500

Believe it or not, this is my 500th post. Not bad, considering I only started this blog back in October, before Halloween. Since then, I've managed to pick up more than a few regular readers, while avoiding alienating and/or embarrassing my friends and family who check in with the blog from time to time. I'm not sure which of these makes me prouder. Suffice to say, I've had a lot of fun writing this blog. In fact, it's the most disciplined I've been about writing in a very long time, probably since high school. Thankfully, I think, my writing, like my hairstyle and wardrobe, has improved since the mid-1990s.

In recognition of this not-so-historic milestone, I turned to the wizards at Wordle, a fun website that creates word clouds from prepared text. I copied all of the various tags in each of my previous 499 posts, and pasted into Wordle. The above image is the result. I think it's a telling--and pretty accurate-- visual representation of all the crap I've been spouting since before Obama was elected. Thanks for stopping by, and for your continued support. I'm looking forward to the next 500 posts, which, by the looks of it, will most likely be about either the Yankees or the Knicks. I wouldn't have it any other way.

HankStein

I'm a big fan of fake Twitter accounts. They're about a thousand times more entertaining and illuminating than regular accounts, which, as far as I can tell, are simply 140-character exercises in self-indulgence. YesMichaelKay, for instance, does a great job of tearing apart Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay's annoying verbal tics. ("Hey fans! Don't expect me on day games after night games. That's the fallacy of the predetermined past a diving wormburner etiquette see ya.") 

But YesMichaelKay doesn't even come close to the genius posing as Hank Steinbrenner, son of George. HankStein is an almost pitch-perfect impression of the loud-mouthed and clueless co-owner of the Yankees. In between Marlboro Reds, Hank likes to talk to the media in clipped sentences about the insignificant goings-on within his own head. Take for instance, this little nugget Hank shared with the Daily News about interleague rules.  

I just think it's time the NL joined the 21st century. The AL, the minors, colleges, high schools, they all have DHs.

I mean, really, Hank might as well have posted this drivel on Twitter, a more appropriate forum for such verbal diarrhea. Which is why HankStein is so brilliant. It distills Hank's moxy down to its nicotine-stained essence, and delivers it straight, minus the porous filter that is the New York Yankess PR department. Take the bio, for one: "I own the Yankees. I like cigarettes." Those 102 characters perfectly sum up George's oldest son. I could spend six solid months trying to come up with a more fitting epigram, and couldn't top it. Not even close. It's like a Buddhist koan in its simplicity. 

Here are some of my favorite HankStein tweets, in all their comedic glory: 

• I love a win streak almost as much as I love 72% lean ground beef.
  
• Hey John Henry? Let's settle this like men. A case of Chivas, 2 cartons of Camel unfiltered, a yardstick & a taser. Your place or mine geek?
  
• Joba needs to get his groove back. I suggest some Crown Royal and the nearest strip club. Too much clean livin' makes the boy dull.
  
• In all seriousness, I won't fire Girardi. Hal won't let me. I owe him ever since he made that mistake disappear for me in the Vegas desert
  
• I could think of a lot better ways to blow 210 mill. Thailand for one. With that kind of scratch, they'd make me king.

At this point, it's impossible for me to imagine the real Hank Steinbrenner comporting himself in any other way. It's like the fake Hank has become, at least to me, more relevant than his real-life counterpart. He's like a tougher version of Marge Schott, and a hell of a lot more entertaining. 

Munson

Over at Omnivoracious, Amazon's book blog, Brad Thomas Parsons reviews former Yankee PR man Marty Appel's Munson, a biography about Thurman Munson, the former Yankee captain who died in a plane crash 30 years ago this August. Parsons writes: 

Appel documents Munson's career as a scholarship athlete at Kent State, his time in the Cape Cod league, and his quick ascension to the major leagues and the Yankees, where he won Rookie of the Year in 1970 and was eventually made team captain, the first player to hold the title since Lou Gehrig. His blue-collar work ethic and gruff but lovable demeanor made him an instant fan favorite (a shot of him making a tag at home plate was the first action photo used in a Topps baseball card). And during that Bronx Zoo era, gloriously depicted in Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning, it was the down-to-earth Munson who balanced out (and butted heads with) his flashy teammate Reggie Jackson. After Jackson made his infamous "I'm the straw that stirs the drink" comments in a Sport magazine interview, Munson was asked if Jackson was quoted out of context. Munson's reply: "For three pages?"

