Kerry Wood, Edmund Gorski, and Necessary Realities: A Twenty Year Remembrance

My commute to high school took me by Wrigley Field twice a day, roughly an hour and forty-five minutes each way, from my home in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood to the Belmont-Cragin neighborhood, northside to the far, far west side, just to the edge of the city limits. I left the house at 6:15 every morning. The Clark Street bus passed Addison Street on the way to or from Belmont Avenue, and once I caught the Belmont bus, I settled in as it took me almost to the end of the line to St. Patrick High School. In the mornings, I’d stare at the quiet, dark stadium, illuminated by interior office lights and the red marquee. In the late spring afternoons, the bus would crawl through game day traffic, navigating pedestrians, tour buses, and the choke of cars. In the mornings, I gave myself internal pep talks, telling myself to have a better day than the day before. In the afternoons, tired and defeated, I tried not to cry, tried to muster enthusiasm to tell my parents I had a good day, that everything was wonderful, that I was making friends.

Both of my older brothers went to Lane Tech High School, a public school roughly 40 minutes away. I, however, was a naive, awkward child, and I knew right away that I couldn’t handle the expanse of a school as large as Lane. I’d latched on to the idea of St. Pat’s, an all-boys Catholic school that felt safer to me, as if I’d seamlessly blend into a smaller, close-knit community.

I was very wrong. Most of the students there had grown up together, gone to the same elementary schools, played little league and flag football together, and had family and friend links that spanned generations. I was an interloper, a fourteen year-old with a bad haircut, glasses, no athletic skills, and a speech impediment. It was the perfect combination for an imperfect new environment, one that I knew right away I didn’t belong to at all. By the spring, I had created a hardened shell, putting up with the shoves, the mocking, the realization I wasn’t going to have a joyous four years. I also had no idea money was tight in my family. It cost my parents hundreds of dollars a month to send me to a private school, one that I secretly hated.

On the afternoon of May 6th, 1998, the bus drove by Wrigley, and I was unaware that history had been made. When I arrived home, the news was on, as it always was; my parents had a ritual of afternoon coffee, Jeopardy!, and the local news following. The lead story came from the ballpark. Cubs rookie pitcher Kerry Wood, in his fifth Major League start, had struck out twenty Houston Astros, trying Roger Clemens’ record, as well as setting the new rookie and National League record. An error by third baseman Kevin Orie had inexplicably been ruled a hit, costing Wood a no-hitter. I was transfixed. It hadn’t been until the previous two years that I’d taken an interest in sports, but this interest, as it is for me now, applies only to baseball and basketball. I became a basketball fan as the Bulls started their second threepeat in 1996; and not long after, I felt the pull of baseball.

I was only dimly aware of the Cubs’ decades of futility, but the 1998 season was off to a promising start, especially after the team started the previous season by losing their first fourteen games. Wood’s game felt like a magic signal. I watched the highlights of the game over and over. I learned about pitching records, how rare Wood’s performance was, and saw just how ferociously he threw his fastballs, his slider/curve, the exasperation on the faces of Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, and Moises Alou as they swung, took called strikes, and shook their heads on the way back to the dugout.

In the face of high school ostracization, my interest in baseball turned into an obsession, an escape, but also a cache of facts and talking points I could use to endear myself to my classmates. However, my following of Wood’s game made me feel guilty. At any other time, I would have bonded with my father, who grew up a Yankees fan in Brooklyn, who was likely relieved I was taking an interest in sports instead of Frank Sinatra albums and MGM musicals.

He couldn’t focus on baseball.

His mother-in-law, my maternal grandmother, was dying of stomach cancer, literally on her deathbed in the hospital. If my parents weren’t at work or refueling at home, they were at my grandmother’s bedside.

I kept the Cubs as my escape, even though I was overcome with new adult emotions and realities. In an act that today feels fantastically archaic, even in the days before widespread Internet access, I clipped out the newspaper articles about Wood’s game and stored them in a folder.

On May 11th, his next start, Wood took the mound against the Arizona Diamondbacks and struck out thirteen batters over seven innings, setting a new record with thirty-three strikeouts over two consecutive starts. The Cubs were three games over .500, not much of a cushion, but the whispers were growing louder in Chicago media. With Wood now a national celebrity, a memorable season was certainly underway.

On May 13th, my father woke me up. The cancer had done its work. My grandmother had passed away during the night. My mother was still at the hospital. Like a small child, I burrowed up in the blankets and sobbed, partly out of grief, but also partly out of the knowledge that everything would be drastically different in our lives.

Doris (who we called Nan) and Edmund Gorski lived with us, occupying the first floor of a two story house. Nan and my father didn’t have the stereotypical mother-in-law/son-in-law dynamic. Instead, there was mutual love, respect, and laughter between them, as they’d both come from working class backgrounds in two very different areas.
Nan was born to a large, poor London family in 1928. She met and married Edmund, a handsome Polish soldier who found work as a banquet manager at the Savoy Hotel. My mother came along in 1951, and in 1956, they moved to Chicago. On the surface, it was an almost propaganda-like immigration story. My grandfather ended up working in the upscale service industry, waiting, bartending, and managing ballrooms at the Bismarck Hotel, the Illinois Athletic Club, the Tower Club, and the Drake Hotel. Nan, who dropped out of school in the sixth grade, worked in various department stores, briefly worked as a telemarketer, and ended up as a clerk at the CNA Building downtown. My mother was their only child, and they made lifelong friends with various neighbors, a seemingly seamless integration to a new country.

But nothing is ever wholesome on the inside as it appears on the outside.

Nan never stopped missing England, preferring it to the United States her whole life. In her early years as a Chicago resident, she was homesick and bewildered, aghast at the concept of working on commission at a department store, disgusted by her coworkers and their thirst for money. She’d grown up with next to nothing and knew how to adapt. She wore her outsider badge with pride.
As my grandmother, Nan wasn’t a frail, gray-haired old lady, doling out candy when we came to visit. She was a staircase away, the smell of her Benson & Hedges Menthol Light 100s curling up the back stairway and back porch. She adored me and my brothers, but would tell anyone else to fuck off as easily as she’d tell them to have a nice day.

Edmund was an alcoholic and gambler, faults that undermined his own American dream. His hotel work had the air of Mad Men period details: memories of war, bottomless glasses, a work life that was strictly separate from his home life. As he aged, and, escalating after Nan died, the effects of his alcoholism made way for his descent into dementia. His world was limited to four chairs: the front porch, the armchair in the living room, the kitchen chair, and the folding chair in the backyard. At night, he smoked and blared his Polish TV shows at the highest volume, so loud the voices hummed and vibrated the walls in our second floor living room.

With Nan gone, the spring turned into summer. My mother had lost her best friend, and her world was in supreme upheaval. The ensuing months showed me firsthand how messy adulthood can be. My mother alternated between fantastic, determined “I’ll get through this” highs, and quiet, fog-like lows, feeling her way through a strange new grief like one feels their way through a dense forest.
Our small family was ruptured. Nan was dead, my eldest brother had been in the Army since 1994, and my middle brother joined the Navy after he graduated in June. I’d finished my first year of high school, and fell into baseball even harder.
The Cubs were winning. Kerry Wood was racking up strikeouts, and to everyone’s surprise, outfielder Sammy Sosa was hitting home runs, many home runs, his totals increasing as the baseball world followed Mark McGwire and Ken Griffey, Jr., the potential heirs to the single-season home run record. I caught every game I could on WGN-TV. I maintained an old man routine: every morning I’d walk to the corner White Hen Pantry to buy a copy of the Chicago Sun-Times, which featured the daily home run totals of Sosa, McGwire, and Griffey. I discovered the joy of hate-reading, shaking my head as I studied Jay Mariotti’s terrible writing, screeching alternations between baseball passions and cold dismissals of players he deemed unworthy of respect.

I went out of my way to ride the bus to Wrigley Field every week during the summer to buy a copy of Baseball Weekly, because retrieving it from a newspaper box across the street from the ballpark felt more authentic than picking it up elsewhere.

***

My mother’s relationship with her father had always been fraught with distance, but the bottom fell out when she found herself as his primary caretaker, without Nan as a buffer. She bought him food, did his laundry, and even upstairs, I could hear snippets of arguments. He once threw an ashtray at her, likely over something inconsequential. She came upstairs in tears and sat by herself in the kitchen. I was too young to have words of advice, but knew enough to keep my distance with enough body language to let her know I empathized. My mother was still angry over her loss, and the distance between her and Edmund was now an expanse. Edmund was mourning in his own way, not just over his wife’s death, but the hand that life and addiction had dealt him. He’d squandered a small fortune from his working days, had no friends, and was isolated.
I helped my mother out where I could. Every Sunday morning, I went downstairs, helped him strip out of his stained pajamas, and quickly got used to the sight of his naked, wrinkled body as he gripped my arm with a strength I didn’t know he still had in him, lowering himself onto his shower stool. Once he was in the tub, he could wash himself. I retreated to his kitchen to read my baseball magazines in preparation for that afternoon’s game.

