We have all been expelled from the Garden, but the ones who suffer most in exile are those who are still permitted to dream of perfection.
–Stanley Kunitz, “Reflections”
[assez]
[assez dit]
[pas assez bon]
[pas suffisant]
[de trop]
[arrete!]
[shhhhhhh…]
It’s pretty apparent by this time that there isn’t a single trade in the world that’s going to make any kind of significant difference in the Twins’ fortunes. And, sure, I remember the Shannon Stewart trade, but that was then and this is now. At the moment there isn’t one guy who could reinvigorate this line-up, or make up for the feeble offensive production of the rest of the team.
This has all been particularly disappointing, of course, because on paper this year’s team –even with the question marks on the left side of the infield– sure as hell looked like it was going to be much improved offensively. What’s happened this year is a systemic failure. You can’t point to any one player or any one game or at-bat and say, see, there’s the problem, right there’s where the train came off the tracks. It’s pervasive. There’s absolutely no consistency –and this applies across the board, up and down the roster– from one game or at-bat to the next.
The Twins have just been maddeningly hapless at the plate, and you almost have no choice but to question the basic, fundamental approach. Or maybe it’s the scouting reports. There must be some explanation, though, for the steady regression, because this team simply shouldn’t be this feeble offensively. They seem utterly incapable most nights of generating the kind of contagious offensive momentum that leads to big innings and rallies.
So I’ll ask you, as KRS-ONE once asked, relative to much more pressing and cosmically troubling questions: “Why is that?”
It beats the hell out of me. It does. It is. Beating. The. Living. Hell. Out. Of. Me.
And I wonder this: what do you suppose the ERA of the Twins pitching staff would be if they had to face the Twins line-up every night?
I’m guessing under 2.00.
Shit, Rick Reed, fresh off his most serious shower mishap or airplane-sleeping injury, would eat this team alive right now.
…what is it we are all doing, what is it we are about, pray tell? And why are we gathered here?
—Raymond Carver, “All My Relations”
I’m on my way
with dust in my shoes,
free of mythology:
Send books back to their shelves,
I’m going down into the streets.
I learned about life
from life itself,
love I learned in a single kiss
and could teach no one anything
except that I have lived
with something in common among men….
–Pablo Neruda, “Ode to the Book“
I frittered away a ridiculous amount of time over the last week or so trying to finish an essay that was supposed to address the decline of reading in America, and, specifically, the question of what this decline means, and whether stories matter.
Your eyes, I’m sure, immediately rolled back in your head when you read that paragraph, so I’m going to presume you’ll understand what I was up against. Too many words have already been wasted on this subject, which essentially boils down to this: Are too many words being wasted on this and other subjects? Are words wasted? Are there too many words? Or: What the hell is wrong with words that they don’t seem capable of stirring the American imagination as they purportedly once did? Have words suddenly –or slowly– lost their ability to make sense of what we are going through, both individually and collectively? Are we, in fact, going through anything collectively anymore, or at least anything that words might make sense of? And if we are not, then might not that be one primary reason why books fail to speak to so many of us?
Or: What the hell is wrong with Americans that so many of them are now apparently incapable of (or entirely indifferent to) being stirred by a language that is still capable of giving voice to all manner of incredibly stirring and dazzling stories?
Or: What?
Never mind, of course, that this is all hogwash. If there’s one thing I’ve proved in my long and distinguished career, it’s my ability and unhappy willingness to wallow in all manner of hogwash in exchange for the most paltry of compensation. Time and again I’ve proved (right here, in fact) that I’ll wallow in all manner of hogwash for free.
And never mind that these people who wring their hands over the alleged decline of words and stories obviously haven’t been listening to much music –hip hop, specifically– or spent much time lately hanging out in decent barber shops. Just for starters.
I made the mistake of engaging my doppelganger in this discussion, which only confused matters. The doppelganger fiercely and mercilessly blocked every one of my entry points into this exercise in futility, challenging each of my arguments with withering rebuttals that increasingly felt like taunting, and, eventually, mockery. It was plenty clear that the doppelganger had no patience, no patience at all, for this foolishness, and was merely humoring me. At one point I somehow found myself defending even my hairline –which needs no defending– and the orthodontic irregularities of my smile.
By this time words truly did not matter. They had ceased to matter.
The problem was, though, that I had a looming deadline. And I had already managed to waste almost two thousand words on this subject, words that, if published, would expose me as merely one more cloistered blowhard braying from the tower into the thick clouds of smoke billowing from the funeral pyres far below. I have already published far too many words that have exposed me in a similarly humiliating fashion.