Sounds like a good one. I don't know much about Munson, outside of his professional accomplishments and a few other pertinent details. Once I finish rereading The Brothers K, I'm going to pick up a copy. 

Is Stephon Marbury More Deranged Than Ron Artest?

I only caught about ten minutes of Stephon Marbury's bizarre 24-hour performance on UStream.tv, but the small segment I watched made the Michael Jackson memorial look downright dignified. Some things in life, Steph, are meant to be private. 

Tall Timber

I stumbled across this clip on a Knicks message board. Seriously. It's incredible footage of a 17-year-old, rail-thin Wilt Chamberlain showing off his skills at Kutsher's Hotel in the Catskills, where he worked as a bellhop during his high school summer vacations. The vintage newsreel, produced by Paramount Pictures and narrated by Marty Glickman, is from 1954, six years before Chamberlain made his professional debut with the Harlem Globetrotters and eight years before he put up 100 points against the Knicks in Hershey, Pennsylvania. 

"Open and Shut Case, Johnson"

Last night, I watched President Obama's press conference. I wasn't particularly sold on his healthcare plan. Truth be told, I simply don't understand how healthcare works in this country, and therefore don't really know which side to take. The President, however, made one excellent point during his prime time address, and it had nothing to do with the topic du jour: the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard professor and the country's pre-eminent African-American scholar. In his home. During the day. After he showed them his identification. And his home address:

"Now, I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. 

What I think we know, separate and apart from this incident, is that there's a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact."

A lot of things raised my hackles this week: the Erin Andrews tape; ESPN's early refusal to report on the Ben Roethlisberger civil suit; the non-firing of Tony Bernazard; Liz Cheney; this paper and this Ken Rosenthal column. None, however, had me shaking my head more than the Gates arrest. One time, when I was still in high school, I drove my mother's car into a snowbank outside of a International House of Pancakes parking lot, just off Kennedy Boulevard, Hudson County's main thoroughfare. I was 16, driving without a license. It was after midnight, and as I tried in vain to get my car off the melting mountain of snow, a police car stopped and asked if I needed help. They didn't ask to see my driver's license, or even try to write me a ticket for any number of things. They just asked if I was in trouble. When I said I was fine, they drove off, no questions asked. Meanwhile, Henry Gates, a tenured Harvard professor, gets arrested for trying to get into his own house, and apparently having the gall to mouth off to a Cambridge cop. Ridiculous. 

Ta-Nehisi Coates, as always, sums up Obama's reaction pretty well:

Moreover, for black people, this is the kind of issue that tends to cut across lines of class and politics. I would say that this is the sort of thing that angers upper middle-class black people even more than it angers anyone else, because they tend to be individuals who, by society's lights, are very accomplished. They deeply resent being lumped in with the mass. And more than anyone they resent the whole "when you're black, you talk to the police like this" routine. Obama has lived as a member of that class for a large portion of his adult life, or he's had some concentrated exposure to it--the black strivers roll deep on the South Side. It's not shocking that he was pissed.

I'm pissed, too. That an unlicensed 16-year-old, in the middle of the night, in downtown Union City, would be given the benefit of the doubt, while a black, middle-aged, established Harvard professor is put in handcuffs in front of his own house is shameful.  But I'm pretty late to the party. Dave Chappelle saw this coming years ago.

Under Your Hat

Every week, FADER magazine tabs one of its employs to write about his or her favorite article of clothing or accessory. This week, Felipe Delerme writes about his New Era iridescent fitted New York Yankees cap, probably the ugliest thing I've seen since, probably, 1992. Delerme doesn't care, though. He loves his hat.