Kerry Wood showed signs of fatigue; he spent the month of September on the disabled list with arm fatigue. But the Cubs were rolling. Sammy Sosa approached and eclipsed sixty home runs. Despite every attempt to squander away their Wild Card lead for good, they still stayed in the picture. I was a baseball fan, and this new identity gave me happiness and something to look forward to; I read the magazines in a happy bliss until Edmund called me back into the bathroom to help him dry off and get dressed. Once he sat back in the kitchen, I quickly fixed him a smoked salmon sandwich, mixed him a cup of instant coffee, and hurried back upstairs to watch the pregame show, to lose myself further in Steve Stone and Chip Caray’s analysis, Sammy Sosa’s heart taps, Mickey Morandini’s mullet, and Mark Grace’s eye black. The guilt I felt leaving him alone once my obligations were done quickly turned into relief. I was angry with him for making my mother completely stressed out, and in my burgeoning teenage psychology, I told myself he deserved to be alone. In reality, it was for the best, for both of us. Had I stayed with him, we would’ve been forced to make small talk, to entertain each other, when all he really wanted was to sit in one of his chairs, smoking his Chesterfields.

***

In early September, my father bought three tickets to an afternoon game between the Cubs and the Cincinnati Reds. Once we found our seats, I went down by the field, hoping to score autographs on my baseball. I was fifteen, but gloriously childlike: jumping up and down, peering onto the field, absolutely thrilled to be so close to the players, caught up in a scrum of people reaching, yelling, and waving balls, pictures, and ticket stubs. I turned and looked toward the upper deck to locate my parents. I saw my mother, who sat, staring into the outfield, her chin on her fist, already bored out of her mind, wanting to be anywhere but the ballpark. Even from a distance, her face and body language was a representation of still-lingering grief and anger. Perhaps she agreed to go when my father got the tickets, perhaps she had to be talked into going. That moment struck me as one my earliest representations of parenthood: my parents taking me to a baseball game, to have a family outing, to take shaky, tentative steps toward normalcy when the world is in grotesque disarray.

It’s fitting that I don’t remember anything about the game itself. Sammy Sosa didn’t hit any home runs, and the Cubs dropped a crucial game in their playoff push.

***

Somehow, they made the playoffs. They forced an additional game with the San Francisco Giants, which they won 5-3, setting up a divisional match with the Atlanta Braves. After dropping the first two games in Atlanta, Kerry Wood returned for the third game in Chicago. Despite allowing just one run over five innings, he was gassed and spent. The offense was stagnant, the bullpen collapsed again, and the Braves swept the Cubs.

Wood tore a ligament in his arm during spring training the following year and missed the 1999 season. He had flashes of stability, spent more time on the disabled list, and regrouped enough to lead the Cubs deep into the 2003 playoffs. After stints with the Cleveland Indians and New York Yankees, he retired as a Cub, having been converted to a relief pitcher years before.
Until winning the World Series in 2016, the Cubs were a cliched representation of hope and the potential for ultimate happiness and fulfillment, represented by the “long suffering” fan base, the community, and the history of the team and ballpark. If baseball is the perfect metaphor for real life (disappointment marked by occasional flashes of good), the Cubs were the literal manifestation of that. But for me, Kerry Wood elevated that to a more grim level. Cubs fans never gave up on him, despite his long stretches of inactivity. The twenty strikeout game in 1998 was his best and worst moment, because that random afternoon showed what he was capable of, and he spent the rest of his career trying to live up to that potential. He gave it everything he had when he was healthy, but it led to more breakdowns, more injuries, and more “what if” reflections. That one nearly perfect game was enough to earn years of patience through every injury and losing season that followed.

***

Chicago is a mess of contradictions. It’s the third-largest city in the country, yet clings to a Midwestern small-town complex, its officials constantly dropping the phrase “world class city,” as if saying it makes it true, rather than letting the culture speak for itself. The Cubs have long played under the guise of being a working-class team: Wrigley Field is situated in a neighborhood, not in a suburb or off a freeway. The notion of the Bleacher Bums, unemployed or truant fans reveling in baseball while willfully disregarding responsibilities, took on a national mystique. Today, the atmosphere around the park is different. It’s wealthier and more exclusive, but still tries to cling to the old ways.

Kerry Wood was an involuntary part of those contradictions. We loved the young, hard-working Texan, and hoped his arm would lead to the glory that came eighteen years later.

***

Edmund didn’t undergo any personal transformations. He didn’t make peace with my mother, didn’t shake his head and examine the mistakes he’d made in his life. Kerry Wood won the Rookie of the Year award, but never regained what he’d planted that May afternoon. Baseball and immigration are essential components to whatever one deems as “American,” but they don’t fit into perfect narratives the way we’d hope. When Edmund died in 2004, his legacy was left in what he didn’t mess up for good: my mother became stronger and more at peace in her life, and his grandchildren, my brothers and I, are aware of his faults, despite making plenty of mistakes on our own. His immigration story has the veneer of success, but once one looks deeper, between the lines, he would have been just as frail and stubborn in Poland as he was in the United States.

***

This story wouldn’t have been possible if the Cubs had somehow pushed through and won the World Series in 1998, or if Edmund made changes in his life following Nan’s death. We always hope for happy endings, but the road to them often takes much longer than we anticipate. Baseball is such an easy metaphor for life, such an unexpected coping mechanism, because of its propensity for long stretches of failure and hopelessness. Kerry and Edmund represent two sides of a spectrum, a Venn Diagram of hope and reality. The overlap is tiny, but we can see it, no matter how small the sliver ends up being.

(Kerry Wood photograph: Richard A. Chapman/AP)

Hobart: Photo Credits

Preface: my Instagram account includes this disclaimer: apologies to actual photographers. I know people do some stellar work with cell phone cameras, but personally, I don't think clicking a few snapshots on my phone allows me to even look at the word "photographer."

Onward.

The literary magazine Hobart did its annual online baseball issue in April. I contributed stories in 2013 and 2014. Awhile back, editor Aaron Burch put out a request for baseball photos and artwork to accompany this year's fiction, poetry, and essays. When I saw this request, I realized I had several baseball-themed photos on my phone. I e-mailed them his way, and I'm really pleased with how the images paired with some stellar writing.

Frankly, I don't care if someone reads the writing and doesn't think twice about the images. The emphasis SHOULD be on the writing here, but anyway, here are my first "official" photo credits:

2015 baseball predictions by Andrew Ervin (a concourse shot from U.S. Cellular Field)

A pitching guide by Emily Nemens (a game shot from a Tigers-White Sox game in August)

Little League memories from Dylan Fisher (I took a walk by a baseball field early one morning and saw this solitary Yankees cap on a post)

A short story by Chad Schuster (my glove and a battered ball)


I'm honored that my images are paired with some terrific writers.


To close, the Hobart baseball issue also included a terrific short story by one of my favorite Chicago writers/lit citizens. Enjoy "Pop Up" by the great Wyl Villacres.

"Until the Light is Off" Now Live on Hobart

Oops, I'm two days late, but I have a new short story publication: Hobart, the home of my first publication last year, graciously published a new fiction installment for their annual baseball series. My piece is called "Until the Light is Off," a short about family, looming loss, and time as filtered through a batting cage. So as one typically says about a baseball story: it's about more than baseball, so if the idea of the game makes you fall asleep, I hope my piece does the opposite.

Thanks a ton to Aaron Burch (his latest story collection will be published in June) and the rest of the stellar Hobart editors and writers for giving my work a home, again. Click here for "Until the Light is Off."

I have another story being published in just under two weeks, plus I'm working on a couple book reviews that I'm hoping will be published in the not too distant future. I'm so grateful for these opportunities to create my own work and reflect on the creativity of others.

My semester is nearly finished, so, while I don't make specific promises, I'll be updating here more frequently over the summer.

Happy writing, all.