I scrolled down to the tail end of those nearly two thousand words and hit the backspace key. Eventually I was left with only the most modest and forlorn little neighborhood of words, huddled together at the top of an otherwise empty screen, all that remained after the rest of the towering city of my indignation had been burned to the ground by the furious onslaught of my doppelganger. Eventually I was left with just these two sentences that I couldn’t bear to part with, and I suppose they’ll have to do:
At precisely the moment that man began to try to write down the story of God, at precisely that moment God turned His back in disgust. He knew what was coming: Lies.
Indubitably that wasn’t precisely the performance any of us were pining to see from the local nine coming out of the All Star getaway. And, agreed, Bret Boone wasn’t quite the shot in the bum we all so desperately hoped he might be. And yes, yes, I did see that the Chicago lumbermen were victorious again this evening. A wee bit discouraging, I’ll grant you, but it all adds up to so much stuff and nonsense in the long run.
Let’s try to be patient with the local lads, shall we? It’s early yet. They were bound to be a tad fagged after the holiday, and, good heavens, poor Bret Boone has barely had time to sort through his luggage and find his way to the ball yard. He probably hasn’t even managed to locate his neighborhood pub or Cracker Barrel. I don’t suppose, in fact, that he even has a proper neighborhood yet. So let’s give the fine fellow a chance to settle in and unpack his tea set, shall we, before we start passing judgment on his acquisition. This is, after all, a true gentleman who is also by all accounts a cracking good ballplayer, or at least was once upon a time, before he lost his way and wandered into a paper bag and discovered he couldn’t hit his way back out of it.
This sort of thing happens to even the worthiest of wandsmen from time to time, and I’m sure Boonie –that’s what the other fellows around the circuit like to call the new lad sporting the Minnesota togs– will be just fine. I’m certain of it, in fact. He is what the baseball insiders like to call “a gamer.” That means…I’m not certain, actually, what exactly that means, but I do believe it means more or less the sort of chap you’d like to have in the foxhole with you when the Huns come charging with their muskets, the kind with sharp objects attached to the end. Very dangerous piece of weaponry, that, if I’m not mistaken. A gamer, I should think, would come in right handy at just that moment.
As for tonight’s admitted disappointment, let’s try to look on the bright side. The fellows struck for two runs against a most crafty southpaw, which is more than they very easily could have struck for. They could have struck for zero runs, which would have been, no doubt about it, absolute rubbish. But, no, two runs! Much better than zero! Jolly good! Etc.
The Lohse youngster “pitched his tail off,” as the salty skipper of the Minnesota club is fond of saying. Indeed he did “pitch his tail off.” Not half bad, I say, not half bad at all. In fact, a bit better than not half bad, if I don’t say so. The others, the hurlers who were summoned from the bullpen (a charming and colorful bit of the parlance, that), acquitted themselves most handsomely as well.
The other fellows across the way were just that much better tonight, and there’s not a thing in the world for that other than to hoist a cup and salute the victors for a valiant effort. Well done, worthy adversary, well done!
And to our local batsmen I can only say, as I have said so often in this long campaign, ‘Chin up, my lads, be of stout heart and stern resolve, for tomorrow’s another day, and even a blind dog’s likely to turn up the odd bone now and again.’
Despite appearances, we’re not particularly bothered about all this chatter regarding the Rove-Plame affair, partly because we’re supposed to be finishing the new issue, you know, putting all the frosting and chopped nuts and confetti on the long-johns here at the doughnut shop. But we noticed an interesting thread over at Romenesko, relative to Mike Miner’s thumb-twiddling at the Chicago Reader. Miner asks why reporters have not done the job of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald–that is, why haven’t reporters themselves discovered and publicized the name of the person who leaked Valerie Plame’s name.
The answer to that is pretty simple, aside from the obvious legal tools that Fitzgerald has to compell witnesses or, say, throw them in jail. (Summarized nicely here, by Aaron Clemens.) Considering that whoever leaked her name knew or should have known that he was committing a federal crime, not a lot of people have the spine or the stomach to go on the record (or even off the record) with such an allegation without dramatic and unimpeachable evidence. That same trepidation affects reporters, and it should. Unless you can prove that Karl Rove is the man you think he is, you run a pretty serious risk of libel. The stakes don’t get a lot higher, though blog-nation loves to play fast and loose with the facts, and frequently turns innuendo into accepted, wife-beating truism. (We’ve stopped holding our breath waiting for the first high-profile libel case to emerge from something someone wrote on a blog… Here in the U.S., it’s relatively hard to win a libel or slander case when it involves public or political figures, which is as it should be, even if it explains Rush Limbaugh’s savings account. We guess it has to do with the fact that so few blogs seem to warrant being taken seriously, present company included, naturally.)