This hat works for me for a couple of really simple reasons. It’s a Yankess cap and a perfect match for Jordans. Specifically, the “Aqua” VIII’s (which I never really liked), but also the “Grape” V’s, which I played myself in waiting to buy, only to incur a ridiculous limited-availability markup some months later. By itself, the cap is a bit more “Flashing Lights” than a lot of the others I own, but in all of its flamboyance, it’s still just a New York Yankee that matches my J’s.

Delerme makes some good points, and it's obvious that he's serious about his fitted. So serious, in fact, that he's apparently willing to throw down about it, seemingly at a drop of the hat. Well, sort of.

A couple of weeks ago I saw this kid I know in the club and he told me he almost didn’t recognize me without a hat on. I should of slapped his ass for getting out of pocket like that but we been cool for a little while so I gave him a pass. But also, until recently I’ve probably worn a fitted almost every day outside of the two or three just after I get a haircut so in a way I guess he had a right.

But why this particular hat?

When the above cap first arrived at the office, immediately it reminded me of the infamous Cam’ron New Era. This came out back around the time Cam mentioned something about hiring a team of scientists to invent his own color and every other rapper was bragging about smoking the purple-est piff procurable. Side by side, the hats aren’t very much alike at all, but I’d like to imagine the purple-teal iridescence of my cap is what his team was working toward. Assuming, of course, that team wasn’t just a bunch of Dipset interns smoking weed and fucking around with the color palette in Illustrator to “piff out” the mixtape covers.

Oh, I see. His is not just a hat; it's a sartorial statement of political import, like Teva sandals or leather chaps, and not to be taken lightly.

I’ve fallen back on the lids a little this summer, but they’ve always served a greater purpose than just keeping my head warm. For people like myself, a fitted is just as much a flag, broadcasting an alliance of some kind (sport and otherwise), in ways the first baseball players probably never even imagined.

But the question remains, with whom does his allegiance lie? The Yankees, New Era or Marty McFly?

Marc Anthony, Jimmy Buffet, and the Tuna

As if the world needed another reason to dislike the Miami Dolphins, team owner Stephen Ross, a New York real estate billionaire who bought the team in January, just added Marc Anthony as a minority owner. Yes, you read that correctly.

''I'm not doing this as a singer; I'm not doing this as an actor,'' Anthony said. ''(It's) just because I love football. Steve and I, our visions are in sync, and this is a great, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a part of Steve's vision."

I doubt Anthony has any cogent thoughts about Pat White, Chad Pennington or the Wildcat formation. He's probably only qualified to judge whether or not Bill Parcells' ego can go toe-to-toe with Jenny from the Block's. Inexplicably, Anthony joins Gloria and Emilio Estefan in the team's rapidly expanding, star-studded roster of minority owners. Earlier this year, after entering into a partnership with Jimmy Buffet, the mayor of Douchebagville, er, Margaritaville, Ross renamed the Dolphins' stadium Land Shark Stadium in recognition of Buffet's eponymous beer, the apparent centerpiece of his Margaritaville enterprise, and catnip for Parrot Heads everywhere.

It's going to be tough to beat former owner Wayne Huizenga's era of ineptitude, but Ross is already off to a solid start.

Phil Hughes Is Here to Stay

Since giving up a two-run home run to Kevin Youkilis in Boston on June 10, Phil Hughes has been untouchable. In 13 appearances, he's held opposing teams scoreless over 19 innings, allowing only 9 hits and 3 walks, while racking up 24 strikeouts. As a reliever, Hughes is sporting an anemic 0.84 ERA, and his 19-inning scoreless streak is, remarkably, only four innings off Mariano Rivera's 2005 23-inning scoreless streak, the second longest streak of Rivera's Hall of Fame career. I wasn't the only one to foresee Hughes' emerging dominance. 