"Hands of Grace" Now Live on Hobart

Well, I'm very excited and humbled today. Aaron Burch and the editors of Hobart published my first short story this morning. It's a feature for their April-long baseball feature, and it's called "Hands of Grace." The story went through multiple drafts and even started as something completely different from the finished piece. It's a story about an unhappy marriage and a man's obsession/crush with former Chicago Cubs first baseman Mark Grace. I'm also thrilled that it's accompanied by the terrific illustration above, by New York-based artist Katie Gross. She's a Phillies fan, but I won't hold that against her. Yet. But seriously, thank you, Katie!

Back in 2008, I remember making this ridiculous declaration to a friend of mine, claiming I'd have my first story published by the end of that year. Well, here we are, five years later. I've gone through a lot of changes since then, yet I kept focused, understood the rejections, and now I can say I've had a story published. There will be many more rejections to come, but also more publications. This is a great way to lead into my MFA Candidacy this fall.

Okay, I'll stop rambling now. Here's the story:

September 13, 1998


Murphy's was packed beyond any regard to occupancy regulations, and this made Evan both grateful and concerned. (Okay, that was just a teaser. To read my whole story, click here. And click HERE for a roundup of Hobart's superior baseball pieces that have been published this month.)

Ninth Inning Town: Nelson Algren's "Chicago: City On the Make"

For the last several weeks, I was mentally plotting an essay about Chicago's collective psychology in relation to the views on the professional sports teams and athletes. While this could very well be a piece I return to, a random reading and thoughts on other strains of civic psychology turned me in a different direction. Back in May, when Chicago hosted the NATO Summit, Mayor Rahm Emanuel made a telling remark that was supported and repeated by local media outlets. Despite the protesters and general apathy about the magnitude of the meeting, Emanuel stated that he wanted to show off Chicago as a "world-class city." This isn't the first time that this idea has circulated, and it always strikes me as odd and pointless, since Chicago is the third-largest city in the country, yet local politicians and boosters maintain a mentality of Chicago being a small town looking to make good.

More recently, Chicago was beset by a nasty heatwave and a rash of gang shootings (which seem to be always ongoing, sadly). A local news channel conducted interviews with tourists vacationing downtown, with some of them stating they would have had reservations about visiting had they been aware of the rise in violent activity. While violence can happen anywhere at any time, part of me was incredulous, since a lot of upper-class visitors remain in the confines of the downtown shopping districts and would never come close to venturing to the areas with concentrations of violence. Media outlets often conduct interviews with the people living in the dangerous neighborhoods, yet I found it strange to watch interviews with people who have only heard of the less-savory parts of Chicago. These thoughts were in my head as I recently read Nelson Algren's poetic 1951 exploration, Chicago: City On the Make. The slim volume contains a wealth of sociological views and assessments, and while not all of them still apply today, it's still an excellent example of how Chicago's image, from both the outside and the inside, maintains a distinctly unique veneer unlike other major metropolitan areas.

Algren shares stories of his own childhood and tells Chicago's tale from the points of view of the drunks, the working class, and the hustlers, the nameless folks who oftentimes share the same personal qualities as the powerful in the city's hierarchy. The working class people represent the majority in numbers, yet are more likely to be disciplined and reviled for doing on a small scale what the elite minority do on a bigger scale. This is Algren's take on Chicago's beginnings:

"They hustled the land, they hustled the Indian, they hustled by night and they hustled by day. They hustled guns and furs and peltries, grog and the blood-red whiskey-dye; they hustled with dice or a deck or a derringer. And decided the Indians were wasting every good hustler's time.
Slept till noon and scolded the Indians for being lazy.
Paid the Pottawattomies off in cash in the cool of the Indian evening: and had the cash back to the dime by the break of the Indian dawn.
They'd do anything under the sun except work for a living, and we remember them reverently, with Balaban and Katz, under such subtitles as 'Founding Fathers,' 'Dauntless Pioneers,' 'or 'Far-Visioned Conquerors (Algren 11-12).'"

Some of Algren's passages are deftly comic and still timely, providing an early, hip assessment of how to handle Chicago's citizens and outlook. A paragraph about the suburbs might appear to be an insult, and in today's Chicago, residents of the city will likely smile, at least inside, at this take:

"So if you're entirely square yourself, bypass the forest of furnished rooms behind The Loop and stay on the Outer Drive till you swing through Lincoln Park. Then move, with the lake still on your square right hand, into those suburbs where the lawns are always wide, the sky is always smokeless, the trees are forever leafy, the churches are always tidy, gardens are always landscaped, streets are freshly swept, homes are pictures out of Town and Country (Algren 26)."

To reference my opening paragraph, Algren writes about his youthful attachment to the Chicago White Sox, especially in the aftermath of the 1919 Black Sox scandal. What led me to ponder Chicago's attitude toward athletes came about after Kerry Wood's retirement from the Chicago Cubs. After years of brilliant flashes and too many injuries, I couldn't help but wonder if Cubs fans still clung too tightly to Wood's 1998 game against the Houston Astros. In that game, Wood's fifth as a major-leaguer, he tied a baseball record with twenty strikeouts in a 1-hit shutout. His arm was constantly injured by the sheer force of his pitches, and for years, Cubs fans kept hoping for a resurgence, with that single game defining Wood for the duration of his on and off tenure with the team. Algren makes a reference to White Sox pitcher Charlie Robertson, who, coincidentally, threw a perfect game in his fifth major league game and never made any true progress afterward.

"(And what became of No-Hit Charley Robertson, who stepped off a sandlot one afternoon to pitch that perfect game for the White Sox? What ever became of No-Hit Charley, who put twenty-seven men down on strikeouts and infield popups--and then stepped back to his sandlot and left nothing behind but that perfect afternoon when nobody in the world could get a hit?) (Algren 54-55)."

Dozens of other writers have made names for themselves by exploring the lives of the downtrodden and blue-collar. The difference with Algren, at least through the lens of Chicago: City On the Make, is that, in addition to seeming like one of the people, is his deft understanding of how Chicago reflects its citizens. While the same claim can be made for Bukowski's Los Angeles, Algren was a much stronger writer. His prose is poetic without being forced or obvious, and while the work is a creative rambling, there are no obvious embellishments or romanticizing. Algren's Chicago was a tough place, and much like today, while solutions for the problems are needed, it's much easier to put a positive spin on the good qualities, even with serious problems in the background. One can only imagine how Algren would have responded to Emanuel, who welcomed the NATO summit with only passing nods to the protesters and the need to call attention to the myriad of problems in the world. Much like today's world, some of the issues in Algren's time were best represented in creative acts. As he states in his 1961 Afterword:

"When the city clerk of Terre Haute refused to issue warrents [sic] for arrest of streetwalkers in spite of his sworn legal duty to issue warrants for arrest of streetwalkers, and instead demanded of the Terre Haute police, 'Why don't you make war on people in high life instead of upon these penniless girls?' the little sport performed an act of literature (Algren 81)."

In the Afterword, he also acknowledges the negative reception the book initially received, since people were more comfortable reading positive spins rather than grim realities. This is still represented in today's political world, when attempts to shed light on problems can be met with resistance or a desire to maintain the status quo. In the 1950s and today, higher ups would much rather put emphasis on Chicago as a tourist destination than thoughts like:

"The slums take their revenge. And you can take your pick of the avengers among the fast international set at any district-station lockup on any Saturday night. The lockups are always open and there are always new faces. Always someone you never met before, and where they all come from nobody knows and where they'll go from here nobody cares (Algren 67)."

Despite these sketches of the seamy sides of city life, there's never a question of Algren not living Chicago. Chicago: City On the Make isn't a tour guide, but in the midst of the stark honesty, there's a bustle and liveliness that Algren continually evokes, even in the saddest pages. It continually evokes the often-used phrase of "history being written by the winners," when in reality, there's much to be gained from accounts of the losers. Before mainstream activism, before Howard Zinn, and before the start of the Occupy movements, writers like Algren were doing their best to shed light on the masses, even if nobody (at the time) wanted to read or think about such things. This is where Algren's beautiful prose becomes most important. Look at the carefully plotted and detailed paragraph below. Again, it doesn't romanticize, but it genuinely sympathizes.

"The nameless, useless nobodies who sleep behind the taverns, who sleep beneath the El. Who sleep in burnt-out busses with the windows freshly curtained; in winterized chicken coops or patched-up truck bodies. The useless, helpless nobodies nobody knows: that go as the snow goes, where the wind blows, there and there and there, down any old cat-and-ashcan alley at all. There, unloved and lost forever, lost and unloved for keeps and a day, there far below the ceaseless flow of TV waves and FM waves, way way down there where no one has yet heard of phonevision nor considered the wonders of technicolor video--there, there below the miles and miles of high-tension wires servicing the miles and miles of low-pressure cookers, there, there where they sleep on someone else's pool table, in someone else's hall or someone else's jail, there where they chop kindling for heat, cook over coal stoves, still burn kerosene for light, there where they sleep the all-night movies through and wait for rain or peace or snow; there, there beats Chicago's heart (Algren 67-68)."

