'I think I shall never see a poem as lovely as a two-seamer fastball'
For the love of the game, not the money
vol. 4 issue 5
Greetings,
If you love baseball, and you have some thoughts about the Major League Baseball’s new rules which were presented at the end of the players lockout, well, that’s good. It’s a sign you still care, which will make the MLB and its network affiliates happy to vacuum your wallet for yet another season.
I don’t really want to talk about all that, though.
Bloated monopolies, bloated franchises, bloated agencies, over-paid superstars who flame out fast, and struggling would-be sluggers and strategists…the game I grew up loving these days seems more like watching a real-life animation of the Wall Street Journal’s Mergers & Acquisitions page while waving a Goldman Sachs pennant in one hand and the contract on a home equity loan in the other so it might be possible to afford season tickets in the cheap seats.
Meh.
How about a little poetry instead?
Much more fun.
Here are two video interviews with my friend, poet E. Ethelbert Miller, who recently published his third book in a baseball poetry trilogy, How I Found Love Behind the Catcher’s Mask. The other two books in the trilogy are If God Invented Baseball, and When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery. Ethelbert knows a lot about baseball and asks good questions and offers just as good insights into the game.
The first interview, also linked above, is with the former CIA officer, now turned baseball historian and author, Bryan Soderholm-Difatte. His latest book, America's Game in the Wild-Card Era: From Strike to Pandemic provides the foundation for Ethelbert’s questions on topics ranging from Moneyball, to the history of storied MLB general manager/executive/consultant Theo Epstein, to the state of baseball in the 21st century.
The second interview is of Ethelbert about his own books, conducted by noted baseball historian and author, Tim Wendel, whose most recent work is the novel, Escape From Castro's Cuba. Wendel and E discuss the metaphysics of baseball, the hope embedded in the game, and the social impact of sport.
Whether or not the majority of us care anymore about the sport — the fear that too many of us don’t being the underlying driver of MLB owners’ angst — the fact is that the game is as important to our collective history as are automobiles, jazz, Westerns, and corporate exec-induced anxiety and depression, ours and theirs.
So, maybe put down your favorite investment bank beer mug swag and that copy of “The Casual Fan’s Guide to Sabermetrics” and listen to a little bit of love for the game instead of a love for the money.
My apologies to poet Joyce Kilmer, author of Trees, which begins, “I think that I shall never see, a poem lovely as a tree…but if he’d ever seen former Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte hurl a fastball or two, (okay, Pettitte played for Houston, too, but he had an excuse — he is a native Texan), ol’ Joyce might have been so inspired to change a few words…
Peace,
Whitney