Brad Zellar After mercifully disappearing for the first nine games of the season that song was back Saturday night. Lee Greenwood, I guess it is. I’ll take the blame (see this if you need any further explanation), because from here on out I’ve decided that I’ll take the blame for everything that goes wrong this year. I … Read more
This is always such a bittersweet night for me, as I curl up in my recliner before the fireplace with the last volume of poetry of the season and a glass of eggnog. Tomorrow, alas, all the verse will be packed away, the poetry decorations taken down, and the Caedmon Recordings of Poets will be … Read more
I had an incredible time at the ballpark tonight –and, yes, I’m in a good enough mood that I’m going to go ahead and refer to the Metrodome as a ballpark. It was a strange and amazing game, and a seriously gutty, inspired, and lucky performance by Carlos Silva. There was a point in the … Read more
–The day of Samuel Beckett’s Funeral. December 26, 1989. Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris. The Spam hat was my own humble offering. This is just the book to give your sister if she’s a loud, dirty, boozy girl. –Dylan Thomas’s blurb on the front dustwrapper of the 1966 first American edition of Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds (Walker … Read more
Back in the day –this was in 1987– I used to have this Nancy and Sluggo tee-shirt that I believed was some sort of magic talisman for the Twins. Whenever I wore it to a game the Twins won, and somehow I figured out, or thought I figured out, that when I didn’t wear it … Read more
It’s not really a surprise to me, but Jacque Jones has quietly become a better player –certainly a better hitter, and I’d argue a better all-around player– than Torii Hunter. Jones is as competitive and driven as Hunter is easy going, and he works as hard as anybody on the team to get better. He … Read more
I’ve gone by a lot of different names over the years, every one of them, I’m sure, transparently phoney. I now recognize that I was laboring under some fairly serious delusions, and harbored the misguided notion that these names I’d choose –and choose carefully, I might add– demonstrated a certain flair. What they actually were, … Read more
…and a 2-1 victory against the Royals should probably go in the loss column, but what the hell, we’ll take it. Don’t knock yourselves out trying to score a few runs for your pitchers, though, fellas. Didn’t you pretty much know that two runs was all it was going to take tonight? I did, right … Read more
What the hell was that? I am sorely in need of some consolation, brothers and sisters. A weekend without baseball, followed by a train wreck in the Motor City, has left me sitting here listening to Skip James with my head in my hands (well, my head was in my hands, but I had to … Read more
My instincts at the moment are pretty minimal. Maybe instincts isn’t the word I’m looking for. I’m not sure what word I’m looking for, to be perfectly honest with you. Appetite? My appetite at the moment is pretty minimal? While that’s certainly true, it’s hardly what I meant to say in the first place. It’s … Read more