And finally, I'd like to offer cited remarks as a representation of the state of Chicago journalism. In a recent "revamp," The Chicago Sun-Times has started a terrible trend. Chicago "celebrities" are given a one page editorial to sound off on their pet projects and view of the city. While the money often goes to good charities, the paper lets it be known that they paid the writers an excellent sum for terrible writing. The first editorial was an awful, embarrassing op-ed by Jim Belushi, who commanded a $1,000 writing fee (again, donated to charity, which is noble, but I'm still shocked that he can command that kind of money from a supposedly struggling newspaper). Chicago is full of great, hungry writers who would do anything for that kind of platform. Instead of actively seeking out the thousands of voices in the city, the Sun-Times plays it safe with pointless celebrity ramblings. These Algren pieces are my way of protesting this.

"Therefore its poets pull the town one way while its tycoons' wives pull it another...(Algren 57)."

"It used to be a writer's town and it's always been a fighter's town (Algren 62)."

Work Cited:
Algren, Nelson. Chicago: City On the Make. Copyright 1951, renewed 1979 by Nelson Algren.

"The Art Of Fielding:" Chad Harbach's Hit Parade

It's very difficult to think of a novel debut that has received the sort of instant praise that came with Chad Harbach's The Art Of Fielding. That's not to say that first novels don't amaze, but normally there is the necessity for attention to build after a publication date. After its early praise and enthusiastic recommendations from my friends, I put the work on my "to-read" list. As is normally the case, I wasn't able to get to it right away, and as its fall publication turned it into one of the holiday season's best-sellers, I found myself to be a bit wary. There is good hype and bad hype, and I was slightly worried that the novel's near-unanimous praise was pushing it into a potential disappointment (I still haven't read or heard anything negative about it, but as is the case with any work, I know it has dissenting voices). Normally, I focus on my own excitement over a piece of writing, but in this case, getting numb to the constant praise seemed to make The Art Of Fielding that much more enjoyable. By going into it with a level head, I was able to let its story and surprises reveal themselves slowly. Having finished it last week, I'm still amazed at how Harbach combined contemporary elements into what feels like an older, established novel.

Henry Skrimshander is the star shortstop for the Division III Westish Harpooners baseball team, a perennial underachiever that has slowly become a championship contender. Throughout boyhood and high school, Henry's defense had served as his best asset, aided by constant practice and by a book called The Art Of Fielding, written by Aparicio Rodriguez, a former All-Star shortstop with the St. Louis Cardinals. As Henry gets stronger (his hitting improves as his team does), he is heavily scouted and projected to be an early Major League draft pick. His teammates have their own unique traits and stories. Mike Schwartz, the catcher and team captain, deals with the aches and pains of being a football and baseball player,is attempting to get into law school, and serves as Henry's mentor. Owen Dunne, Henry's roommate, is openly gay and primarily rides the bench, reading books during games, yet manages to remain a vital part of the team. Adam Starblind (Harbach has a unique system of names that mirrors the offbeat names of baseball players past and present) is their number one pitcher.

Guert Affenlight is the Westish school president, a Melville scholar (hence the team name) who finds himself in a tender and rushed affair with Owen, and these personal complications are both aided and harmed by the unexpected arrival of his daughter Pella, who's fleeing her broken marriage. Pella and Mike quickly become enamored with each other, and these separate affairs become heightened when the sure-handed Henry accidentally throws a routine grounder into the dugout, striking Owen in the face and landing him in the hospital. This seeming unnatural error spirals Henry into a case of Steve Blass disease, leading to personal and existential crises for everyone involved. Relationships become strained, the team struggles to keep their momentum going despite Henry's crumbling defense, and the novel becomes a narrative of the characters' individual and collective pursuits of happiness and confrontations of open and secret problems. All throughout, Harbach manages to combine exceptional narratives of baseball and academia through the sympathetic characters.

While the team's championship run holds the plot lines together, it's far too easy (and potentially misleading) to call The Art Of Fielding a "baseball book," but Harbach's descriptions of the game's actions are superior and realistic without resorting to grandeur. Baseball is too often discussed and written in mythical qualities, but in this book, it's done naturally and realistically:

"Before the pitch he stood at ease, glove on his hip, his face round and windburned and open, delivering instructions or encouragement to his teammates with a relaxed smile. But as the ball left the pitcher's hand his face went blank. The chatter stopped midword. In one motion he yanked his navy cap with its harpoon-skewered W toward his eyes and dropped into a feline crouch, thighs parallel to the field, glove brushing the dirt. He looked low to the ground but light on his feet, more afloat than entrenched. The pitch was fouled back, but not before he had taken two full steps to his left, toward the place where he anticipated the ball to be headed. None of the other infielders had moved an inch (Harbach 68)."

This is a character-driven novel, and is strongly assured for a debut, especially since all of the characters have the potential to be rendered in cliche or stereotype. The relationship between Owen and Guert, while seemingly doomed from the start, transcends their gender and becomes a realization that their positions (school president, student, and their age difference) render anything serious to be impossible. But it's a relationship not solely based on sex, but on mutual appreciation. Guert is worried that he's having a midlife crisis, but their meetings are beautiful and show signs of a genuine compatibility.

"Part of Affenlight felt peeved at Owen for interrupting or dismissing his bliss. Because it was bliss, he felt, to be here with Owen and to read to him, even when he was reading dry-as-dust sentences from a poorly xeroxed course packet. Of all the activities two people could do together in private, Affenlight had a special fondness for reading aloud. Maybe this was part of his instinct for solitude and self-enclosure; a way to reveal himself while hiding behind someone else's words (Harbach 218-219)."

Pella is the only major female character in the novel, and again, her makeup is one that could veer on insulting, especially with the emphasis of the past few years on the lack of dynamic female characters in contemporary fiction. Pella has a strained relationship with her father, and her personal relationships are fraught with unhappiness. However, she acknowledges this outright and comes to Westish in order to forge her own path. She takes classes and works as a campus dishwasher despite her father being the school president and a previous life of comfort with her ex-husband. She's determined to be strong and to be her own person, even as her relationship with Mike hits a few serious bumps along the way. From the beginning, she and Mike seem to make an excellent match, and this description of him manages to unintentionally apply to Pella as well:

"Schwartz prided himself on his honesty. If one of his teammates was dogging it, he busted that teammate's balls, and if one of his classmates or professors made a comment that seemed specious or incomplete, he said so. Not because he knew more than they did but because the clash of imperfect ideas was the only way for anyone, including himself, to learn and improve. That was the lesson of the Greeks (Harbach 102)."

Henry's descent into realizing a potential world without baseball manages to tie in nicely to the literary/academic world of Westish. Athletes, like humanities majors, are often told to have backup plans in case their ambitions don't work out in "the real world." With Henry, baseball is like literature for some people: he simply cannot imagine functioning without it, and it leads him into his own existential gloom, literally roaming around trying to make sense of an alternate reality. Again, much like baseball is often too romanticized (and I say that as a serious baseball fan myself), there is often a tendency to over-emphasize baseball's relationship to literature. However, this is where Harbach succeeds. His writing sometimes winks to this, but is predominantly grounded. Much like the above passage linking Mike and Pella, some passages manage to reflect multiple themes. This one deftly combines the ideals of baseball and writing without being obvious:

"Talking was like throwing a baseball. You couldn't plan it out beforehand. You just had to let go and see what happened. You had to throw out words you knew no one would catch. you had to send your words out where they weren't yours anymore. It felt better to talk with a ball in your hand, it felt better to let the ball do the talking. But the world, the nonbaseball world, the world of love and sex and jobs and friends, was made of words (Harbach 420)."