The other element of all this that we find compelling, that no one seems to be writing about, is its meta-media quality–on some level, if you want to get your tinfoil hat out and talk about media conspiracies, it is possible to discuss it under the rubric of political bias, and it might take you in some interesting directions. Time magazine, by caving into the judicial system and Mr. Fitzgerald, might actually be playing to its liberal bias, because it has facilitated the publication of what appears to be Leaker Number One’s name–Karl Rove, who also happens to be Blue America’s Most Wanted. (We dislike him as much as anyone, probably more. But last time we checked, libel law does not stop applying when your intentions are pure and your politics are noble.) Journalists have got themselves into quite a lather over Time’s decision–are they protesting a little too loudly?
No, we think generally they are sincere, even if the New York Times appears to be working overtime (like our managerial friends over there at the Strib) to convince the world of its political neutrality by erring on the side of the right (maybe even going so far as to take pains to use Republican accounting methods in its circulation department). While we like to play both sides of the issue for our own entertainment and edification, we basically agree with our friend Chris Lehmann: No matter what you may think of Judy Miller’s work, she is chilling in the cooler for simply trying to get on with it. She can’t very well repair her tarnished reportorial credentials in an orange jumpsuit and bunny slippers, can she.
But we wonder whether this whole thing really will deflate the courage of other potential anonymous sources the way people are saying it will. Maybe so. How often are these sources breaking the law–or at least bending the rules–to speak to reporters? Probably more than you might think. Cripes, coffee-jerks at Starbucks have to sign confidentiality agreements these days, and unless you are explicitly authorized to shill for your company, there’s a pretty good chance you’re violating some contract somewhere.
Last night, we enjoyed Dan Cohen’s little chat at Raking Through Books about anonymous sources, and we found some closure. Cohen suggested that the real beacon of hope in press-source-public affairs has been and will continue to be the U.S. Supreme Court.
A little background: Cohen sued the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press for violating their confidentiality agreements with him, after he attempted to pass along damning information about a political rival. And the case rose all the way to the USSC. The Men (and Woman) in black ended up siding with Cohen, and said that the press is not above the law when it comes to verbal contracts, no matter what they may say about First Amendment protections.
Now, where we found some closure–at least so far as how Cohen’s case is related to present difficulties, or how he sees it to be, anyway–is that the First Amendment does not necessarily apply when it is being used to shield illegal activity, civil or criminal. (The comparison to yelling “fire” in a theater is inexact, but informative.) Naturally, Cohen sides with the decision of Time editor in chief Norman Pearlstine, who in all modesy and righteousness asserted that Time could not hold itself above the law to protect an anonymous source who had apparently broken the law in opening his mouth. (By contrast, Cohen had NOT broken the law–he had merely made public documents available to the local papers.)
So it is Cohen’s belief that the Supreme Court in both cases recognized that a law had been broken, and that that violation needed redress, and the First Amendment could not be used to impede that redress.
Cohen does not hold the press in very high regard, especially the local press. In fact, he gets real exercised thinking about the arrogance of the local daily papers. This is undoubtedly a function of having spent ten years of his life trying to extract justice from them for breaking their agreements and more or less ruining his public life. We’re not sure we agree with Cohen when he describes the press as self-styled “Gods who walk the Earth entirely above the law.” That applies to almost all corporations of a certain size and profit margin. But Cohen’s slightly odd blind spot, developed, we think, as a result of his own redemption from bitter, dirty political hardball, is what could have been a more pointed attack on the liberal bias of the local papers, particularly the Star Tribune. He mentioned it, but he could have made considerably more hay.
It may be more or less obvious that, through various machinations, the Strib is trying to shed the albatross of lefty bias that has for so long defined the community it patronizes. But back when Cohen was a GOP operative, it is almost unthinkable that his effort to cultivate a cheap smear against a respected governor (actually respected governor’s running mate) would not have generated its own backlash at the papers conservatives love to hate. We cannot, for the life of us, understand why he didn’t mail his public documents anonymously, and patiently wait to see if either paper picked up on the story. Cohen expresses astonishment that the local papers turned HIM into the story. “That would be like Ben Bradlee telling Woodward and Bernstein, ‘The real story here is Deep Throat. Let’s publish his name!”
Well, not exactly, no. But here’s where the allusion is interesting: Imagine what the Washington Press, or the Weekly Standard, or The National Review would have done with the snitching of Mark Felt. Maybe you begin to get the idea what the pre-McClatchy Star Tribune would have done with some public documents cheaply smearing a beloved Democratic politician. You might also speculate why those idolatrous right-wing institutions are presently as quiet as a Convent on Good Friday, with regard to Mr. Rove.