The kid's figured out how to dominate at the Major League level, primarily out of the pen, in much the same way David Cone starred in relief for the Mets in 1987, before anchoring the rotation a year later, in 1988. In fact, Cone's mentioned this parallel a number of times on the YES broadcast this year, because, I think, he sees in Hughes what I see in him: a top of the line starter in the Major Leagues. Like Joba, Hughes will eventually be a key contributor to the Yankees' revamped starting rotation. After a disastrous 2008 season, Hughes is showing why Cashman refused to include him in a potential deal for Johan Santana, and why he won't be sent to Toronto as part of an MLB-ready package for Roy Halladay. Ladies and gentlemen, Phil Hughes is here to stay.  

KKK Knights Vs. Hebrew Stars

Via Jeffrey Goldberg, comes the most interesting box score you'll ever see. I'd imagine this particular rivalry makes the Yankees-Red Sox pairing look like a match up of the two worst teams in a Sunday softball league.

For more information about the game, including details about one famous Star, take a look over here.  

Toney Douglas

Toney Douglas, the 29th overall pick in this year's NBA Draft, is making quite the name for himself in Las Vegas this summer. Douglas, a 6-6' combo guard out of Florida State, has been running the point for the Knicks in the team's first two Summer League games. So far, he's racked up 21 total assists, while only turning over the ball twice. That's practically an 11:1 assist-to-turnover ratio. Ridiculous. Douglas, whose draft rights were purchased by the Knicks on Draft Night, still hasn't found his shooting stroke, but Knicks coaches and league scouts are raving about his ability to run the floor, manage a game, create shots for his teammates and, best of all, defend the ball. I can get behind that, even after only two games. 

Team Borat

Forgive me for not realizing this sooner, but Lance Armstrong, a normally fierce defender of his own brand, is in bed with a pretty shady Kazakh sponsor for the 2009 Tour de France, which just reached the half-way point. "The New Republic's" David Roth has the details:

In place of the relatively wholesome U.S. Postal Service and Discovery Channel jerseys he wore during his previous wins, Armstrong is currently racing in the blue-and-yellow of the Astana Cycling Team. Which means that one of America's last golden boys is a walking (or riding) advertisement for the Kazakh government. 

[SNIP]

Astana rose from the ashes of the risibly corrupt Liberty Seguros Cycling Team, which disbanded in 2006 when manager Manolo Saiz was caught in the anti-doping sting Operacion Puerto. Liberty Seguros' star racer, Kazakh cyclist Alexandre Vinokourov and then-Prime Minister Akhmetov cobbled together some Kazakh sponsors and Astana was born. Vinokourov and Kazakh teammate Andrei Kashechkin promptly tested positive for blood doping, and Astana was kicked out of the 2007 Tour de France and banned in '08. Bruyneel was hired shortly thereafter in an attempt to re-brand the team and largely cleaned house, but Armstrong's current Astana teammate Andreas Kloeden has been dogged by doping rumors for years and Astana hasn't shaken its rep. "There's a high bar for hijinks in this sport," Lindsey says. "But Astana is a different creature than any cycling has seen in 50 years."

As Roth points out, the only reason Armstrong is with Astana is because his longtime manager, Johan Bruynell, is under contract with them, and there's nothing wrong, illegal or untoward about Armstrong's affiliation with the state-owned enterprise. It's just kind of goofy, like Borat himself or, for that matter, grown men in spandex.  

Cooperstown Confidential

Over at The Second Pass, a fantastic website about books that's rightfully starting to get a ton of attention, my friend John reviews Zev Chafets' Cooperstown Confidential, an almost total take down of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. As is his wont, John gets right to the heart of the matter: 

Zev Chafets’ Cooperstown Confidential, a slender book that serves as both a revisionist history of the Hall and a polemic in favor of socially liberal admission policies (Pete Rose and steroids users will rejoice if Chafets has any impact on voting patterns), manages to be earnest and playful, though not in the traditional ways described above. Earnest because it spends more time addressing issues like racism and commercialism than whether Bert Blyleven deserves a plaque; and playful because it gleefully spits in the face of anyone who thinks the Hall’s (very thin) Puritanical sheen is anything but a “public relations sham.”

