Brad Zellar Did you see the All-Star Game home run derby? The derby itself was sort of a snooze –too drawn out, too much digressive commentary, too many commercial breaks– but it was the bullshit beforehand that really had me stomping around my living room and foaming at the mouth. I mean, seriously, doesn’t it chap your … Read more
My, my. Mercy. Yowza. Goodness gracious. Good heavens. For heaven’s sake. For the love of Pete. Holy cow. Holy shit. 59 hits, 22 walks, 11 home runs, six errors, and 46 runs, in two freaking games. An American League contest in which the pitcher for the winning team was actually forced to bat –two times. … Read more
Here are the facts, or at least some of them: the Twins lost five of seven games to a lousy Yankee team. And thus far, they’re 0-5 against the first-place Cleveland Indians. Kevin Slowey didn’t turn out to be the second coming of Francisco Liriano, or even quite the second coming of Brad Radke, circa … Read more
When Scott Baker pitches a game like that, dammit all to hell, you have to find a way to win. Hell, when anybody pitches a game like that for you, you have to find a way to win. The Twins have won eight of their last twelve, and just went in and won two of … Read more
If you’re the sort of fan who has an appreciation for both the home team and the history of the sport, today’s Twins/Jays finale was a pretty fabulous proposition all around, particularly if you were one of the 31,038 folks in attendance at the Dome to see Frank Thomas’ 500th home run in an 8-5 … Read more
Good lord, the stars, the dusty, glimmering sprawl above some dark, quiet place in America, the stardust, star-scatter, the worlds stretched up there above this one. Remember? Remember standing on a gravel road in Vermont –along a big river in a Montana valley, on a dock jutting out into a lake in the Adirondacks, at … Read more
How messed up is it that a guy –Pat Neshek in this instance– can come in with runners at second and third and nobody out, give up a sacrifice fly, yet nonetheless retire every batter he faces, and get a blown save out of the deal? That whole game was sort of messed up, really. … Read more
John Parizek was standing on a stage in the middle of the Mall of America’s rotunda, waving some sort of a racing flag and speaking into a microphone. Even though he was less than twenty-five yards away, nothing Parizek said was intelligible. Granted, the Malliest Mall of Them All is a noisy proposition on most … Read more
Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Dirda is something of an endangered species: a professional book critic. At a time when daily newspapers are shrinking their book sections or eliminating them altogether, Dirda soldiers on at the stalwart Washington Post Book World. His criticism has always been marked by real passion for reading—that’s maybe too fancy; the guy … Read more
Agee has always been a fascinating study, as well as refreshingly free of literary conceits and pretension. She has a distinctly Midwestern, blue-collar sensibility, and is fearless (or perhaps heedless) when it comes to her subjects; this is a woman, after all, who somehow managed to publish a collection of stories built around automobile racing, … Read more