He would have been seventy-two years old this week.
By the time he was my age he had four children and a literally broken heart.
He did what he could.
He taught wonder.
I still sense him coiled like a discus hurler behind every one of my best intentions.
His blood is the blood that calls me back to this world each time I crawl away disgusted.
His are the words of forgiveness I am always surprised to find crouched at the back of my tongue. The tenderness, unexpected, that seizes me when I am in the presence of suffering or helplessness, that also is him feeling through me.
My biggest dreams are his.
He pointed out the stars, and taught me to appreciate the gorgeous example of upholstery that is a baseball mitt. The short trigger, the hatred of condescension, the intolerance of cruelty, his compassion and affection for the little guy and the underdog, all these things he gave me.
He could not, unfortunately, give me his unbridled optimism, his undying faith in human goodness, his stiff upper lip, or his genuine willingness to just let the world be the world.
But his capacity for love, his sense of loyalty, his appreciation for a good road trip, and his eagerness to play the fool –What can I say? I am his boy.
Even when he was ultimately defeated by life, he showed me again and again how to live.
I’ve forgotten so much already. I’d give anything if he could come back for just one day, for just one hour, for just one cup of coffee, to help me remember.
I was born a clown, and in retrospect my parents were incredibly good sports about what must surely have been on a number of levels a shock and a disappointment. They’d been trying for years to have a child, and they accepted me immediately as a blessing and loved me unconditionally for what I was.
My father likes to tell the story of how on the day I was born he went right out and bought me my first pair of big red shoes. I took my first tentative steps in those shoes.
From the very beginning my lips were preternaturally large, and I have never required much in the way of embellishment beyond a basic application of lipstick for color and a bit of accenting around the outline. I have no memory of being outfitted with my rubber nose, but from the first time I can recall gazing at my reflection in a mirror it was a source of great pride and enduring pleasure.
One morning in early childhood I awoke to discover that overnight my chin and jowls had acquired an application of Vaseline and coffee grounds.
I was, I am told, an uncommonly stubborn and willful child, with a clear and unwavering self-image. I was as a result always allowed to choose my own clothing, and favored a ragged old porkpie hat, an oversized smock with red polka dots and shiny buttons, and baggy trousers covered with brightly colored patches. I was a very happy boy, and a happy clown.
Childhood is of course an awkward and confusing time in the life of a clown. By the time I was old enough to attend school I had grown used to the charmed attention of adults. All of those I had come in contact with had seemed both amused and enchanted to find themselves in the presence of a happy little clown. I suppose in hindsight there was a good deal of condescension in this response, but I loved the attention all the same. I craved and needed attention; there was nothing I could do about it. It was hard-wired in my brain. My self-esteem was entirely dependent on entertaining people and making them laugh.
My parents were an unfailingly compliant audience. They adored me, and I could induce heaving fits of laughter in them with little more than a wide-eyed grin or a startled spit-take at the breakfast table. To their credit they never pushed me. They didn’t have to. I was, however, an unusually sheltered child, and though I don’t believe this was ever a conscious decision on the part of my parents, I had had precious little interaction with other children by the time I started elementary school. As such I was utterly unprepared for the reactions I received from the other students. I understood neither the casual cruelty of children, nor the irrational fear that clowns seem to inspire in so many youngsters.
There were long, unhappy stretches where I got the shit kicked out of me every day I went to school. Bullies on the playground held me down and wiped my beard of coffee grounds from my face; they stole my ragged hat, stepped on my big red shoes, and tore the shiny buttons from my polka dot shirt.
In my teenage years I would stand alone and friendless in the darkened gymnasium at school dances. No girl would dance with me. Even balloons could not get me a date. I eventually taught myself a few simple magic tricks to try to impress my classmates, but it was too little, too late.
I ate too much candy and gained a great deal of weight.
I learned this difficult lesson: a clown is simply not equipped to handle the brutal truth.
By the time I dropped out of high school to join the circus my fate was sealed. I would be a sad-faced clown to the end of my days.
It’s no secret that people of great achievement are often abject curiosities and spectacular failures as human beings, and this was certainly true of Tchaikovsky, who lived in my hometown when I was growing up.
I can’t truly claim that it was my privilege to know the man, or even that to know him would have been, in fact, any kind of privilege at all. (My understanding is that this was decidedly not the case.) But I certainly remember the old man, and recall seeing his stooped and wretched specter stumbling along the sidewalks of my neighborhood.