I read a very early version of Chafets' excellent and provocative book, and I'm in total agreement with John. Like the College of Cardinals or the U.S. House of Representatives, the Baseball Hall of Fame is made up of equal parts legends, qualified representatives, quacks, criminals and, yes, cheats. That the Hall of Fame continues to hold itself up as a model of constancy, integrity, even infallibility, is nothing more than clever marketing. Everybody's just selling soap. Chafets, a former columnist for New York's "Daily News," is right to call the Hall out on their spotty history of institutional hypocrisy. His book is worth picking up. 

Obama Owns the Room

Sure, his first pitch left a lot to be desired, but Obama's trips into each team's respective clubhouses more than made up for his on-the-mound miscue. I've said it before: Obama is always, without question, the coolest guy in the room. He talked trash to Albert Pujols and Ryan Howard, called Derek Jeter old, and basically ordered Mark Buehrle, the lone representative from Obama's favorite team, the White Sox, to announce his presence with authority, or something like that. Oh, and he made Ichiro blush like a 1960s schoolgirl meeting the Beatles. In fairness, though, I'm pretty sure that's exactly how I would react, too. 

Copa N.Y.C.

Believe it or not, in about two weeks, New York City will host a 16-team world soccer tournament. Copa N.Y.C., a sort of mini-World Cup, is made up of national teams drawn from the Metropolitan area's diverse cultural and ethnic communities. Each team, according to Copa N.Y.C.'s website, consists of a team president, coaches, and 25 players who can at least claim some heritage to their country they're representing. 

The 16 teams-- the United States, England, Ireland, France, Ghana, Korea, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Greece, Trinidad & Tobago, Cyprus, Albania, Liberia, Jamaica and Ecuador-- have been split into four groups. The top two finishers from each group advance to the next round. For those scoring at home, the United Sates is in Group C with Cyprus, Argentina and Liberia. First round games are 50 minutes long, while the semifinals, quarterfinals and finals are all 90 minutes. 

The first round kicks off July 25 at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens. Semifinals and finals are scheduled for the following week at the Metropolitan Oval in Maspeth, also in Queens. This should be fun. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict Ghana comes out of Group B, and wins it all. 

Pujols To Catch Obama

President Barack Obama will throw out the ceremonial first pitch before Tuesday night's All-Star Game at Busch Stadium to Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols, hometown hero and Major League Baseball's leading vote-getter. The All-Star game is totally lame, a complete waste of time, but let me be clear: I will tune in to check out Obama's moves on the mound. 

(Via Bats)

The Fall of the House of Dykstra

The New Yorker's Ben McGrath offers a pretty damning post mortem on Lenny Dykstra, the former Met hero and latterday contagion of the financial industry who filed for bankruptcy yesterday morning:

His grand plan included a partnership with A.I.G., the soon-to-fail insurance giant; his great champion in the investment world was Jim Cramer, the “Mad Money” host, who was later forced to repent for his irrationally exuberant ways in front of Jon Stewart. But, in retrospect, perhaps the most telling detail about Dykstra’s complicity in the age of magical thinking can be found in the Mitchell Report, baseball’s Book of Atonement for steroids. It describes a meeting that took place nearly ten years ago between Dykstra and Kevin Hallinan, an official in the commissioner’s office: “According to Hallinan, Dykstra said that using steroids eliminated the need for him to work out during the season.

That Dyskstra, a man Keith Hernandez denounced for his off-the-field antics, was celebrated as a stock market whiz by anyone, speaks volumes about how out of hand things got in the financial industry. Now that I think about it, with guys like Dykstra, Bernie Madoff, Joe Cassano and countless others running amok, I'm actually shocked the dollar is still worth the paper it's printed on. If you can stomach it, take a look at the following clip of Bernie Goldberg's Real Sports spot about Dykstra from, I believe, early last spring. It's not pretty.   

Brett Gardner, Elite Outfielder?