Chad Harbach is the co-founder and editor of the excellent literary and political journal n+1, and had been working on The Art Of Fielding for over ten years, and the amazement over the novel stems from both its contents and its completeness, a rarity for a first-time novelist. It was initially praised by Jonathan Franzen, and a few months back, a humorous web article stated that people who loved The Art Of Fielding were readers who were just waiting for the next Franzen novel. However, I don't see any immediate similarities between the two. Franzen tends to make his characters unsympathetic at first, until their situations, histories, and developments redeem them. Harbach's characters are all immediately likable, even with their faults. Franzen works in a style that is immediately contemporary and fits well into current conditions; with the exception of the occasional mention of an iPhone or Scott Boras, there are stretches of The Art Of Fielding that feel as if they could be set in any era. With that in mind, it's stunning how the novel works as a contemporary study as well as an unabashed homage to classic literature (however, I personally don't buy the connection between the title and Henry Fielding, of which much has been made in more than a few reviews). That's not to say that the novel is without faults. Harbach manages to write some hilarious dialogue and scenes, but occasionally falls flat (an early passage hints at characters having sex, when in reality they're weightlifting), and I found the ending to be slightly implausible, even if its emphasis is on the metaphor (sorry to be vague, but even now, a revelation would be a major spoiler). However, these missteps are minor. Harbach has written a work that contains almost everything one could want in a novel, and hits the rare mark of being both intellectual and vastly entertaining, and, returning to Franzen, represents one of my favorite sentences: "You call it art, I call it entertainment, we both turn the pages."

Work Cited:
Harbach, Chad. The Art Of Fielding. Copyright 2011 by Chad Harbach.

The Future Of Baseball: Less Is More

Like many people, I'm anxiously awaiting the start of the 2011 Major League Baseball season, but aside from the anticipation, I've also been thinking about Commissioner Bud Selig's desire to expand the baseball playoffs. Granted, this might seem odd. Perhaps it would be best to focus on the beginning of the season, and not October. However, Selig was hoping to have the expansion in place for this season, but that was thankfully pushed back. Of course, there's a strong possibility that it could happen for the 2012 playoffs. As I've mentioned in some of my previous baseball articles, I'm in no way a purist; as long as the game itself is the same, I'm all for the changes that inevitably happen due to logistics and the passage of time. And the point of this piece is not necessarily to criticize Selig, but to offer my own thoughts as to how a possible expansion of the baseball playoffs could work. Besides, I'm not a stranger to critiques of Selig:

"Another glaring problem is Bud Selig, baseball commissioner. [The 2002 All-Star game that ended in a tie] fiasco proved that he lacks the true baseball mind that is needed to run the league. That is why I propose two people who would be respected, organized, and intelligent baseball commissioners.
The first choice is former NBC announcer Bob Costas. In addition to being a lifelong fan of the game, his book Fair Ball showed that he has astute knowledge of both what happens on the field and off the field. He has some good ideas to help baseball's labor problems, if not to solve them completely. This labor problem is going to take years to fix, but Costas could lay a foundation.
The second choice is journalist George Will. Again, Will is a man who loves the game. He has a keen political mind that would serve the business end of the game. As much as we fans love to think that baseball is just a game, it's really a business, with politics and money being the real bats and balls.
Bud Selig no doubt loves the game, but he lacks the command that either Costas or Will would immediately bring to the job."

I wrote the above passages when I was nineteen, part of a longer article calling for a change in baseball's leadership, and it was published as the featured letter in the April 27th, 2003 edition of the Chicago Sun-Times. Looking back, it's obvious that I was only nineteen at the time (what exactly is a "true baseball mind?" And did I not know how to write a compound sentence?), but I'm semi-pleased that it worked as a sort of bi-partisan appeal (Costas leans to the left, Will to the right). Also, a random reader could assume I was hinting that Selig doesn't love baseball. Obviously, that's not the case, whether viewed through the actual game or the business side: more playoff rounds equal more television revenues and more games. However, that's the problem.




It would behoove Selig to reverse the decision he made following the embarrassing tie in the 2002 All-Star Game (currently, the league that wins the All-Star game gets home field advantage in the World Series). The home field advantage of the World Series should go to the team with the better record. Also, even as a teenager, I hated the rule that every team needs an All-Star representative. Instead, Selig should take a cue from the NBA. Last year, Chicago Bulls point guard Derrick Rose was named Chicago's first All-Star since Michael Jordan in 1998, and the attention he received was extremely well-deserved, in addition to (even if viewed in a nostalgic manner) highlighting the fact that being named an All-Star should be earned on the field, and not by default. For example, I doubt that the majority of Houston Astros fans tuned into the game to see Michael Bourn get his one at-bat.

As much as I love the game, by the time late October comes around, I cannot help but think "Is the season STILL going?" And when the World Series is continually pushed into November, it becomes even more ridiculous. If Selig has his way, a possible second or third wild-card would be added to each league, bring the total number of playoff teams to either ten or twelve. This would mean another round (or two) of playoffs before the League Championship Series and the World Series. The current format (three division champions and one wild-card for each league) has been ridiculed since its inception in 1995. But then again, when the season was expanded from 154 games to 162 in 1961, that was criticized heavily before it became accepted.

I don't think that expanding the playoffs would cheapen baseball, but something has to be done about the length of the season, both the regular season and the playoffs combined. In my opinion, this is how a baseball season would work:

1.) I applaud baseball executives for starting the 2011 season right at the beginning of April, and hopefully this will continue. However, I would prefer to see the season cut to 158 games. This way, the season would end in the middle of September, and there's no reason to not have the playoffs start the week after.

2.) I prefer the current playoff formats, and let's assume that it doesn't get expanded. It would make sense to keep the best-of-five divisional playoff format, and while this may be a stretch, baseball could go back to its original LCS roots and revert to the current American and National League Championship Series to a best-of-five, rather than a best-of-seven.

3.) After the NLCS and ALCS, the pennant winners would take a week off, and the emphasis would be on the World Series. This is taking a cue from football, which does an excellent job of building to the Super Bowl. Yes, this would drastically cut down on the number of playoff games, but would add potential excitement to a playoff system that, even for the most diehard baseball fans, tends to drag on too long. The World Series would still be played under the best-of-seven format, and would end in the middle of October, instead of flirting with November. Even with these rules in place, another round of playoffs could be added, but would still keep the postseason within the confines of September and October. Selig's current problem is that he thinks nothing about baseball going past October. By reverting the format of the LCS to a best-of-five, I cannot imagine that any television revenue would be lost, since the series in either league rarely goes to a seventh game.

I'm not trying to focus on the negatives. Overall, I'm as excited as always to see the start of the season. However, Selig is taking steps back when he thinks that he's taking steps forward. He's entirely right to be thinking about expansion, but the fact that baseball has a longer season than any other sport, it's odd that he's not taking these simple subtractions into account. Shaving a few games off the schedule would create immense room for a logical playoff increase, and would bring back the reverence for the World Series that seems to have been lost. I'm sure that I'm overlooking some logistical problems, but I think that my ideas would appeal to both purists and the natural progression of baseball.

Now that I have these concerns written and out of my head: Play ball!

The (Should Be) Hall Of Famer

In any circumstance, December is the harshest month in which to discuss or write about baseball. Even though the 2010 World Series ended less than two months ago, it already feels like a truly distant memory. The winter meetings are under way, and the trades and free-agent signings are being reported quietly (Adam Dunn to the White Sox) and loudly (Jayson Werth's stunning signing with the Washington Nationals). Locally, with the exception of a page or two in the local papers on said winter meetings, baseball in Chicago is a literal afterthought, especially with the Bears leading their division and the Bulls trying to capitalize with their young, talented core. In a perverse paradox, I pass by Wrigley Field during my commute to work, and especially given Chicago's brutal cold snap in the last week, baseball seems so far away, yet so close (pitchers and catchers report in just over two months, much closer, at least subconsciously, than the two months prior since the end of the World Series). The recent death of former Cubs third baseman/announcer Ron Santo makes this off-season middle ground much more poignant. The only real activity around the ballpark comes from people snapping photographs of the candles, Old Style bottles, and signs that have formed outside in remembrance of Santo. I hate to obviously sentimentalize someone's death, but it seemed cruel that he passed just days before the Veteran's Committee elected former GM Pat Gillick to the Hall Of Fame. Santo was never ashamed to lobby the Veteran's Committee on his Hall Of Fame Credentials, especially given the fact that a.) he put up great numbers with the historically mediocre Cubs; if Santo had played with the Yankees or Dodgers, he probably would have been in the Hall years ago, and b.) he played with diabetes throughout his career, eventually having both legs amputated. He was also the greatest, most unabashed homer in broadcasting. When the Cubs were fighting for the playoffs in 1998, Santo's call of a late inning error by outfielder Brant Brown was an eloquent, journalistic "NO! NO! NO! NO!," one that will always be remembered in Cubs history.

I wanted to get that out of the way, since I've been thinking about this essay since before Santo's death. Given the above introduction, the title of this piece, and my status as a Cubs fan, one would assume that this would be a look at Ron Santo; instead, it's a look at a player who was not elected by the Veteran's Committee, and someone who in the last fifteen or so years has not been elected by the Baseball Writers Association of America (the BWAA). Admittedly, it's about a player whom I never saw pitch, either live or on television, and whose stats are very good, but just shy of being stellar. However, despite my lack of personal knowledge, I was shocked that Tommy John wasn't elected by Veteran's Committee, along with Gillick.




