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NauenThen

Baseball's back!

Me in a Mary Engelbreit daily calendar from a few years ago. 

And the Yankees are the only undefeated team in the AL East. Much as I still want snow, spring does have one glorious thing: BASEBALL. 

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Another afternoon in the universe of baseball

My granddaughter Meagan is the pitcher her, her team the Lightning in the West Side Little League. She's 12, has power & a great motion, with that little hiccup in the hip that you see in college ball. It's softball & underhand so her arm doesn't wear out. The girls know the rudiments & occasionally execute well, although most of the scoring was on overthrows & stolen bases.
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A little more baseball

Aw y'know, just so perfect & eternal & beautiful.
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Days off

Staggered through the last of Passover & am happily eating chametz again.

Ended the holiday at a baseball game. Yankee stadium opened on this date (April 18) in 1923. This was the "new" Yankee stadium we were at, of course. A crisp 2-hour game against the ChiSox that ended their 8-game winning streak. A chilly 50°. I thought I wouldn't bother keeping score but once they started with the lineup I quick drew a card in my little notebook. It's how I watch a game. I used to draw scorecards on scrap paper on the way to the ballpark before someone gave me a fancy wire-bound scorebook.

All baseball is the same game & not like anything else ever. That's what's so great about it. Read More 
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A poem from the past II

Here's another poem that turned up while I've been going through files. This one I've edited from the version I first wrote 25 years ago.

Away Game


the Lisbon of Henry the Navigator
     cobblestones, tiles with the colors of isolation,
          baleful pigs on a truck

romantic Lisbon on the Atlantic
     where endeth land and where beginneth …
          but

no one to talk to
     blisters (why these shoes?)
          alone, travel’s effort not adventure

hotel TV: smarmy British game show
     Bogart flick with Portuguese subtitles
          & suddenly baseball

heaves into sight
     so unexpected it Read More 
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Beisbol

Mercè at her first-ever baseball game; note hotdog & beer. Neil at far from his first game.
I can't imagine a more perfect night. Sitting outside in 70° weather, in the 3rd row almost behind the backstop (we missed two foul balls by one row)—and for $15 no less. Leisurely conversations. No electronic distraction. Getting to Staten Island by ferry, the 1st Avenue bus waiting at the terminal on the way home. Explaining baseball to a Spanish newbie, and tangling ourselves into memory & history. How threadbare my life would be without baseball.  Read More 
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Linda Kittell

Just received word from her husband Ron Goble that my friend Linda died on Wednesday. She had had a rare lung cancer. I'll remember her big smile, her big laugh, her love for her family & for baseball, her good poetry.
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Love

What a good poet Linda Kittell is. I included her "What Baseball Teaches Us About Love" in my anthology of women's writings about baseball 20-odd years ago; to this day, I can't read or hear that poem without crying. We became friends through that book & have been ever since. I've visited her in Idaho, & we read together at a Baseball Hall of Fame event. At last she has a collection out, Love Reports to Spring Training, about a left-handed pitcher named Love. If she lived anywhere but rural Idaho, she'd be well-known, I have no doubt. She deserves to be.

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