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Brett Gardner. Although he’s playing well, even better than I thought he would, he still has a long way to go before anyone would begin to consider him anything more than a marginal-to-good center fielder. He’s arguably not even the best center fielder on his team; he’s splitting time with Melky Carbrera. Which is why I was surprised that FanGraphs is ready to declare him one of the best defensive outfielders in the league, a notch below Hunter Pence, Matt Kemp, Ryan Ludwick and Nick Markakis.

Gardner has racked up an incredible +8.4 ARM rating since showing up in the majors last year, and he’s done it in half a season’s worth of playing time. He has 83 “defensive games” as a major league outfielder, meaning that he’s had just over 1/2 of a season’s worth of balls hit to him to turn into outs. The four guys ahead of him are all at 200+ defensive games during this same time span.

This is a ridiculous performance, honestly. Over a full season, Gardner’s +17 pace would easily be double that of the 2008 ARM leader (Pence). He’s been worth almost a win to the Yankees (in half a season!) just by chucking the ball back in from the outfield

These numbers, which are a result of a pretty narrow 754 total career innings, are misleading. As a number of FanGraph commenters rightly pointed out, Gardner does not have a particularly good arm. I'd describe it as somewhere between Damon's pop gun and Melky's cannon. Gardner's fast as hell, which allows him to cover a lot of ground in the outfield. His ability to get to more balls, though, doesn’t reveal anything telling about his arm strength. Kid’s got only 3 assists in 448 innings this year. 3 assists in 448 innings. Matt Kemp, in comparison, has three times as many assists in twice as many games, while Oakland's Rajai Davis has 4 assists in about 153 less innings, or 17 less games, than Gardner. Call me crazy, but I'm not ready, as FanGraph seems to be, to declare Gardner an elite defensive player. Not even close. 

(Photo stolen from New Stadium Insider)

Michael Jackson Is Twice As Big As The Super Bowl

Staples, the corporate hosts of Michael Jackson's memorial service, is poised to rake in approximately $75 million in free advertising today. That's nearly twice as much as Raymond James, the backers of Super Bowl XLIII, earned for hosting the biggest sporting event of the year. Seriously.   

Given the worldwide exposure on the event, Staples will conservatively get between $65 million and $75 million in advertising exposure from today alone, said Eric Wright of Joyce Julius & Associates, a sponsorship evaluation firm.

To put that in perspective, Wright says his company calculated that Raymond James Financial garnered $37.3 million in exposure from hosting this year's Super Bowl. Wright said Staples got as much as $8 million in exposure for each of the years that the Lakers played in the NBA Finals.

Between the Lakers' championship and the King of Pop's over-the-top sendoff, I'd say Staples is having a pretty good year. Who ever said there was no such thing as an easy button? 

French Fry Dodged

Jason Kidd decided to stay in Dallas, the best thing to happen to the Knicks since, well... it's a good thing. Trust me. Was anybody looking forward to a 39-year-old Kidd, an older, slower version of the current broken-down Kidd, hobbling his way through D'Antoni's offensive sets? I didn't think so. Bring on Morris Almond. 

The Brothers K

A few days ago, while writing about Ed Randall, the host of "Ed Randall's Talking Baseball," for an upcoming work assignment, I rhetorically asked on my Facebook page for another word for baseball. A friend, in book publishing, mind you, responded: "Boring." Her reply made me think of the following extended passage from David James Duncan's glorious book The Brothers K, which, if not the best book I've ever read, is at least one of the most resonate. If you haven't read it, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. It's big and fun and honest, and it's about, basically, baseball and family, two of life's most satisfying and infinitely complicated subjects. My buddy John turned me on it, and for that I will always be grateful. For John's excellent take on David James Duncan's masterpiece, take a look over here. It's worth the read, both the book and John's review. Enjoy the long weekend and the excerpt, a powerful novena for the national pastime and beaten-down fathers who continue to shape us, fairly or not, one way or another.

the hedge hideout/winter/1964

There are, as far as I can tell, just two types of people who can bear to watch baseball without talking: total non-baseball fans and hard-core players. The hard-core player can watch in silence because his immersion is so complete that he feels no need to speak, while the persona non baseball can do it because his ignorance is so vast that he sees nothing worthy of comment. For the rest of us, watching any sort of baseball-like proceeding without discussing what we're seeing is about as much fun as drinking nonalcoholic beer while fishing without a hook.

