A Baseball Poem

I had a dream about Zack Greinke and he spoke to me,

on the telephone,  I mean,

Zack Greinke spoke

to me and he said many things. It was a dream,

remember, and I started spitting teeth

like bad TV but my ears remained in place

and Greinke said “You use me—

you use me like you use so many others.

To suit your needs, as tools

of distraction from thinking

about yourself. Maybe

I shouldn’t be me. I should be someone else,

like your mother or your high school girlfriend or

a person more meaningful.”

I had a dream

about Zack Greinke but it wasn’t

a dream because I was awake

and not sleeping. Greinke

said “You have to check out

this video online. These Russian guys are driving

and they almost hit a semi

head on, but at the last second they swerve

out of the way. It’s crazy.”

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An Electronic Drawing of a Baseball

Baseball is Not a Person

Baseball is not a person.

It does not have a face, or a heart, or a brain.

Baseball is not alive.

It does not need help, or assistance, or protection.

Baseball is.

Baseball is a game.

Baseball is innocent when played by children but not innocent when played by men.

This is how it has always been, and how it always will be.

Baseball’s soul is safe on the Little League fields, where it belongs.

It’s there for you to visit, when you start to feel old.

Baseball doesn’t think, or feel, or care.

Baseball is not a person.

Baseball is not alive.

Long live baseball.

 

Originally published at Call to the Pen

Things Baseball Players Have in Common With Scuba Divers

Both wear masks.

I mean, if you’re a baseball catcher you wear a mask and if you’re a scuba diver
you also wear a mask.

Both require the breathing of oxygen.

Expensive equipment?

Both wear wetsuits on the job.

Actually, no, that’s just scuba divers. Damn it.

Something about the Tampa Bay Rays.

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This is a Baseball Blog Post

Baseball Player

This is a baseball blog post. It discusses the sport of baseball and offers insight and humor in regards to one specific facet of the game. It features a picture of a baseball player and a caption accompanying the picture. It does not feature a video because embedding videos on this platform, while probably not impossible, is not simple. This baseball blog post utilizes baseball statistics in order to illustrate a perceived objective truth about the game and the players who play it. This baseball blog post makes an argument and then uses evidence to support that argument. There are also jokes.

This baseball blog post features one or two digressions, digressions the author utilizes as a means towards accumulating an appropriate amount of words and content so that this baseball blog post seems lengthy and considered and substantial rather than thin and lacking and without merit. The digressions are also easier to produce than the analysis, because the digressions simply require a modicum of writing aptitude while the analysis requires a grasp of mathematics and well-reasoned, nuanced critical thought. This baseball blog post has a conclusion, an interesting and concise summation of the overall thesis presented previously in the body of the entry. This baseball blog post ends in a profound way, either with a particularly inspired flourish of prose or with a clever and humorous witticism.

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Call to the Pen: Baseball Last Night: What I Imagine it Was Like

I’ve been slacking on the baseball writing like an MF’er lately because I quite literally bought a goddamn house. It’s been a busy and stressful time so get of my back, alright?

Please click this internet hyperlink to read the entire post over at Call to the Pen

Seeing as I didn’t follow baseball last night, I really don’t have much of anything to rely on for reference or inspiration in this post. All I know is I like baseball, and you like baseball, and here we are, stuck in this awful mess I’ve constructed for the two of us. I have followed baseball’s current season rather closely, though, at least up to this point, so why don’t I just wing it? It wouldn’t be the first time, that’s for sure. How much could have really changed? Baseball players are people and people are predictable. It’s not like anyone hit three home runs in a single game or got suspended for performance enhancing drugs or anything like that. That kind of stuff never happens! So if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to offer you a handful of things I’m almost certain happened last night in the sport of baseball:

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Page 12 of Google Image Results from the Search Term “Baseball”

How’d that Football Player get in there?

Baseball Players and Drake Lyrics

Baseball is a very popular sport. Drake is a very popular recording artist. It only stands to reason that these two topics should be combined together to create one singular unstoppable force of topical and resonant popularity. Doesn’t it? Ok, maybe not, but it’s done now. Don’t ask me why.

Ozzie Guillen: Baseball Manager, Incessent Drinker, Renaissance Man, Role Model

Ozzie Guillen is many things to many people. His multitudes astound. What he is not, however, is some irresponsible lout who airs his libatious shenanigans out on to public streets. He takes his way of life, and by extension, his alcoholism very seriously, and he practices it with prideful care. Thanks to this post over at Eye on Baseball, we now have a better idea as to what that kind of rigid service to ones craft entails. It entails routine, discipline, and a taste for the finer things in life:

I go to the hotel bar, get drunk, sleep. I don’t do anything else.

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I get drunk because I’m happy we win or I get drunk because I’m very sad and disturbed because we lose.

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Same routine, it never changes. It’s been the same routine for 25, 28 years.

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I never get in trouble, you see that? I never leave the hotel. Nobody can call my wife and tell her they see Ozzie in this bar or place … I never get in trouble, I don’t go out.

Time and disposition permitting in the morning, Ozzie likes to play a round of golf and dine on a luncheon of sushi. The man knows what he likes, and he’s not here to change for anybody. Baseball, Alcohol, Golf, Sushi. In this world, there is nothing more, nothing less.