by Dallas is too strong. Baseball has been embraced around here as a nice little summertime diversion until the big kids put on their pads. The Rangers averaged a little over 30,000 fans a game this year. Not bad. In August, the Cowboys drew 20,000 fans – to watch practice.

There’s baseball lovers here. Hell, Ty Cobb played here, in the Cotton Bowl. Okay, he was 64 and it was a stunt, but when you’ve played three playoff series and won only a single game, you’ve got to search hard for bright spots. For years the Rangers’ highlight film consisted mostly of clips of Nolan Ryan throwing his sixth and seventh no-hitters as a Ranger. Oh, and Nolan giving a beat down to Robin Ventura. (They sell signed copies of that photo in the gift shop.) For Texans, that the same guy is atop the Rangers’ management pyramid as they make this run is breathtaking.

There’s also baseball haters. The TV stations and talk radio hosts and newspaper columnists have been snickering for years at the poor Rangers, contrasting their haplessness with the Cowboys’ success, and now those same cats can’t wait to plant their butts in those free World Series press box seats. Just hope they don’t hurt themselves jumping on and off the bandwagon.

I still can’t get my arms or my head around this fact: the Rangers are going to the World Series. How full is our bag of Halloween treats:

Pitcher C.J. Wilson goes to management last spring and says, “Hey guys, like a lot of relievers, I secretly think I’m wasted in the bullpen. How ’bout letting me start?” They do. And he goes out and posts a top-10 ERA.

General Manager Jon Daniels waits until Cliff Lee has one arm in a Yankee uniform, then calls the Mariners and says, “Oh, Justin Smoak is the key to a deal? Why didn’t you say so? As of this moment, he’s available.”

Josh Hamilton, slumping, wakes up one morning and says, “At the age of 30, I just realized batting practice is not for putting on a home run show. It’s for learning to take balls the other way.” MVP.

Alex Rodriguez, who said he’d never have come to Texas if he’d known it was going to be “me and 24 kids,” stands frozen, staring at a curveball thrown by a kid, 22-year-old Neftali Feliz, ending the ALCS.

Come on, it doesn’t get better than that. Oh wait, it does. The Texas Rangers are going to the World Series.

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After Game 1:

The Rangers’ weaknesses all exposed on the same night. We’ve long known Vlad Guerrero is a liability in the field, but his mistakes never looked so glaring as they did last night. And Michael Young, known locally as “The Face of the Franchise,” is the team’s all-time hits leader, a beloved force in the clubhouse, and a matador at third base. He’s a model citizen, never ducks a tough question. He’s changed positions twice for the good of the team. He’ll make $11 million this season, a chunk of which he’ll donate to charity, and he can no longer field his position. That’s tough to watch.

I’m still calling Rangers in 5. For one thing, I remember the meltdown in Game 1 vs. the Yankees. Next day, Texas played as though it had never happened. For another thing, I have a ticket – a good seat, at a too-high price – to Game 5 of the World Series.

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After Game 2:

Ouch. Now I know how Yankee fans felt during that 10-3 loss to the Rangers last week. Feeling like every break went the other way. Like every decision backfired. Watching previously dependable pitchers get on the mound and seize up. It’s painful to watch, because you know these aren’t “your Rangers.” This is not the kind of ball they played to win 90 games. But it’s their first trip to the big stage and a dash of nerves and a skoche of bad luck swirled in a cauldron with eye of newt and wool of bat can cook your goose.

Having said all that, now is the not the time to panic. You dream of a sweep on the road, hope for a split, and plan to lose both games. The Rangers have not lost a World Series game at home. If they do, then we can panic.