That's why, if it weren't for the new freeway just a block and a half south of our house, Papa would have heard Everett and me jabbering in our hedge hideout the first night we crawled into it. As baseball aficionados and mediocre players both, it was doubly impossible for us not to converse loudly and at length about the intricacies of the one-man ball game being played in our backyard, and thanks to the freeway's riverine roar we could do it without getting caught. It was odd to have something to thank a freeway for.

We snuck out to check on Papa's shedball progress once a week on the average, and as time passed on both his pitching and Everett's hedge-bound analysis of it became far more skillful than I'd first thought possible. Despite the dead thumb, Papa gradually developed four distinct pitches. And despite our laurel-leaf and shed-obstructed view of the proceedings, Everett was able--by pointing out the various spins, speeds and trajectories--to teach me how to identify all four. He dubbed them 'the Heater,' 'the Hangman,' 'the Knucklebrain' and 'the Kamikaze.'

The Heater was a fastball, and Everett said that Papa's was more effective than ever in that it was still lightning fast, but was also so wild now that it would scare the living guano out of anybody on earth except maybe our Uncle Marv. The Hangman was basically just a hanging curve--the sorry remnant, Everett guessed, of the darting slider that had once been Papa's money pitch and earned him the nickname Hook. The Knucklebrain was a no-spin no-dance no-account knuckler that any .250-hitting Single A musclebrain could have kabonged into the bleachers of his choice. But the Kamikaze was our favorite: it was a high-speed sinking fastball that dove so violently and late as any Zero-flying pilot who ever bought the farm for Tojo. More often than not the thing went up in flames ten feet in front of the plate, or missed the mattress altogether and blammed the garage siding. But when it managed to hit the strike zone, the Kamikaze looked so actionable and unhittable that it really did seem like something piloted, something more flown than thrown.

For all its perspicacity, Everett's shedball analysis was, for him, a melancholy business. Hunching in a damp niche in a dirty hedge watching pitches being flung into a wall by a crapped-out millworker was, after all, a far and farcical cry from his boyhood dream of catching Smoke Chance in a major league, or minor league, or at least a sandlot game. Hooked as he was on the idea that Papa's new hobby was a surreptitious comeback, and haunted as he was by memories of Papa's glory days, Everett couldn't help but be depressed by most of the pitches that limped out into the light.

But to my mind, hunching in that hedge stands out as the best thing I did that year, and one of the best things I've ever done, period. The dank laurel, the darkness and the need for low-voiced secrecy created an atmosphere that made our talk more considered than the ebullient, hormone-garbled yammering we were prone to elsewhere. And with an eight-piece family crammed in a house the size of ours, it was a balm to discover a place, however squalid, where intimacy with one of my brothers was not a necessity but a choice. But it was that maimed little remnant of what had once been Papa's great art form that has really stayed with me. There is a part of me that wants to state flat out that I learned more in the hedge about the defiance of dullness and career death, about the glory hidden in defeat, about the amazing inner capacities of a straightforward, no-frills man--even a man stripped of hope--than I've learned anywhere since. But such grandiose claims and language clash with the swaddling clothes my hedge insights came wrapped in. All I remember feeling at first was the sad satisfaction of knowing that, whatever he was doing in that shed, he was doing it partly for me, and that watching even his most brain-damaged Knucklers and hungest Hangmen beat watching him chain-smoke himself to death in front of the TV. But as the weeks passed and he kept slamming bucketful after bucketfull of baseballs against that padded wall, a wall in me began to give way: I began to sense a new realm of athletic possibility, or a different sort of scale upon which to weigh a life...

Your Moment of Zen

(Via Fack Youk)