Despite all of the evidence and commentary that hints to baseball lagging in popularity behind football and basketball, the Baseball Hall Of Fame seems to have the most respect of all the major professional sports, whether this is due to baseball being a game so old that it never pulls itself away from history, or if it's a case of the Baseball Hall Of Fame marketing itself in a much better fashion. The annual announcements, whether by the Veteran's Committee or the BWAA, have all of the hype and excitement of the Academy Awards: who will be named? And just as, if not more importantly, who will be snubbed? Much like the hype or build-up to any award, the anticipation can be just as great as the announcement. For the 2011 inductions, a lot of attention was given to the late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, and following the lack of votes, just as much attention has been given to his not being selected. Up until a few days ago, I simply assumed that Tommy John would be elected. When that didn't happen, I decided to look at his numbers and status, aided by a website that I've used and loved frequently in the last few years, Baseball-Reference.com. By going with numbers alone, and given baseball's history-long obsession with statistics, it's wonderful to see how John's numbers both frantically point to and sternly deny his status as a potential Hall Of Fame inductee. He pitched in 760 games over twenty-six seasons (good for 56th all-time, ahead of Hall Of Famer Warren Spahn, but below Hall Of Famer Don Sutton); he won 288 games, just twelve shy of the magic 300 mark (ahead of Bob Gibson, below Lefty Grove); his career ERA was a decent 3.34, but makes for a distant 319th place all-time, ahead of Robin Roberts and just ten spots shy of assumed future Hall Of Famer Roy Halladay). Yes, I'm just throwing numbers out there without any true analysis or concrete thoughts (I'm pretty much doing the same thing that Jayson Stark does every week). Again, numbers are subjective. Anyone can pick a baseball player at random and be shocked at how his numbers in a given category compare, for better or for worse, to players in baseball history. However, my firm belief in John's worthiness of the Hall Of Fame has nothing to do with his statistics, but in reality, everything to do with his statistics. Tommy John belongs in the Hall Of Fame for his longevity, and the fact that not as many people know ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction by its official name; it's much better known as Tommy John surgery.

Some people might (perhaps rightfully) take a step back and say "You think he's deserving of the Hall Of Fame just because his name is synonymous with a surgical procedure?" I say yes, and before I began this essay, a random Google search of just headlines shows that a lot of other people feel the same way. In the truest, non-cliched sense of the phrase, John was a trailblazer. He was the first professional athlete to have the procedure done, and the fact that his name is now attached to what is (at least in baseball circles) a procedure in which the major hassle is just the recovery time, really adds a legacy that is worthy Hall Of Fame, and makes his numbers that much more amazing. Three years after having the surgery, he won twenty games, finished second in Cy Young voting, and helped lead the Los Angeles Dodgers to the National League Pennant. This isn't the same as Lou Gehrig having his name attached to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis after his death. Not to downplay Gehrig's condition (which may have been something else entirely), but John proved that success after ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction was possible, in a time when there was almost no hope of recovery from major elbow ligament damage. To use the often-tired phrase, some legitimate future Hall Of Famers have undergone the surgery: John Smoltz, John Franco, and Billy Wagner.

The "proper" close would be to make some obvious comparisons throughout baseball history, given that it's a game that's heavy on "firsts," "after 'x' happened, this happened,' and so on. And it's certain that if Tommy John had not been the first baseball player to undergo the surgery, then someone else would have, and thereby received unofficial naming honor. But even by numbers alone, 288 wins, even if it's just an average of just over eleven wins a year, is proof of John's skill and the fact that dozens of other ballplayers, both famous and under the radar, undergo ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction and end up having healthy, productive careers. Perhaps the Veteran's Committee will end up electing him, perhaps not. But if I, as a quiet writer/baseball fan, can come up with some pretty strong arguments for John's credentials, then surely actual baseball veterans could do the same. As much as baseball is determined by what happens on the field, the happenings off the field can be equally important. For example, Dr. James Andrews, a surgeon who perform the majority of Major League Tommy John surgeries, has been touted as a possible Hall Of Fame inductee, dating back for at least the last three years. When one mentions baseball and technology, there can be wonderful examples of the advances made in the field, advances not named steroids or human growth hormone. If a logical case can be made for a doctor's contributions to the sport, why not the man whose name will forever be linked to the benefits and safety of a career-saving procedure? Imagine a position player having a total of 342 home runs, 1,331 RBIs, and 2,254 hits in a career interrupted by Tommy John surgery.

Actually, that's what Ron Santo did in his entire career with diabetes. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

The Cost Of Perfection

The ninth inning of Tuesday's baseball game between the Cleveland Indians and the Detroit Tigers has been discussed, tweeted, blogged, analyzed, and ripped apart in a few ways in the past two days. My goal for this piece is not to add yet another small part of cyberspace to the discussions of Jim Joyce, but to open, it will help to recap the events. At Detroit's Comerica Park, right-handed pitcher Armando Galarraga was one out away from pitching a perfect game (twenty-seven batters faced, twenty-seven batters retired); this has happened only twenty times in Major League Baseball history. Indians shortstop Jason Donald hit a hard ground ball to Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera, who threw to Galarraga at first base. The throw beat the runner by a full step, but first base umpire Joyce blew the call and signaled safe, ending both a perfect game and a no-hitter. Galaragga ended up pitching a fine 1-hit shutout, but immediately following the game, there was a surge in media, with the majority of people calling for either a reverse ruling from Commissioner Bug Selig, the firing of Joyce, or both.

Just as quickly, Joyce acknowledged his error, and before the Indians-Tigers game on Thursday, Galarraga met with Joyce at home plate, giving him the lineup card, and symbolically forgiving the man for the mistake. Selig decided against an executive decision to award Galarraga a perfect game, and for the most part, all seems to be forgiven, if not forgotten. Tigers manager Jim Leyland stressed that everyone in baseball makes mistakes, and while it would have been a historic feat, the Tigers won 3-0 and remain just a few games out of first place in the American League Central Division. Had Joyce clenched his fist for an out call instead of waving his arms for a safe call, it would have marked the third perfect game in the 2010 season. The previous two were thrown by two vastly different pitchers, showing both the "obvious" expectations and the randomness of such a feat.



Roy Halladay of the Philadelphia Phillies threw a 1-0 perfect game against the Florida Marlins on May 29th, and his career is such that he's the type of pitcher one would "expect" to throw a perfect game (forgive the constant quotation marks; what I love about baseball is that certain ideas have to be marked with them, combining normal statements and what could be perceived as far-fetched opinions). He's a former Cy Young winner with dominant pitches, and he routinely throws complete games in an era that doesn't allow that to happen as often. Halladay has accumulated many shut-out games, and has come close to throwing a no-hitter before. The coverage of his May 29th game was normal, but in the back of my mind, it was almost an anti-climax, along the lines of "well, it's Roy Halladay. It was bound to happen sooner or later." See also: Randy Johnson's perfect game in 2004.




But nobody expects a perfect game, especially not the fans who saw Dallas Braden pitch one on May 9th. Not only was Braden barely known outside of the Oakland area, his game came with the kind of supporting stories that almost seem fictional: he pitched his perfect game on Mother's Day, years after losing his mother to cancer. Before, after an on-field argument with Yankees' third baseman Alex Rodriguez, Rodriguez said that he didn't want to increase Braden's "fifteen minutes of fame." Assuming that Braden's career stays along its course (he's currently 4-5 with a 3.77 ERA), he'll retire with that perfect game being his major feat. That's not necessarily a bad thing, depending on how much he wants to publicize it. Don Larsen threw a perfect game in the 1956 World Series and has spent decades enjoying that publicity. See also: David Wells' perfect game in 1998.

So what if Galarraga had officially been perfect on Tuesday night? The excitement and attention would have been the same, but, and this is not meant to be pessimistic, it might have been lacking. Wells' perfect game was followed the next year by David Cone's, and at the time, it was shocking that two rare pitching milestones had been reached in such a short timespan. After Braden's gem, it was less than a full year since the previous perfect game, thrown by Chicago White Sox ace Mark Buehrle. Once Halladay became the twentieth man to tally one, it was generally agreed that it would never happen again in such a short span. Then, a week later, Galarraga almost made history.