People around town knew Tchaikovsky, of course, or certainly were aware of his strange presence. Few, however, apparently realized he was writing music. Most folks remember him as a stunningly bad amateur painter whose crude oils of birds –robins, almost exclusively– were entered in the art show at the county fair each summer.
Somewhere I have a snapshot of the garish tattoo of a clown bleeding from his eyes that Tchaikovsky had etched into one of his forearms. I can’t recall how I came by this photograph, to be honest with you, but it remains among my most prized possessions, and countless scholars have tried to buy it from me over the years.
There was always a great deal of speculation that Tchaikovsky was consumptive, or infected with venereal disease. There did, certainly, appear to be something wrong with him. There were clearly health issues of one sort or another, most obviously a painful-looking skin condition. He also had dodgy hygiene, and always seemed to be in need of a new pair of shoes.
Late in his life Tchaikovsky wore a beat-to-shit pair of purple moon boots, no matter the season. This was after moon boots had long since gone out of fashion, and I suppose he picked them up on one of his regular visits to the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store, where he was also said (this was in the newspaper after his death) to be an indiscriminate hoarder of “potboilers and paperback westerns.”
I can also tell you that he rolled his own cigarettes, and spent a great deal of time drinking coffee and banging away at the Cannonball Run pinball machine at a local pizza parlor.
Whenever we’d see him out and about, my mother would always say, “That poor man doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going.”
“I could help him out with that,” my father would say. “He’s going.”
Tchaikovsky had one sister still in town, but she was said to find him repellent, and more than once sought a restraining order against him on the grounds that he “creeped her out.”
He occasionally played chess at the public library with the conductor of the high school orchestra, and somehow managed to talk this man into performing some of his compositions at the annual spring orchestra concert. Nothing much was made of his music at the time, however, and when Tchaikovsky died he was largely friendless and wholly uncelebrated.
Even to this day there are people in my old hometown who will insist that the music now attributed to Tchaikovsky was, in fact, composed by some other person, or persons. Repeated attempts to raise money to erect a statue in his honor outside the library have been unsuccessful.
Can we just start the All Star break now? Seriously, let’s go ahead and forfeit tomorrow’s game and give the boys an extra day’s rest. Go on and send Joe Nathan to Detroit, but keep Johan home. He needs some quiet time, maybe one of those spirit retreats the New Age hippies used to talk about. Maybe they still talk about them, the goofy bastards. Nothing good can come of letting Johan go to Detroit, though. It would be tantamount, in fact, to handing a suicidally depressed man a straight razor.
For God’s sake, people, have you been to Detroit lately?
I doubt that you have, but if the answer is ‘yes,’ would you care to explain yourself?
Tonight’s performance was disgraceful. The sixth inning was as wretched as any single inning in the last ten years. I can’t think of a more miserable game in recent memory. This is, after all, the Kansas City Royals, and the Twins are being administered a stinging high colonic with barbecue sauce. Let’s all hope like hell it has some sort of long-term therapeutic effect, although I certainly don’t know why it would. I can assure you that it’s never worked for me.
Everything about that game sucked, other than the fact that poor Luis Rivas had his first extra base hit of the season. And his second. And his third. Luis put the Twins on his back and carried them…he carried them…he, uh, oh, shit, that’s right, he didn’t carry them anywhere, because right now this team is just too damn heavy for anyone to carry, let alone Luis Rivas. Or Mike Redmond.
Need I remind anyone that it’s Saturday night, by the way? What the hell was I doing sitting home on a Saturday night watching a demolition derby on television? I could have cleaned my garage. Or torn it down. Or given myself a tattoo. Or even gone over to Uptown to gawk at the aliens.
There’s not a damn thing, really, that any of us can say about that game, but I will tell you what I’d be happy to live without. I’d be happy to live without Dick and Bert constantly singing the praises of Shannon Stewart’s virtues as a sparkplug at the top of the order.
Because right now Stewart has an on base percentage of .338. That’s two points higher than Michael Cuddyer’s OBP, and there are nine guys on the roster who have higher on base percentages, including such famously patient hitters as Torii Hunter and Jacque Jones. Stewart has drawn 22 walks. Five guys have more walks. He has five stolen bases. He is, in short, not a leadoff hitter anymore. I’m sorry about that, but it’s time to face the facts, particularly since one of the problems for this team all year has been that all sorts of guys have been playing (and pitching) out of position.
I hope the game’s not on TV tomorrow, even though I like to think I have the good sense to avoid it entirely if it is. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to even think about it. I want to go down to the Dome next Thursday with a brand new scorebook and pretend that tonight –and all the other nights too much like tonight– never happened.
Come Thursday I intend to start the season all over with a clean slate. And I expect that the Twins are going to do the same.