The 2010 season has been dominated by pitching, but that has no bearing on these rare games. It's a combination of great pitching, great fielding, and the occasional break in which a hit ball or a strike call could go either way. Had Joyce properly called Jason Donald out, baseball fans would have been spoiled yet again, after the exciting hangover of the past month. But, it might have been lackluster. When a rarity happens too often, it's not nearly as exciting. The 1990s saw four perfect games; the 2000s saw two; and the 2010s have seen almost three in less than a month. Maybe Galarraga would have been the last for twenty years, or maybe there will be another one thrown in August. But even though he lost out, his interactions with Joyce has gained the young pitcher even more respect, when he rightfully could have been sulking over his lost chance at history.

But now, more than ever, when fans settle in for the first pitch, the looming idea of random magic will be even more palpable this season. For a game of numbers, there are plenty of wonderful intangibles to be rightfully discussed. And even though it won't go in the record books, Galaragga was perfect on Tuesday night, even if he gave up that one "hit."

The Star and Strikes

The fact that I was going to write a piece to coincide with the start of the 2010 Major League Baseball season has been a given since the close of the 2009 season. However, the topic itself has gone through a few changes in the past month. At first, I was going to go the usual route with a light preview of the upcoming season (much like when I picked the Kansas City Royals to compete for the American League Wild Card. Ouch.) After I scratched that idea, I was pretty set on writing Chicago-only previews for the Cubs and White Sox, partly as a homage to the title of this blog, despite the fact that the title arose as a tribute itself to my home city when I lived in Seattle. Now, the piece you're reading concerns a player on a team, the Washington Nationals, that's almost guaranteed to finish in last place, even among the not-so-vocal fans of the D.C. region. The player, right-handed pitcher Stephen Strasburg, isn't even on the Opening Day roster, and was largely unknown outside of baseball circles a year ago. A few nights ago, his story and hype popped into my head, and the postives and negatives of his emergence seem to be struggling for dominance.

At first glance, the onslaught of attention for Strasburg is great for the game. As the first overall pick in the 2009 draft, he was heralded as one of the best college pitchers to ever emerge, receiving attention usually reserved for college football or basketball picks. He was undrafted out of high school, but dominated as a pitcher for San Diego State, registering an astonishing 1.57 ERA during his 2008 season. His draft position made headlines on ESPN and dominated the sports journalism world, a tremendous feat considering that critics claim that baseball keeps losing ground to the popularity of basketball and football, and even in the face of a rapidly advancing technological world (this was the theme of a recent column by Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Sun-Times). As is the case with a lot of baseball (or football, for that matter) draft picks, he held out after being drafted by the Nationals, signing almost literally at the last minute for a record four-year, $15.1 million dollar contract. But this is just a business aspect, right? Possibly, but this also drew headlines because Strasburg is represented by agent Scott Boras.

One of the chic things to do in baseball is to bemoan the effects of the "superagents," the people behind the scenes that negotiate the mega-million dollar contracts for elite Major League players. However, this bemoaning goes far beyond the chatter heard in pregame discussions over beer. It can be easy to complain about the lucrative contracts, especially in an age when most people are struggling. However, the problem with agents like Boras is the air of "making sure said player is paid what he is worth," when it's obvious that the bigger the contract, the bigger the cut for Boras, et. al. I'll get to the Boras effect later; let's start with the immediate possibilities.



Strasburg is starting the 2010 season in the minor leagues to get some more low-pressure experience under his belt, despite the assumption among scouts and fans that he's ready for Major League action. Depending on who's asked, he'll be called up in June or July, but in reality, if the Nationals struggle early (as they almost definitely will), he could be with the team by early May. When this happens, it will be a major event, the game will likely be televised nationally, and this is good for baseball in Washington. They relocated from Montreal thanks to an indifferent fan base, and while the D.C. area has somewhat embraced them, the novelty has worn off. Their best pitcher is left-hander John Lannan, who would likely be a middle rotation player for a contending team. Their best position players are Adam Dunn (great power, but seriously prone to striking out), and Ryan Zimmerman. After that, the team is a collection of young, unproven players and veterans past their primes. While this could make for a great movie script, the reality is that the Nationals don't look like contenders this year or next year. How will that effect the most heralded pitcher in Washington, D.C. since (and this is no embellishment) Walter Johnson?

The pressure will be great, but exciting. If Strasburg struggles (but stays healthy), the hype will die down, and he'll work towards a stronger full season in 2011. But let's assume that he dominates immediately, going, for argument's sake, 10-2 with a 2.90 ERA. Given his already famous stature, and assuming that he keeps up his performances, he'll be one of the most feared pitchers in baseball. However, as is the beauty of baseball, he's only one man, and as brilliant as he can be, he can't carry the entire team (look at his division rival, Roy Halladay--he dominated the American League but never made the playoffs with the Toronto Blue Jays). The Nationals' farm system isn't the greatest, and unlike the Cleveland Cavaliers and Lebron James in the NBA, the organization doesn't have the resources to sign free agents to compliment their star (assuming Strasburg is as consistent as advertised when he's finally called up). His contract will be up in 2013. And this is where Boras could factor in negatively.

Unless they become playoff contenders in the next few years, it would be hard to imagine Strasburg staying in the D.C. area, playing for a mid-market team. A year or two before the end of his contract, the media would begin to whisper about his potential signing with another team--and being that his agent would demand a large contract, the list of potential teams would be whittled down to the usual suspects: the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox, and the New York Mets. This is the business of baseball, as negative as it is at times. But the reality is always there, and that was out in the open last night as I watched the opening game between the Yankees and Red Sox. One of the announcers casually mentioned Boston's Adrian Beltre signing a 1-year contract, with the hopes of putting up big numbers and demanding a longer, more lucrative deal after the season. Beltre's agent? Scott Boras.

But with the new season beginning, there's always optimism. The atmosphere of this post may be negative, but the fact that Strasburg has created so much press as someone who hasn't thrown a single Major League pitch is good for baseball, showing that young players can create excitement, even for struggling teams. However, Strasburg should do his best to avoid the hype and focus on improving himself, whether that be in his early start in the minors, or during his starts when he's called up to the parent club. I've never been one for sports cliches, and as I've mentioned numerous times, baseball seems to received the bulk of grand pronouncements. But then again, as a baseball fan, it's hard not to get caught up in the adrenaline rush of a new season. Players like Strasburg should revel in the clean slate, and in reality, baseball is enjoying increasing popularity, even, as Morrissey states, in our fast-paced era. But nothing is guaranteed. Strasburg has to perform, and hopefully, he'll become an adopted son of the region, much like catcher Joe Mauer, the first overall pick of the Minnesota Twins in 2001, and the current American League MVP.

But, to reiterate an important point, nothing is guaranteed. Just ask David Clyde or Kris Benson.

Not Quite Perfect

So far in 2009, the book world has seen a stunning wealth of baseball books, spanning an excellent, diverse array of subjects that appear fitting for involved, book-length studies--Thurmon Munson, Satchel Paige, and a joint interview between Bob Gibson and Reggie Jackson. However, the one baseball book that I've read so far this year would, at first glance, seem like a tired subject: a New York Yankees championship team. After the Yankees won their 27th World Series last night, I'm sure that most people (myself included) have had their fill of superlatives and outlandish hyperbole, and aren't interested in books or reviews about the team, no matter what era is being discussed. With baseball season now over, the focus will and should shift completely to football and basketball. However, Lew Paper's Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game and the Men Who Made It Happen proved irresistable for me. The subject (Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series) is well known to baseball fans, but lends itself to wanting more analysis and facts. On top of that, Chuck Klosterman gave the book a strong review in Esquire magazine.

Despite my interest, I nearly stopped reading this book after only half a page. The prologue is entitled "The Moment Of Truth," and begins with this opening:

"The tall right-hander peers down at the catcher from his perch on the pitcher's mound under the fading afternoon sun in the cavernous environs of Yankee Stadium (Paper 1)."

The tired title, coupled with the even more tired description of Yankee Stadium as "cavernous" made me worry that the rest of the book would be filled with obvious metaphors and overwrought attempts to convey the "magic of baseball's Golden Age." Even as someone in my mid-20s who never saw baseball in the 1950s, there are enough books and documentaries that depict baseball at its acme in the mid twentieth century. I kept going, and was happy to find that the book provides extremely detailed biographies of the players on both teams (the Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers). For baseball fans, some of these are well-known (Mickey Mantle's alcoholism, the stunning racism expressed towards Jackie Robinson), but Paper does a great job of giving the lesser known players the same amount of coverage as the legends. For example, before picking this book up, I had never heard of Dodgers outfielder Carl Furillo, and Paper's profiles work extremely well, educating the reader on the backgrounds of the players. The chapter on Furillo depicts him as an above-average baseball player, even if he's not as well known as some of the other men from that era:

"Furillo knew all about the trickery of the right-field wall [of Ebbets Field], and he meant to master it. 'He was a workman,' teammate Carl Erskine later said of Furillo. 'I studied every angle of that fucking wall,' Furillo later explained. He would have teammates hit him flies so that he could see how the ball responded to different situations. In time, he knew every quirk. When a sportswriter later asked him how he learned to play the wall so well, he had a simple response: 'I worked. That's fucking how.'(83)."

Paper also does a commendable job as a journalist, showing an unbiased look at both the positives and negatives of the individuals. Furillo made an off-hand, negative comment about Jackie Robinson, and, regardless of his views on race, found himself linked to the racism of the era.

"...Furillo later said that he had no interest in signing the petition that Dixie Walker circulated among the team to say that they did not want to play with Robinson. Having grown up in a small community where Italians were a distinct minority, Furillo knew that ethnic and racial discrimination was not confined to blacks (81)."

Despite these compelling insights, the actual game that's supposed to be the subject seems to be lost at times. Don Larsen gets the same amount of coverage as the others when he should be the primary focus. A lifelong average pitcher dealing with a failing marriage and alcoholism pitches the only perfect game in postseason history? This should be receiving the most attention, despite the excellent backstories of the players on both teams. Paper profiles Larsen in the beginning of the book, and occasionally returns to him. What brings the book down the most is the style that Paper employs at the end of each chapter, detailing every at-bat of the game.

"Jim Gilliam is more concerned with getting on base than retaliating against a knockdown pitch as he steps into the batter's box in the top of the seventh inning of the fifth game of the 1956 World Series. But Don Larsen is not making it easy for him. The Dodger second baseman takes a called strike, watches another pitch go by for a ball, and then fouls off a pitch (224-225)."

Paper is obviously trying to create what feels like a radio play-by-play, and this ends up being incredibly distracting. Personally, I've never been a fan of present-tense writing, and this is made worse by Paper injecting the perceived emotions of the particular players in the various parts of the game. While these emotional assumptions are understandable, it feels like Paper is trying to create fictionalized scenes in a book that is otherwise a strong history text. Overall, Perfect is amazingly well-researched, but is weighed down by these little problems. Had Paper focused more on Don Larsen and strictly adhered to his journalistic tendencies, this pivotal game account would have been so much better.

Work Cited:
Paper, Lew. Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game and the Men Who Made It Happen. Copyright 2009 by Lew Paper.

True Americana

There's really no need to mention a specific list. Whether one is discussing the essential postmodern authors, the essential American writers of the past thirty or so years, or an international list, Don DeLillo is virtually guaranteed placement anywhere. Personally, I've probably included him on some of my own lists, but the more I think about him, I don't have that much of his bibliography checked off on my reading lists. I read his debut novel, Americana, roughly six years ago. My memory of it is very, very sketchy, but I clearly remember not being terribly impressed (then again, I wasn't as well read at that time). White Noise followed, and it immediately restored my faith in DeLillo's warranted hype and acclaim. Cosmopolis lost me after about forty pages, and until recently, Underworld has held a noticeable place on my bookshelf; the only problem being, I've kept putting it off, occasionally reading the prologue, and feeling guilty that such an essential text was collecting dust. I've owned the book for a few years, and I've finally given it the proper time and attention.

The tidy description of Underworld is that the novel is a metaphor of American life and ideals following World War II, during the Cold War, and the formative years following both conflicts. The story revolves around two people, Nick Shay and Klara Sax, who knew each other very briefly and sexually when he was a teenager and she was a young mother. They reunite just as briefly in the beginning of the story, politely and maturely, and their interactions hint at a much longer, intertwining history:

"'I thought I owed us this visit. Whatever that means,' I said.
'I know what it means. You feel a loyalty. The past brings out our patriotism, you know? We want to feel an allegiance. It's the one undivided allegiance, to all those people and things.'
'And it gets stronger.'
'Sometimes I think everything I've done since those years, everything around me in fact, I don't know if you feel this way but everything is vaguely--what--fictitious (DeLillo 73).'"

Klara is an esteemed artist, and Nick is a waste management official. The difference in these occupations and lifestyles is manifested in the differences in their lives and histories, along with a supporting cast of dozens, sketched and crafted in staggering detail by DeLillo. Whether directly or through varying degrees of separation, the characters are connected by the travels of a baseball, the ball hit by Bobby Thomson off of Ralph Branca, a home run that gave the New York Giants the 1951 pennant over the Brooklyn Dodgers. It's known as "The Shot Heard 'Round the World," arguably one of the most famous moments in American sports history. This most American of moments, in the most American sport, is the launching pad for the myriad of events and personalities that follow.

"Pafko at the wall. Then he's looking up. People thinking where's the ball. The scant delay, the stay in time that lasts a hairsbreadth. And Cotter standing in section 35 watching the ball come in his direction. He feels his body turn to smoke. He loses sight of the ball when it climbs above the overhang and he thinks it will land in the upper deck. But before he can smile or shout or bash his neighbor on the arm. Before the moment can overwhelm him, the ball appears again, stitches visibly spinning, that's how near it hits, banging at an angle off a pillar--hands flashing everywhere (42)."

Cotter Martin is the first of a few people to have possession of this baseball, but the above passage is a terrific example of DeLillo's ability to break down such a monumental point of history into a private, reflexive moment of one person. In addition, moments that register as seemingly private on the outside are given just as much detail, rendering them much larger than they actually are. This may seem like a catch-22, but DeLillo's eye for detail makes the small seem large and the large seem small. An example of this expansion:

"He [Brian Glassic, an associate of Nick's] also did it as a provocation. Brian believed I was safely encased, solid, with a house and family folded around me, surer than he was, older but also physically superior, physically fit, a man of hardier stuff, this was his own stated theme--a man who keeps his counsel. And it greatly fazed him, it made him want to chip away, make boyish forays, place claims on my attention (108)."

During my first attempt at Underworld those years back, I remember being dismayed by fictional accounts of famous personalities, namely Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, and J. Edgar Hoover watching the Giants/Dodgers game together. At the time, I felt that DeLillo included them as caricatures of sorts, quintessential 1950s representations, but now, the famous inclusions seem essential. After all, what is a true look at postwar America, imagined or otherwise, without the factor of famous power or celebrity? There are several imagined stand up routines performed by Lenny Bruce later in the book, which serves as yet another terrific metaphor. Bruce was the ultimate counterculture icon of his time, and his audience, both in real life and the novel, were allegorical mixes of people who understood the honesty of what he said, and people who either strongly opposed this frankness or were not accustomed to hearing it spoken aloud. One might subconsciously think that George Carlin (for example) could have been used just as easily as Bruce, but Carlin didn't suffer the same amount of backlash, scrutiny, and private investigations.

The aforementioned occupational differences between Nick and Klara may seem obvious, but there's much more that lies below the surface, even literally, in Nick's line of work in waste management. A running idea is that the history of any given culture or civilization, not just America, can be studied and explained by what its inhabitants threw away or buried.

"[Brian] looked at all that soaring garbage and knew for the first time what his job was all about. Not engineering or transportation or source reduction. He dealt in human behavior, people's habits and impulses, their uncontrollable needs and innocent wishes, maybe their passions, certainly their excesses and indulgences but their kindness too, their generosity, and the question was how to keep this mass metabolism from overwhelming us (184)."

A sampling of Klara's mentality as an artist:

"Art in which the moment is heroic, American art, the do-it-now, the fuck-the-past--she could not follow that. She could look at it and respect it, envy it, even, in a way, but not, herself, place hand to object and make some furious now, some brilliant jack-off gesture that asserts an independence (377)."

Obviously, there are several passages, characters, and plot points that I haven't given the proper attention in this essay, but the relationship between Nick and Klara, and the paths in which their lives go in the novel, is one of the better interpretations of American postwar history, the mixing of (and independence of) American business classes and creative classes. As they grow older, the two characters seem to switch roles and personalities. Nick is a rebellious teen, and Klara is a semi-stable housewife. As we see Nick as an adult, his outward persona appears stable, whereas Klara's life calling is one that would seem to naturally lend itself to rebellious qualities. The beauty of DeLillo's creation is that neither one fits comfortably into occupational stereotypes, and while the two are separated for most of the book, there's a definite understanding of how they've affected each other. They're both flawed, passionate, and committed, and despite their independence, they would not be who they are without the other, even if the relationship is neither close, conventional, or ongoing.

Work Cited:
DeLillo, Don. Underworld. Copyright 1997 by Don DeLillo.